Viral outrage stories never sufficiently reach viral status until their main perpetrators make fools of themselves on cable news.
Such was the case today for Joshua Feuerstein, the former pastor who made national headlines on Monday with his claim that Starbucks “hates Jesus” because of its minimalist, solid red holiday-themed coffee cups.
Appearing on CNN, the evangelical activist explained, with a straight face, that his crusade is about more than just the offending cup. “The silent majority is sick and tired of consistently being bullied to be quiet about our beliefs and trying to remove Christ out of Christmas,” he said, channeling his inner Bill O’Reilly.
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CNN contributor Pete Dominick (a professional comedian—perhaps suggesting just how serious the network believes the Jesus cup man to be) chimed in that Feuerstein is an “entrepreneurial bigot” who has, in the past, called for taking up arms to fight against same-sex marriage.
“Starbucks isn't going to change their policy,” Dominick crushed Feuerstein’s dreams. “The idea he's going to try to get people at Starbucks to say ‘Merry Christmas,’ he's only going to get people to go to Starbucks more and buy more coffee.”
When anchor Brianna Keilar noted that Starbucks currently sells a bevy of Christmas-themed products, including a Christmas blend of coffee, Feuerstein was only able to muster this response: “They are known for their cup.”
Furthermore, he exclaimed, what’s really important is that his outrage has touched a lot of other people with similarly short-sighted views. “I think that what we tapped into here is that there's a large demographic of Christian Americans saying we are fed up with being politically correct and it's time to just be correct.”
And then he dropped this knowledge bomb: “Why did Obama have to pretend to be [Christian] in order to get elected?”
“There it is!” Dominick shouted. “There it is. That's what I’m talking about.”
Entrepreneurial bigot, indeed.
