Mike Corrigan

By Mike Corrigan

BN Columnist

One of the truest things that can be said about Americans is that we’re spoiled rotten. This was brought home again last week when a computer glitch shut down Starbucks for a few hours.

Oh, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth!

One woman complained, “I’ve got a crying baby in the car and I have to have a coffee, and here the place is closed right when I need them? This really sucks!”

Yeah, what kind of country is this, where you can’t get a Hazelnut Banana Grande Cappuccino whenever you want it, wherever you want it, at any time of day or night? What did they invent money for, anyway?

We complain when it costs real money to put gas in our cars, because driving is an American right so basic we will attack and subdue any country in the name of oil and profits, right or wrong be damned. We complain about taxes, because roads should be built and children educated and businesses and people helped on other people’s dimes — or maybe we just don’t need roads and education and government programs at all. We complain we can’t even get a coffee when we want it, and never realize how selfish and small we sound.

The real news is becoming more like satire, and satire sounds more like the news every day. You can’t make this stuff up, because you no longer have to. We Americans just don’t have a clue what lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky jerks we are, what we owe our country and what we owe each other — or how we look to the rest of the world that we can’t even imagine is out there.