"Vanilla-soy-latte-drinking" Starbucks customers are not necessarily "tofu-eating", "Birkenstock-wearing", but probably "NPR-listening". The yuppies (ok, I called myself a yuppie) can afford the coffee, like the "ambience", bla-bla-bla. We all understand the branding here. The Starbucks crowd doesn't necessarily want to free Tibet, but obviously tend to be educated and socially liberal. I think...
But what with the recent worrying about the brand's future, maybe the company wants to, Dean-like perhaps, to open up their tents to, uh, another demographic?
One of the pithy quotes on their cups in their "The way I see it" vseries, #224, reads like this:
Darwinism's impact on traditional social values has not been as benign as its advocates would like us to believe. Despite the efforts of its modern defenders to distance themselves from it's baleful social consequence, Darwinism's connection with eugenics, abortion, and racism is a matter of historical record. And the record is not pretty.
Now, this is not merely a fair-and-balanced answer to #220 ("Evolution [...] is a scientific theory abundantly reconfirmed...") That would be bad enough. But the author of the quote, Dr.Jonathan Wells, is not just a member of the Discovery Institute.
He is also a proponent of AIDS reappraisal, a belief that HIV does not cause AIDS, joined by such distinguished scientific luminaries as Thabo Mbeki. Enjoy that with your vanilla soy latte...
P.S.
I've gotten a cup with that ID tripe for two days in a row, and just as I told them, I was about to refuse a cup the next time, when I got the #220 today... Coincidence? Quick reaction (I did mention the store on the comment form :-)? Is a Starbucks cup a new debate forum? You decide.