Yes, there is a Barista Guild of America, and it's as pretentious and snobbish as one would imagine.
The contenders
Evidently Community Coffee has moved up into the big league of "first-wave roasters peddling steel cans of grounds (gasp!), the likes of which are now only seen on visits to your parents' house" - that, according to Thrillest.com, one of those lifestyle sites for 20- and 30-somethings with impossibly hip standards for adventure and consumption.
Thrillest decided to put five big-box coffees to a taste test - and to the snark attendant to such endeavors, because that was really the whole point - at the mouth and nose of a cat named Lorenzo Perkins, a certified coffee instructor and executive council member of the Barista Guild of America. That Lorenzo would deign to allow Maxwell House to pass his lips is a wonder unto itself.
The five coffees tested: Folgers Classic Roast, Maxwell House French Roast, Community Coffee Cafe Special, Chock Full o' Nuts Original and Yuban.
Community actually won the competition with the faint praise, "This could pass for a low-grade specialty coffee." Maxwell House, which came in last, didn't fare so well. Its aroma was described as "Wet dog, burning" and its flavors as "Fish oil, despair," with the conclusion that it is "What death tastes like."
Read the whole thing here.