Fortune over at the always-excellent Bread, Coffee, Chocolate, Yoga bitch-slaps the New York Times for a stupid, shallow piece on how fair-trade coffee mainly exists to make Americans feel better about themselves:

no, what i find most comic about this coffee piece is its proud laziness, its light-weight refusal to take the subject seriously.

“the world-market price of coffee has fallen so low that, according to a non-profit called transfairusa, millions of third-world farmers are being crushed by unfair competition and cannot survive.”

those readers who stop be here even on rare occasion can’t help but be floored by that sentence.

the times has never apparently heard of the coffee crisis (and here), despite many mainstream articles on it, including one 2 years ago in the wall st. journal, of all places!

According to the Wired article:

The ultimate iPod accessory is Fendi’s Juke Box, a $1,500 carrying case for transporting multiple iPods.

That’s right: multiple iPods.

The bag, unveiled by the Italian fashion house at a catwalk show in Milan, is a rectangular gilded purse about the size of a bread bin. It is lined with multicolored cloth and incorporates a pocket for holding up to a dozen iPods.

Okay, this is just tragic. A sign of the Apocalypse. And you know what’s even sadder? I can imagine a lot of people saying, “Oh, that sounds like a good idea. I’ll go pick one up.”

These are people with a heck of lot of money. These are the same people who bought the titanium Maclaren stroller with the leather seat (at $2500 a pop) because it looked cool (my local Right Start sold out of theirs). Clearly these were people who have never had a kid in a stroller because they get, you know, messy. But then you just have someone else clean it up, I guess.

All I can say is: get a hobby. Or give the money to a worthy cause, like Coffee Kids. Sheesh.

I love Danny Gregory’s weblog. This piece he did for The Morning News is hilarious. Check it out.