When I was giving talks on Red State, Blue State, I’d always get a laugh with the Starbucks/Walmart graphs. One thing I realized is that everybody hates Starbucks. From the left, Starbucks is a creepy bit of corporate America, whereas the right sees the ubiquitous chain of coffee shops as a snobby overpriced slice of big-city liberalism. Not everybody feels that way, of course–let’s not forget the zillions of latte-swilling customers out there–but the Seattle-based sugar-and-caffeine-dispensary does seem to be disliked by both ends of the political spectrum.
As is White House economist Lawrence Summers, who is despised on the left for his Wall Street connections, his links to the bank bailouts, and, of course, that infamous “pollution memo”–while also being mocked on the right for being an economic redistributionist who couldn’t even hold down the job of president of Harvard (a post that traditionally has a turnover rate closer to that of Popes than that of manager of the Steinbrenner-era Yankees).
P.S. The second link above comes from our co-blogger Henry. I found the first link by Google searching blogs for “Larry Summers.” It wasn’t hard to find some negative things!
P.P.S. It’s beyond my competence to make any judgments on Summers’s competence on economic issues. Heck, as a non-coffee drinker, it’s beyond my competence to judge Starbucks! I wouldn’t be surprised if Summers drinks a lot of coffee, though.