Sonicsgate

Sherman Alexie - Writer: [in a bonus scene, talking about Howard Schultz's lack of commitment to keeping the team in Seattle] It's always interesting to me how it's mostly liberals in the U.S. How we freak out about conglomerates like Starbucks, McDonalds, Blockbuster, or whatever. Pretty much all of them started as mom-and-pop joints, and generally speaking, one person turned it into a huge, successful conglomerate. Now, we can talk about the ramifications of conglomerates, but it still took the skills and dedication of one person to bring the shop to success and fame. Howard Schultz took Starbucks from a little shop into an international sensation. That's amazing! It would be hypocritical to go on and on about Ray Allen's jump shot, and not commend Howard Schultz for his success. So, I'm not angry at him based on some liberal notion that he's inherently evil because he's a corporate honcho. In fact, I like Starbucks. Because in certain areas, you don't know how tolerant they are about minorities, but then you go to Starbucks, and you say, "Yeah! Starbucks doesn't care! The only color they care about is green!" There's something very inherently democratic about greed, that the greedier the corporate monster, the safer you are as an ethnic minority. There's power in that! But he has stopped being a member of a community for a long time. Basically, the rise of his company into an international conglomerate turned him into an international conglomerate himself, and he forgot, consciously, subconsciously, unconsciously, that he's also a member of this community. He forgot that he had a responsibility to the citizens of this city, and I blame him, and judge him, and condemn him for that.