Corporate Newspeak Presents:

A new addition to the Corporate Newspeak dictionary was silently inaugurated: 'Starbucks.' It nearly carries the grammatical weight of other household names that can take on multiple parts of speech, e.g. "Google it." Its utterance lights up the eyes of the loyalists who have formed a cult and subculture behind it. It's the dirty little word that happens to mean the same thing in every language.

I encountered this corporate insult on my trip to Istanbul. Hoping to see merry little Turks of the old and new generation sipping on their internationally renowned beverage, I was disgusted to see them instead carrying the familiar plastic cups called 'Venti' and 'Grande' and filled with more nauseating vocabulary: frappe, soy, non-fat. The land of divine coffee should not tolerate defectors.

Turkish coffee comes in one size (small). No soy or honey or nutmeg to pollute the essence. No advertising required; consumption is worldwide. If Americans from the South started denying their own signature bbq in favor of say, Korean bbq, there'd be an awful lot of violence and hurt feelings. Emergency federal aid would be set aside for per-capita therapy. The Korean economy would flourish and Kim Jong Il would upload to YouTube a video of himself giggling over untouched cornbread and brisket.

So invasive is Starbucks that, in front of their second most famous mosque (Sultan Ahmet or Blue Mosque), was the equivalent of an American coffee crack house. In fact, on their most famous boulevard, their very analog of the Champs Elysee, were THREE such crack houses, all within the entire one and a half mile stretch of road. McDonald's couldn't get away with such an imposing and blatant presence.

And the underlying foundation for a corporate infestation on a global scale: ubiquity. We are a culture driven by the pursuit of convenience and consistency. Coffee or any caffeinated alternative is consumed daily by every Social Security number in America. The rest of the planet will play catch up because every trend set by corporate America reaches even the Third World. The Japanese obsession with Americana means they should be the first to conform, and so it will go: Venti Wasabi Latte (with extra wasabi), Mocha-curry-ccino, then Kung Pao Soy Frappe. If Starbucks can parody itself and still sell, the Vatican will accept gift cards as penance.