Faux Populism vs. Faux Liberalism

As I've probably made clear, I'm kind of obsessed with Twitter these days, which probably accounts for my decreased posting on this here blog.  I've found if I can find a way to say something like "Wow, that song "Ain't No Rest For The Wicked" is the biggest White Stripes ripoff ever" on twitter, I don't really feel the need to create a blog post about it because I've pretty much said all that I need to say about that particular issue.  (Wow, though--at first I thought it was Jack White's new band, and I was like "why did he need to start a new band to sound exactly like the White Stripes?")(Biggest White Stripes ripoff since "Joker and the Thief")  (Biggest ripoff of another band's sound since "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress")  (Okay, that was probably at least 3 tweets' worth, but you get the point.)

Also, people I follow on Twitter post links to stuff that I find interesting. Sometimes.  Like this little controversy, which I will attempt to sum up as briefly and coherently as possible.  There is this website, stopstarbucks.com which takes Starbucks to task for their union-busting ways.  I suppose that Starbucks is a juicy target because they have kind of positioned themselves as part of the liberal, college-educated professional lifestyle, so the fact that their corporate behavior is not at all liberal or worker-friendly shows a disconnect, and much of their customer base might be motivated by liberal guilt to push Starbucks to change their evil ways. 

So far so good--having worked as part of the "Charter School Movement," which is at least half about union-busting (oh yes it certainly is, and I will dispute at length and in excruciating detail anyone who says otherwise), I appreciate the value of unions and have a special dislike for union-busting companies. 

But then there's this.  Starbucks was trying to run some kind of contest on Twitter.  Post a picture of yourself with one of their new ads and get a free coffee or something.  So the Stop Starbucks people sent the word out to their vast network of supporters asking them to hack the contest and post photos like this:



Starbucks quickly ended the contest and Stop Starbucks was trumpeting their success all over twitter, except here's the thing:  almost all the anti-Starbucks photos that were posted were taken in the same exact place as the photo above, which is lit really funny--it looks for all the world like an outdoor scene shot inside.  It looks like they hung a Starbucks ad on Sesame Street. A bunch of the photos seemed to come from Twitter accounts created for the express purpose of posting an anti-Starbucks on Sesame Street shot.  (if you have any interest in finding this out for yourself, go to search.twitter.com and search for #top3percent.)

So yeah, I guess this is the little guy taking down the big guy, but it's not some big populist uprising.  In fact, Stop Starbucks' attempt to get the angry masses to rise up on Twitter was clearly a bust.  The masses are, as usual, apathetic. 

So, on one side we have the union-busting corporation that pretends to be liberal, and on the other-side, we have the ersatz rabble-rousing organization that can't manage to rouse the rabble.  Conclusion:  everybody sucks.