'Beer Summit' Doomed by Menu
Obama shirks the opportunity to educate the world about the wonders of good beer
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An event of international import has been forever diminished by the cheap swill being served at President Obama's picnic table.
Today is the most important day in the history of humankind, and indeed in the history of history, for today our president is sitting down at a picnic table to talk with an ornery cop and an indignant professor over beers. The eyes of the world are watching! It's like Yalta, Versailles, and the Camp David Accords, all rolled into one, plus beer.
With so much at stake, you'd think that President Obama -- a former professor! -- would take advantage of this "teaching moment" to enlighten Americans on a topic still fraught with ignorance, prejudice, and misunderstanding: beer.
Too many people still labor under the grave misapprehension that the fizzy, rice-based water-swill sold to us by large breweries constitutes a drinkable beverage.
But rather than correct this impression, President Obama just went ahead and decided to perpetuate the ruse by suggesting he'd drink Bud Light at the historic Beer Summit.
President Obama will drink Bud Light at the Thursday meeting .... Press secretary Robert Gibbs just made the announcement to the press pool on Air Force One.
The full menu looks set. Sgt. James Crowley, whose arrest of professor Henry Louis Gates at his home, touched off the incident, has indicated a preference for Blue Moon. Gates has said he likes Red Stripe.
If the president had any sense at all, he would put Crowley and Gates on a plane to someplace like Germany or the Czech Republic, where they make actual beer, with flavor and everything.
But no, he's got to do this Summit the way he does everything -- hastily and on the cheap -- with the very predictable result that we will never achieve racial harmony in this country. After all, who can be pleasant when they're sitting at a picnic table on an oppressively muggy DC evening with a warm bottle of flat beer their hand?
It's just another lost opportunity for our new president, and doubtless not the last.
Sara K. Smith writes for NBC and Wonkette. She never drinks before 5pm.
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Posted Thursday, Jul 30, 2009 - 3:18 PM EST
