'Starbucks hates Jesus' viral video guy gets slammed on CNN

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last couple of days, you’ve likely heard about the unfortunate ‘Starbucks hates Jesus’ crusade of former pastor and self-proclaimed social media personality Joshua Feuerstein. The angry fellow made the unfortunate decision to appear on CNN to discuss his ideas on Monday.

The whole kerfuffle is about Starbucks’ new holiday cup. It’s plain red, forgoing the snowflakes and Christmas trees that have graced the design in previous years.

Feuerstein posted a Facebook video rant condemning the cups as anti-Christian and anti-Christmas, and encouraged viewers to give “Merry Christmas” as their name to baristas. The idea, it would seem, is to get baristas to write “Merry Christmas” on the cup, putting the Christ back into your egg nog latte.

The video has since received more than 14 million views, and so, like any slightly nutty Internet sensation, Feuerstein appeared on CNN to talk about his ideas. Appearing opposite him and representing all that is sane in this world was Pete Dominick, a comedian and frequent CNN commentator.

Feuerstein jumped right in.

“The silent majority is sick and tired of consistently being bullied to be quiet about our beliefs and trying to remove Christ out of Christmas,” said Feuerstein.

Dominique let Feuerstein say his bit with a giggly smirk on his face, and then happily fired back.

“First of all, it’s always fun to hear to hear someone who calls themselves a Christ follower tout the benefits of a capitalistic society,” said Dominique. “He’s what I call an entrepreneurial bigot.”

He went on to point out the contrarian nature of Feuerstein’s method of protest:

“The idea he’s going to try to get people at Starbucks to say ‘Merry Christmas,’ he’s only going to get people to go to Starbucks more and buy more coffee.”

Dominique goes on to detail Feuerstein’s militant anti-gay activism, his efforts to debunk evolution, and the fact that he moonlights as a Chaz Bono impersonator.

Anchor Brianna Keilar also seemed quietly bemused by Feuerstein’s posturings. She pointed out that Starbucks has other Christmas themed products, and then brought up a rather incriminating image of a red bag of coffee labelled simply “Christmas Blend.”

But Feuerstein was undaunted by the attacks, escalating his rhetoric until finally letting it rip with the following statement:

“Why did Obama have to pretend to be Christian in order to get elected?”

Dominick, clearly thrilled by Feuerstein absurdly erroneous claim, began shouting, “There it is! There it is. That’s what I’m talking about.”

Even Keilar, composed throughout, let out a little gasp and then carefully corrected him.