Thomas,

The mixed reactions on this piece are priceless. Generally, I like what you've done here. I actually noticed about five or six years back that pumpkin spice was basically the same as chai, but I never thought about the deeper connection.

A lot of your commenters who object most vehemently to this piece jump almost instantly to the conclusion that this is a political hate piece. To be honest, I understand why people have that knee-jerk reaction, not to this article specifically, but to articles like this in general.

For the last several decades there has been this moralistic undercurrent to a lot of left (and right) wing social movements which basically boils down to "Hey, this thing you enjoyed? It's secretly evil. You should stop enjoying it if you want the world to be pure and shiny. And if not? You must be one of the evil ones. Grr. Argh. Feel guilty. Because that will certainly solve our world's problems."

I think people were willing to listen to arguments like that when they felt like they were making some sort of meaningful social change, but most of the "meaningful social changes" that were supposed to accompany such conceptual boycotts never worked out. So it's easy for a lot of people to look at an article like this and see another callous political manipulation tactic.

But that doesn't seem to be what you did here, at all. This is a very straightforward history article. You're clearly not trying to drum up hatred for pumpkin spice or get people to boycott something else they like to make a moral statement. Rather, you used it as a window into history. And that history happens to be pertinent to a lot of major problems that we're wrestling with today.

My take on this isn't that you're asking people to hate pumpkin spice. You're using pumpkin spice to remind people why we should care about blood diamonds, mass layoffs, exploitation of offshore labor, etc... -- while also using pumpkin spice to remind people why we have historically overlooked that type of thing (i.e. we like the product so we don't ask how we got it). It's a good reminder about what corporations are willing to overlook in favor of profit, and what consumers are willing to overlook in favor of their preferred brands.

Anyhow, it was well done. I enjoyed it. And on that note I'm going to go get a pumpkin spice latte.

J