We get transfixed on the oddest things. Last week, Obama, unwisely, interjected himself into the Gates Arrest controversy. He then comes out the next day, and says that he called the police officer, apologized for implying that the officer or the Cambridge PD was stupid, and then invited the Officer to the White House to “sit down and have a beer” with the President and Prof. Gates to discuss the situation. OK, maybe that’s a little overboard, but hey, you have to give the man credit for trying to make a bad situation better. Whatever.
So, in my mind, if you invite someone over to sit down and have a beer to talk about something, it is understood that the beverage choice is secondary. The whole “have a beer” part of that sentence is intended to convey a casual, friendly, atmosphere, not to limit the beverage choice to alcoholic drinks made from grain and hops. So what has the media focused on?
The beer, of course. Fox News has dubbed this “The Beer Summit”. Both Fox and washingtonpost.com have front page discussions right now of the beer selections, what they say about the participants, and how some brewers are annoyed at the President’s choice of Bud Lite. Why do we know what beers are being drunk? Because the press corps bothered to ask Gibbs about it enough that he bothered to look up the answer.
Because that’s what’s really important here. Not the racial animosity sparked by the incident, or the free speech concerns of being arrested because of what you say to a cop in your own home, or the need to teach our children of all colors that they ought to be respectful of public servants. No, no, the media would rather talk about what beers are being drunk, and analyze that for political meaning.
It’s a silly world in which we live.
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