NEW YORK. Luz Paramabilia is a 27-year-old baker’s assistant who has never paid much attention to national politics, but she experienced stirrings of partisan passion she had never felt before as she watched Howard Schultz, CEO of coffee purveyor Starbucks, discuss his candidacy to become President of the United States at the Union Square Barnes & Noble bookstore here this week.
Schultz: “This is a big country–it needs a big ego to run it.”
“This man–he good man,” Paramabilia said in the broken English that she works hard to improve by taking night classes at a local YWCA. “Why they no like him to President?”
Paramabilia is a Macchiato-American, a mixture of nationalities formed from strains of Italian and Hispanic lines, with subtle notes of cocoa and toasted nuts. “The Macchiatos–or more properly Macchiati–are a bold race with a smoky flavor and after-notes of support hose and cigar boxes,” says ethnographer Myron Hallukan of The New School for Social Research. “They came to this country in convenient canisters with re-sealable lids, so they have been impervious to party appeals–until now.”
Macchiato virgins offer themselves to Maximum Ruler Schultz.
“I am glad he run–this is VENTI!” says Dorz Meningle, who came to America from a small village in the northern, industrial part of Macchiato three years ago. “In my country, all coffee shops have long lines. Here, I download Starbucks app and–how you say–‘jump the line’ of losers with flip phones.”
“Your name is ‘Con’? I’m going to spell that M-i-k-e.”
Schultz is regarded as a national hero in Macchiato for his work in preserving the native language, a mixture of Esperanto and pidgin English with a dash of cumin. “Before Starbucks, Macchiato writers labored in obscurity,” says the country’s poet laureate Olgala Numerato. “Now, we labor as baristas because we blew all our money on MFA degrees.”
Schultz is widely credited with pulling the American economy back from the brink of recession in 2011 with his “Create Jobs for USA” wristbands, which were sold for $5 at his chain’s retail outlet to stimulate job growth. “If you look at the Bureau of Labor’s statistics for the past decade, you see that non-farm employment dropped precipitously from 2010 to 2011,” says labor economist Michael Schiffrin of Research Analytics. “All of those unemployed people helped keep inflation in check by sitting around in Starbucks pretending to write novels.”
“Would you like a job with your cheesy wristband?”
Paramabilia says she doesn’t understand macro-economics, but she is so thankful for Schultz’s unselfish devotion to America that she brought her daughters Trenta and Dolce-Latte with her to see the great man. “I don’t care if they spell my name wrong on my cup,” she says with tears in her eyes as she holds Trenta up above the heads of other supporters. “As long as they do not send me back to my country, where there is no pumpkin spice latte in the fall.”
The MFA-degreed baristas are out in force, for sure!