I, too, couldn't figure out what the point of this article was...other than I came away from it liking S. Renee Mitchell even less for being so full of herself.

I don't think I can care about anything any less than I do about this.

Amazing - I can hardly wait for someone to tell me how lousy a person I am so that I can attend a transformational thinking class and reform myself.

I hope this is not an augur of what an Obama adminstration will be. Are we tending towards mass re-education camps?

So Mitchell basically used her column to publicize a minor altercation that resulted in the firing of a misguided Starbucks manager. The former manager had to leave town and now only finds hope in the cult-ish, for-profit EST program.

Good job, Renee!

Dear Renee,
I defended you on this blog when others called for your firing, so please, take my words to heart: The Barack Obama campaign is the best thing to happen to America in years. Do not screw it up for him here in Oregon by latching onto his greatness to suggest your own. It's not helping. I don't want to read a headline that says, "Obama Loses Oregon Because of Ridiculous Self-Serving Column."

Affirmative Action promotes the less-qualified over the more-qualified, rather than simply opening doors to the historically under-represented.

It's just too bad the former Starbucks manager didn't sue this no-talent busy body. Even if the lawsuit never went anywhere, it might make Mitchell use her head before she wrote something so damaging about someone else.

"I am so grateful that Barnes was gracious enough to create a space for us to find common ground.'

what complete and utter narcissistic bull.

Mitchell, as usual, made her column about herself. she took the person's story and twisted it carefully into some kind of perverse vindication for her amateurish journalism on the Starbucks story.

I took a second read of the column and I have changed my mind. I now find it off-the-charts hilarious. First, the New Age drivel from the ex-Starbucks employee - "I had given you my power and you didn't even know it" and then the stuff about being perfect the way you are and the way you are not, and next the real comedy: Renee buys into it completely, and feels moved to elaborate on the quotes. Very, very funny. I would guess part of the instructions in the healing path to the oneness of our inner pure selves, is that you must contact the people you were mad at and take back your aura or whatever by forgiving them. Meanwhile Renee plays it like it was some kind of genuine consequence of an elaborate set of events that she caused. I love this column. It's a great comedy team.

Renee and Barack are here to heal us.

Meanwhile Renee plays it like it was some kind of genuine consequence of an elaborate set of events that she caused.

you said it better than me, Bill. your sentence above is the essence of it.

"The Landmark Forum gifted her with a paradigm shift about her desert journey."

The best thing I can say about that sentence is that it's written in the active voice. I have no idea what it actually means...maybe someday I can attend a transformational thinking workshop and figure it out.

Maybe Renee should take up a new career in "stand up comedy", or better yet retrain as a barista.

I just went to the store and they gifted me with some groceries.

I threw up a little in my mouth. That was just the first paragraph! By the end of the "I'm as good as Obama, and do wonderful things" piece the retching was so bad it started to make my cheeks bulge.

Shelley isolated the sentence that made me bust out laughing and imagine the scene at the Oregonian copy desk...

"You've gotta see this one."

"Don't touch it. She's a columnist."

"I can't even ask her what it means?"

"No, or we'd be here all day. Let it go."

Mitchell v. the Creative Barista is like so many other uniquely Portland contretemps (protesters v. Schumachers, Chavez v. Interstate) where both sides are so annoying that I can't stand either of 'em.

SRenee should SResign or SRetire....her drivel SRemains incoherent

Renee tends to buy into drivel on a pretty consistent basis imho. The editors can't fire her because they are guilty of the same thing. Colleges like to hire teachers with "real world" experience, newspapers should require the same. Some of these people are so gullible and at the same time too cynical about anyone who questions them.

Renee Mitchell did not have anyone fired. What she did was write a column about an obnoxious caricature that was like something straight out of Amos and Andy. It was Starbuck's that did the firing.

Having said that, this latest column of Mitchell's was a loser.

I was done last week (AGAIN) with crime in East Portland column. If Steve Duin has written that column, his head would have been on a platter.

That she would even quote Landmark Forum or EST-lite, as being a positive thing. . . well, not the sharpest tool in the shed. We lost some friends to that for about 10 years. kinda scary really.

the barista v. S. Renee thing makes me wish for a more talented writer (yes, Virginia, you can be black and female AND write well) and some more interesting people in this town. Who knew the barista had some blogsphere campaign? I didn't. Then again, I spend far too much time in the real world.

p.s. Renee, please don't help Obama, 'kay?

The biggest cock and bull part of the column is this:

I saw her unfortunate marriage of words and art as an invitation to offend. So, I -- clumsily, I admit -- opened the door to a conversation about the ways in which our racial perceptions stir up misunderstandings.

Yeah, right, Renee, you were trying to spark a conversation about race.

NOT. You were doing like you always do, taking advantage of your platform to spout off about some personal gripe (Boo Hoo! Why wont the library let me use them for free day care! Boo Hoo! I think Starbucks is racist!), devil take the consequences.

Re racial assumptions: what is the race of the (former) Starbucks employee?

Her Sista got a column in yesterday in the opinion section.
http://www.oregonlive.com/commentary/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1206485746114610.xml&coll=7

The poor woman gets fired and then imitates a character in a Woody Allen movie and Renee is proud of this? Seems to me she's just decending through the rings of hell.

WTF?

(Oh, and btw, whatever anybody doesn't like about it: LIARS caused that.)

That does it. I'm writing a rock opera!

Poor Renee is culturally conflicted. She wants to be from a poor, underpriviliged minority background, but she actually grew up upper middle class in Newberg.

I wish someone would draw a cartoon of Renee taking away the barista's powers. Blunder Dim powers . . . activate.

Did Renee really grow up in Newberg? Maybe that's why she can't write coherently.