In January, Egyptian Cleric Safwat Higazi brought viewers of al Nas TV urgent news (subscriber only) about the Starbucks logo:
Has any of you ever wondered who this woman with a crown on her head is? Why do we boycott Starbucks? ... The girl on the Starbucks logo is Queen Esther. Do you know who Queen Esther was and what the crown on her head means? This is the crown of the Persian Kingdom. This queen is the queen of the Jews. She is mentioned in the Torah, in the Book of Esther. The girl you see is Esther, the queen of the Jews in Persia...
Can you believe that in Mecca, Al-Madina, Cairo, Damascus, Kuwait, and all over the Islamic world, hangs the picture of beautiful Queen Esther, with a crown on her head, and we buy her products.[...]We want Starbucks to be shut down throughout the Arab and Islamic world. We want it to be shut down in Mecca and in Al-Madina. I implore King Abdallah bin Abd Al-‘Aziz, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques: It is inconceivable that in Mecca and Al-Madina, there will be a picture of Queen Esther, the queen of the Jews.
As anyone can see, however, the female figure in the Starbucks logo (pictured above) has two fish tails. This is a clue that she is not Esther, queen of the Jews in Persia. She is instead a twin-tailed siren of Greek mythology. This is because the company is apparently named in part after Starbuck, Captain Ahab’s first mate in the book Moby Dick.
I have no idea if she's right about Moby Dick but sheesh.
Update: finally remembered what this reminds me of: Colonel Bat Guano’s, “You're gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company."
5 comments:
Our Starbucks is always completely mobbed with Somali men. So many of them hang out there for long periods of time that Starbucks has a security guy monitoring the parking lot to enforce the one-hour time limit. So I don't think the boycott is terribly successful.
I'm sure you're right. Here everything is so "go local" that the Austin based coffee shops are the ones with the crowds but I don't think a boycott of those would work either.
What I still don't get is paying $3.00 for a cup. I splurge maybe once a month but I've got friends who go twice a day. $1800 a year on coffee? This is not my parents' Great Depression.
I've never heard of a time-limit at Starbucks, or any coffee-shop for that matter. HOw do they get away with that?
The time limit is just for the parking. You're welcome to hang out there as long as you wish.
I don't drink coffee at all. We're there for the adjoining bagel/sandwich place. Bagel with cream cheese -- cheaper than a cup of coffee at Starbucks. I'm also amazed at the amount of money people are willing to part with for coffee. I'm guessing many of them aren't calculating the annual cost.
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