Thursday, July 30, 2009
Presidential brewskis
In the now-famous "beer summit" that is supposed to clear the air after Gatesgate (and, presumably, rebuild the president's now shattered cred in the law enforcement community), even the brands of beer are on display, no doubt for their iconic significance:
The president, we are told, will be drinking Bud Light, Crowley will have Blue Moon, and Gates will have Red Stripe — Red Light and Blue.
Barack Obama drinks Bud Light? Puh-lease. He will be the first graduate of Harvard Law School to drink Bud Light this summer, if not this decade, and that is because Bud Light is so flavorless as to be pointless. Either Barack Obama does not know what good beer tastes like or he is forcing down a few sips of Bud Light because he thinks it will play in Peoria. Or wherever.
Sam Adams, coming as it does from Boston, would have done just fine.
25 Comments:
By 
, at
Thu Jul 30, 02:05:00 PM:
Bud Light ... flavored water. Should play well with the alternative lifestyle crowd and teenagers. Red Stripe is Jamaican urine. So two prissy black guys who really aren't beer drinkers. I'm not a blue moon drinker, but at least it's a US beer, so Crowley's got that going for him (which is nice).
I like the Sam Adams recommendation ... local to Boston, made here in the States.
Maybe Bama be going with the watery stuff in order to not shoot his mouth off and say some new stupid thing under the influence, or for fear that he gets too whacked and Biden jumps into the fray as the stand-in ala Alexander Haig.
Bwahaha ha.
By , at
Thu Jul 30, 02:16:00 PM:
I keep imagining how this is going to go and I can't see how it could in any way be in Crowley's interest to be there. He'll be hearing constant harangues from Gates and Obama about race this, race that, so on and so forth. And then he'll be expected to have some sort of press statement afterward saying that they all got along well.
In a way, this sort of reminds me of the infamous incident with Phyllis George on the CBS Early Show-after which she became known as "Our Lady of the Hug" for suggesting that a wrongly imprisoned man hug the woman who had falsely accused him of rape.
By , at
Thu Jul 30, 02:18:00 PM:
Why is one of the black racists drinking a Jamaican beer and not a US beer? Has Rev Wright been teaching him to hate America, too?
By 
TigerHawk, at
Thu Jul 30, 02:35:00 PM:
C'mon, the choice of beer is not about race, it is about politics. Missouri is something of a swing state, and the last thing Obama would have wanted to be known for is efete taste in beer.
By , at
Thu Jul 30, 03:40:00 PM:
"...the last thing Obama would have wanted to be known for is efete taste in beer"
Then he should have avoided anything with the word "Light" in it.
Granted no matter what beer he has no one is going to believe that this is anything but an attempt to try and repair the damage resulting from his health care conference.
By , at
Thu Jul 30, 04:00:00 PM:
Imagine, two uppity Negroes and a racist White cop drinking beers in public, smack in the center of the nation's capital!
I just pray nobody gets arrested.
By filbert, at
Thu Jul 30, 04:02:00 PM:
If Obama wanted to drink a Missouri beer, he'd be drinking Boulevard.
And, I must admit, when I first heard of the 'Bama Beer Bash, I thought Red Stripe would be the appropriate beer for Dr. Gates (and perhaps even the President), based on my perception of his/their underlying political philosophy, although a quick dip into Wikipedia reveals that Zhigulevskoye might also have been a fitting choice.
By GreenmanTim, at
Thu Jul 30, 04:54:00 PM:
Here are some alternative suggestions:
A box of Dunkin Donuts and a Box of 'Jo to go. The classic Massachusetts workingman's breakfast, and what cop doesn't love donuts?
Dinner for three at Redbones in Somerville, MA. Superb Bar-be-Que for Yankees without those pesky associations with soul food or cracker fare.
Or they could all go to Hooters or the Fozy Lady and do some serious male bonding over Jalapeno poppers and g-strings.
I stand ready to accept the position of White House Mea Culpa Tour Director if offered.
By , at
Thu Jul 30, 05:35:00 PM:
Link again,
Loved the comment on Hooters. While in Atlanta I once got thrown out of an Irish bar with my 15-year old son, but we found refuge at the local Hooters.
Fuller version: We saw an ad on cable TV for a local faux-Irish pub and went there for lunch because World Cup soccer was on. We ordered lunch seated at the bar -- Cokes only. The place started filling up at half time, after we had ate while we were still nursing our Cokes. I guess the manager thought we weren't spending enough and so informed me that Georgia state law prohibited even escorted minors from being in a bar. By that point only six different bartenders and waiters had crossed our path -- we had practically opened the joint.
So we stumbled out with nowhere to go -- there's actually not a lot in downtown Atlanta -- and I at least wanted to watch the end of a tight game -- Argentina v Germany in the quarters. We found ourselves in front of a Hooters. I asked the head Hooters girl if we could come in ... she smiled at me and then at my son ... and said ... "Of course ... we're a family restaurant!" So we sat at the bar and watched Germany outlast Argentina. They never charged us for the Cokes we ordered.
I didn't have to say to my son "don't tell Mom."
By Hebrew National, at
Thu Jul 30, 08:18:00 PM:
i love how the black guy drinks red stripe, a jamaican beer.
By Billy Bob Corncob, at
Thu Jul 30, 08:49:00 PM:
I drink Budweiser. I'd probably do Bud light if I did light, but I don't do light.
Of course, i went to Yale Law School, not Harvard Law School. Fair point.
