Michael Gerson’s Squooshy Rebellion

My Scene colleague Matt Frost has had some fun at Michael Gerson’s expense, as have I, on account of this column.  Matt also notes that Gerson’s taste in coffeehouses has changed a bit.  When Gerson was “writing” the Second Inaugural and doing other such “work,” he was allegedly at a Starbucks, but now he supposedly hangs out with the hip java revolution radicals with whom he is now “comfortable.”  Those would be the people who think Starbucks customers are yuppie, sell-out scum (especially the ones who try to claim that they are still hip and progressive while being a Starbucks customer).  These are the people who buy coffee brands called things like Intelligentsia, and who would probably be pretty sympathetic to the anarchists who were throwing bricks through Starbucks’ plate-glass windows in Seattle, c. 1999–Gerson feels at home among them.  

Gerson–always a uniter, not a divider, as he might say–bridges both worlds in his never-ending quest to be trendy-yet-serious.  It doesn’t really make a bit of difference where Gerson writes his bad policy “arguments,” since his endorsement of aggressive war or amnesty doesn’t seem any more appealing on account of its rich Arabica inspiration.  But he thinks it does matter, so much so that he feels obliged to tell us about why it is important. 

Matt rightly concludes with this line:

You have had more than your due measure of influence and now it’s time for you to please go away.

Perhaps he could return to his old stomping grounds and begin tackling the kind of assignment that he would have a real knack for: the quotes on the side of Starbucks cups.  They are described thus:

Stylistically, the quotes are mostly the literary equivalent of Bearista Bears: sentimental, squooshy, with no aphoristic bite.

Sounds like “compassionate” conservatism in physical form to me.