Thursday, September 4, 2008

Liberal Coffee

I feel so good about myself today. You see, I start off each morning with coffee--good coffee--usually Distant Lands coffee purchased at my local grocer and brewed from whole beans. Coffee is important to me. I enjoy it. I thank God for it (and that goat-herder in northern Africa who discovered it). It gets me going.

I usually maintain a strict "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to the politics of my coffee. I find it easier to drink it this way. Just like with my favorite Hollywood actors, I would prefer not to know or hear their political leanings because, well, sometimes it can be scary. I like to remain blissfully naive on these things. Who wants to learn that their favorite character in a movie was portrayed by some marxist sympathizer who thinks, for example, that America should be more like Fidel Castro's Cuba? No, I'd rather just like the guy and not know anything about him.

The same goes with my coffee. I don't ask it what it thinks about capitalism and it doesn't try to raise my taxes or put me on the government dole. We just enjoy each other's company.

But this morning when I went for the coffee beans I remembered that the bag was empty. The poverty I felt at that moment had a Dickens-like character . . . enough to make a good capitalist's blood run cold.

So I made my way to work without my morning brew, vowing to stop somewhere where I could get something with some strength and fortitude, some flavor, some substance.

Something real.

Have I mentioned that typical American coffee like, say, Folgers or Maxwell House is embarassingly weak? Drinking that meager fare is akin to pouring food coloring in hot water. Seriously. American coffee, for the most part, is like half-coffee. I could not settle for that.

So I stopped at Starbucks.

I got a grande Sumatran blend and a bag of whole bean Ethiopia Sidamo. Oh, and a coffee mug for the road--liberal coffee.

I feel so good about myself now. I've probably saved a rainforest, done my part to encourage fair trading practices, helped put a long-hair through Berkeley, and, oh yeah, even built a bridge in Ethiopia to help farmers get their beans to market.

Man, what a guy I am!

I feel like Sean Connery in Medicine Man, like I'm making a difference in the world.

I bet Bush doesn't even drink coffee. The Nazi!

So if you really care about the earth, the poor, saving the rainforest, curing AIDS, fair trade, and making the world into a worker's paradise and all that, start your morning off right . . . like I do . . . with some liberal coffee!

1 comment:

Momo said...

*I* know you'd drink liberal coffee or ANY coffee--as long as it was goooood... coffee snob.