Ed Coffin Can Die In a Fire

Or at least that's what Twitter user, XtopherHorrocks, said in regards to the scathing article that was published yesterday about me. The article came to fruition after I called out Sweet Freedom Bakery for supporting the Philadelphia Zoo. The author of the article, Christopher McJetters, has taken a lame attempt to support the bakery by trying to put the blame on me.

Mr. McJetters has a total of five followers on Twitter and the outlet he writes for, Culture Mob, has only 1,654. Not to toot my own horn, but I have 2,978 followers on Twitter, so I'm not too concerned that this article is going to be very damaging for me, especially since I did nothing wrong. Anyone with a brain can see the article by Mr. McJetters is full of blatantly false statements.

First Mr. McJetters begins by questioning why I used quotation marks around the word "vegan" when making reference to the bakery. Well, probably because they support the zoo and vegans don't support the zoo, therefore they're not vegan. Mr. McJetters goes on to state that honey is a matter of choice in the vegan community -- not true, it's well understood that honey is NOT vegan, hence the reason Sweet Freedom removed it after carrying it for a short period of time after first opening.

Mr. McJetters then goes on to deduce that I said autistic children can "go to hell," a statement I NEVER made. I'm wondering why Sweet Freedom chose to support the autism event at the zoo, when there was another similar event at Sesame Place a week later, which they did not attend. He also claims that veganism is not a lifestyle, by relying on advice from the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Sorry, Mr. McJetters, but veganism was founded by Donald Watson in 1944 as a lifestyle based on the conscientious objection to animal use, so you're wrong yet again.

He goes on to say that vegans support zoos, by providing a link to a Flickr page with pictures of animals. If Mr. McJetters knew how to actually use Google, he may have been able to figure out that going to the zoo is NOT vegan. He also points out that I wrote a "glowing review" of Sweet Freedom just last year, which is true, I did that to help support a business that I actually thought was vegan when they first opened. I would have done that for any new vegan business.

He then takes the cheapest shot of all, aided by one Sweet Freedom owner herself, by accusing me of starting the attack on Sweet Freedom because they refused to carry a line of beverages produced by my company last year. It's funny to think my company would care if Sweet Freedom carried our line when we have national distribution and sales that likely topple Sweet Freedom's by 100-fold. How many bottles would they actually sell per year? 3?

Sure, I'm really bitter that Sweet Freedom isn't carry my company's line of drinks when we're in hundreds of other stores. Yes, we're really hurting over that. Also, it's funny that Sweet Freedom wouldn't carry the fermented drinks because they're produced with turbinado sugar, but each bottle contains only 40 calories and 5 grams of sugar. I wonder how that compares to the calories and sugar content of a Sweet Freedom cupcake? The Sweet Freedom owner also lied by saying that was the only contact I ever had with her, because I had a pleasant email exchange with her shortly after opening on January 18th, 2010.

Overall, the entire piece was nothing more than an attempt to divert the blame from Sweet Freedom back to me. I didn't go to the zoo, Sweet Freedom did, so SHAME ON THEM. Maybe once Mr. McJetters gets his dick out of Sweet Freedom's ass and actually becomes a real vegan, he will realize the hideous flaws in his article and be capable of writing more factual pieces that are worth reading.

Sorry, for the long rant, but I felt it necessary to respond to this attack on me and thought the blog would be the best place to do so. Stay tuned for some yummy recipes coming soon and if you don't already subscribe to the podcast, please do so now, as I will be uploading the next episode today or tomorrow where I interview the VP of Earth Balance to talk about the sustainability of palm oil used in their products. Until then...

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