A Pittsburgh coffee shop is making news with a violent loyalty punch card. The design from Black Forge Coffee features prominent right-wing politicians and punditsโ€”your Cardiff-Giant-in-Chief Donald Trumps, your Bill Oโ€™Reillys, your Lyinโ€™ Ted Cruzesโ€”who after being hole-punched with each beverage purchase look as though they have been shot in the head. Itโ€™s a real double-whammy: controversial and dumb.

Black Forge is certainly not a shop that shies away from being โ€œfringeโ€. Their whole aesthetic could be described as โ€œBaphomet chic.โ€ Itโ€™s all black metal and occult iconography, which is to say, I dig it. But this punch card, hoo boy, was that a swing and a miss.

Black Forge owner Nick Miller tells WPXI “The joke is that they look like they have been shot. It’s based on shock value. I want people to remember the brand.” And I guess itโ€™s working. Here I am spending precious moments of my life talking about these guys when I could be sharingย my infinitesimally small amount ofย time in this cosmic blip with my loved ones or talking about a new cold brew or something. But no. Iโ€™ve got to write about a punch card because some dude with a coffee shop wanted to show you he was more punk rock than you.

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Amid the controversy, Black Forge has released a โ€œsorry not sorryโ€ statement on their website:

Black Forge Coffee has been in the news recently regarding our customer loyal punch cards. They were created as a humorous marketing tool and we do not with harm or violence on anybody, including the people depicted on the punch cards.
We will continue to carry these cards as a form of political satire. We opened in the Allentown neighborhood of Pittsburgh in 2015 as a community gathering spot for everyone regardless of race, gender, age, religion, or political affiliation.

Thatโ€™s nice, but what exactly is being satired here? And what is the message of the โ€œsatireโ€ exactly? Satire is smart and pointed. This is just a left-wing drive by, and a poorly done one at that; the better version of this would have the shop using a fist-shaped stamp instead of a bullet hole, because y’know, it’s a punch card. That’s a pun at least.

You canโ€™t just say something is satire and make it so, much in the same way you canโ€™t say youโ€™re the โ€œmost welcomingโ€ coffee shop to folk of any political affiliation when youโ€™re making shock value jokes about killing the leaders they elected.

Iโ€™m a firm believer that ย no topics are off limits ofย being satirized or made fun of. The catch is that the fun-making has to be good. This punch card is not good. Itโ€™s not funny, itโ€™s not creative, itโ€™s not thought provoking, it doesnโ€™t start a conversation. Itโ€™s dumb.

Iโ€™d say it belongs scrawled across the notebook of an angsty high school metalhead, but that would beย a disservice to angsty high school metalheads everywhere.

Zac Cadwaladerย is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network.

*top image via CBS Pittsburgh

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