Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Cupcakes Just One More Sign That We Are, In Fact, Headed To You Know Where In A Handbasket (Probably A $200 Longaberger Basket)


I’m sorry to offend anyone, especially the good folks at Longaberger. Don’t get me wrong. I like cupcakes as much as anyone, and I like my wife Kelly’s pumpkin cupcakes more than anyone.

But these new stores that sell nothing but cupcakes are too much. There is something wrong, wrong, wrong with this, something ethically and morally and emotionally and financially wrong.

Our town has apparently just opened a cupcakery, and Kelly wants to go. If it’s anything like Gigi’s Cupcakes, which we visited in Memphis, then I want no part of it. Gigi’s is a delightful little shop, run by delightful and dedicated women, and the cupcakes are mighty tasty, but they are cupcakes – cupcakes! – cupcakes that sell for $4 each. Each! Four dollars! For a cupcake.


Now, lest you pass me off as some kind of beast or barbarian, let me explain. Four dollars for a two-ounce cupcake is $32 a pound. That’s more than breakfast cereal. That’s more than lobster, more than mercury. You could buy two ounces of silver for that. You could buy 10 gallons of gasoline - for the price of a dozen cupcakes.



But it’s not just the money. It’s the idea, the notion, the attitude that there isn’t something horribly wrong with spending $4 for a cupcake. That’s why gas costs so much. That’s why medical care costs so much. Companies keep raising the price because we keep paying it.

Anyone who spends $5 for a coffee and another $4 for a cupcake, well, they’re the problem. They are exactly what’s wrong with America.

Don’t you agree?

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