By , at
Thu Jul 30, 08:59:00 PM:
No beer for me. Family is in the wine business, all California wine for me. Cabernet Sauvignon or a glass of Domaine Chandon sparkling wine. Mmmmm
How girly is that?
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Thu Jul 30, 09:05:00 PM:
Greenman Tim - Redbones. All three of them should be ashamed of themselves for not thinking of it.
And Sam Adams - Obama missed the PR value of that.
Honestly, my respect for all three has gone down. I now believe Crowley is an authoritarian prick, Gates a whining racist, and Obama just clueless.
By JPMcT, at
Thu Jul 30, 10:21:00 PM:
I suspect Obama's choice of ass-water Bud lite reflects his admiration for Inbev, the Belgian EuroBrewer that just bought out Anhauser Busch.
Sorry, but that's about al;l the attention I could muster for this charade.
I agree with vicki that a nice California wine would have been far better than bud-lite...or Biden's near-beer.
HAHAHA...good lord, look what the White House has become!
By Dawnfire82, at
Thu Jul 30, 10:35:00 PM:
I thought the exact same thing when I heard that Obama was 'drinking' Bud Light.
I mean come on, seriously? Who would believe that the guy who exasperatedly asked Iowans if they'd seen the price of aragula (which I had to look up, and I'm sure most of them did too) at Whole Foods drinks freaking Bud Light? I don't even drink Bud Light, and I'm from bona fide blue collar bayou-dwelling redneck stock.
But at least it wasn't Arrogant Bastard.
Cuz, you know... it's terrible beer.
In case anyone wonders, I usually drink darker beers and prefer (as a matter of fact) Sam Adams with Shiner (local Texas brewery) as a backup. Oh, and Abita Turbodog, from Louisiana. That stuff is awesome.
By , at
Fri Jul 31, 12:28:00 AM:
Well, if I have to drink a beer, preferably with some chips and guac and a burrito, it would be a XX(dos equis)amber, the darker and stronger the better. Good mexican food and beer, nothing better. That from a girl originally from Ohio. Not girly now, huh!
By , at
Fri Jul 31, 12:31:00 AM:
Who knows, if Gates were to greet Crowley with, "Hi, officer, would you like a cold beer?", the whole conundrum could have been avoided altogether?
By , at
Fri Jul 31, 06:53:00 AM:
Candide ... how about, hey, thanks for coming Officer but the emergency is over ... I was drinking all the way home from China, couldn't find my key, and had to piss so bad I broke down my OWN door rather than piss on my shrubs and scare the neighbor's children. Vicki ... have you tried the Negra Modelo? that's some good dark Mexican beer, perfect for chasing with a Bass Ale while smoking a stogie.
By JPMcT, at
Fri Jul 31, 08:03:00 AM:
" have you tried the Negra Modelo? that's some good dark Mexican beer, perfect for chasing with a Bass Ale while smoking a stogie"
This discussion is heading toward the campfire scene in Blazing saddles!
My vote's for Brooklyn Dark Ale.
By Eric, at
Fri Jul 31, 03:51:00 PM:
I don't drink much of anything since the kids have come along. I used to drink Molson Export Ale. An oil can of Foster's is always good. I used to drink Rolling Rock when it was brewed at Latrobe.
Bud light is like making love in a canoe ....... it's f***ing near water.
By , at
Fri Jul 31, 06:22:00 PM:
Have to try the negra modelo tonight. Going to a local Pasadena hang out with my hubbie and grandson for dinner. Daughter coming home next weekend from NYC (Law School) and she is dying for some good Mexican food. No such thing in the big apple.
By Trochilus, at
Fri Jul 31, 10:57:00 PM:
Hey, good call on the Sam Adams, Tigerhawk!
Looks like Skip Gates daughter, Elizabeth, has offered her first hand account of how indeed her father had a Sam Adams . . . but adds that he didn't finish his.
Or could it be that this small collection of men were actually devising some master plan to rid the world of all racist tendencies right there in the presidential Rose Garden over a few brewskis? No. That would have been impossible to achieve—even on Obama’s best day and even if my father had actually finished his Sam Adams.
(my emphasis)
The piece is otherwise rather snotty, at least in places. She took a cheap shot at Jim Crowley's daughter for wearing too much eye make-up, and actually referred to the officer as the "the now infamous Sgt. James Crowley, and yet also claims to have told his daughter that she thought he was "cute."
By , at
Sat Aug 01, 09:26:00 AM:
I love Bud Light. It is not how it tastes, it is the memories. Bud Light to me means a bright sunny 78 degree summer day in Northern Michigan with the afternoon wind piping up as you raise the sails and pull away from the shore. You rode 60 miles on the bike real hard that AM starting at 6AM and already have a bit of a sunburn going. When you pop the can (gotta be a frosty can) and take that first sip it is like nectar.
The memory always trumps the taste.
By GreenmanTim, at
Sat Aug 01, 04:34:00 PM:
"The memory always trumps the taste."
I feel the same way about chunky brown bottles of Piels: the pisswater beer of my youth that the heavy drinkers in our house packed away by the six pack and which I remember was best used for steaming clams or lobsters. Or Rolling Rock in long neck bar bottles, which provided the perfect grasp when pitching an empty off the roof while banging up shingles and hoping the birds would start working out in the bay to lure us to put to sea and land the blues.
By , at
Sun Aug 02, 12:39:00 PM:
ROMULAN ALE and SUARIAN BRANDY dont make a good mix
