So, President Obama is having beers with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge, Mass., police department tonight, in an attempt to ease racial tensions he riled up with a somewhat irresponsible comment at a press conference last week.
That's kind of cool.
Personally, I'd be surprised if this little happy hour turns out to be particularly warm and / or fuzzy, or if it heals any wounds. But this blog isn't about politics, it's about beer selection.
According to a report I heard yesterday on NPR's "All Things Considered," Gates will drink a Red Stripe, and Crowley will drink a Blue Moon. Obama will drink a Bud Light, a choice that was panned by the founder of Boston Beer Company, Jim Koch.
Koch, who makes Samuel Adams, suggested that Obama pick a beer that was actually American-owned, a jab at Anheuser-Busch, which is controlled by Belgium's InBev.
I see Koch's point, though I'm trying to figure out if Obama is making a wise choice by opting for Bud -- or if he could've done better.
Consider this:
True, Budweiser isn't as American of a beer as Sam Adams or Sprecher or even PBR. But it's also America's most popular brew (though, for my money, it tastes like yellow water), and right now, Obama is working hard to look like a man of the people.
But in the privacy of his own White House, would Obama really order a Bud Light? I picture him as a microbrew or import sort of guy, the kind of man who orders Heineken or Goose Island (a Chicago beer) or Harp. Or maybe he just drinks hard liquor. How cool would it have been if he skipped the beer entirely and asked for shots of tequila?
On the other hand, Obama is from Chicago, so I could've easily seen him order a macrobrew like an Old Style -- but while Midwesterners would get that choice, it wouldn't resonate like Bud Light does elsewhere around the country.
Of course, as Milwaukeeans, we would all like to see the president drink a High Life tonight -- and with MillerCoors now based in Chicago, that would make sense, too. But while nothing says "blue collar" like Miller in Milwaukee, Budweiser still seems like the safer choice, since both are owned by foreign breweries, anyway.
Either way, wouldn't it be cool to be a fly on the wall at the White House tonight after the cameras left the room and that trio dove into another round of brewskis? I picture a tipsy Obama lighting up a cigarette, explaining to Cowley and Gates that he only smokes when he drinks, as all three drunkenly hug and make up.
Bam! Race relations snafu fixed in one night!
Of course, we all know that won't happen. Obama will barely touch his brew (and not just because it's borderline undrinkable). Hands will be shaken, photos will be taken and we'll all move on.
It's cool that the president is trying to ease tensions over beers. But something about this photo opp strikes me as too staged and too planned to be real.
No offense, A-B, but I can't think of any other reason that the most powerful man in the world, who could order anything he wants, would opt for a beer that most of us stopped ordering when we turned 21 and began to know the difference between drinking for quantity and drinking for quality.
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
