Black Cups for Anarchy!

7-11 has been doing this promotion for a few weeks now: "7-Election."  When you buy coffee at a 7-11, you can choose either a blue cup or a red one.  Every blue cup sold will be "counted" as a vote for Obama, every red a vote for Romney.  I suppose the winner will be revealed sometime after the polls close on the West Coast on November 6th.

Anyway, a few weeks back, I posted the following tweet (or tweeted the following post; I still haven't figured the whole "Twitter" thing out yet):

I thought the whole #7election thing was idiotic.  Then I learned the results are binding! Who will win 7-11's 14 electoral votes?!?

At the time, I thought I was kidding.  This morning, I heard a radio commercial for 7-11, in which the announcer clarified that you could vote for Obama or Romney, or, "if you just want a delicious cup of coffee, you could choose a green cup."

Couple of things: Does this mean that the coffee you pour into an Obama or a Romney cup will lack "deliciousness"?  Frankly, I assumed mediocre taste to be an unalterable feature of 7-11 coffee, regardless of political affiliation.

More to the point: I suppose this is shrewd marketing, meant to show the convenience store's commitment to serving all segments of the American electorate: Democrat, Republican, or non-aligned/undecided.  At the same time, I couldn't help wondering if this was really an issue for 7-11's customers.  Was some significant portion of their clientele offended at having to express a political preference in order merely to buy a coffee?  Worse yet, were there people stranded at nationwide 7-11's, desperate for caffeine, but paralyzed by political doubt?

Honestly, if 7-11 wanted to represent the undecided's, they should have gone with purple cups.  "Green" has certain Eurocentric or Naderite associations.