The Beer Summit

I was out of town last week, away from TV and- mostly – radio. As a result, I missed most of the commentary on the “Beer Summit.™”

Conceptually, this sort of thing seems wildly unreal to me. It may be the sort of thing that a rock star President would do as a PR stunt, but it’s such a phony photo op that it makes my skin crawl. How do you stage something like this without being embarrassed?

Four guys – two white and two black - sitting at a table near the White House lawn, two wearing dark suits in the heat of the day, drinking a single beer for the cameras. Is this supposed to show us racial harmony? Is this one of those patented Obama events – like the repetition of “Hope ’N Change” – that people can use to derive their own meaning? If not a “teachable moment” a fill-in-the-blank moment?

Could it possibly get any more stagey, phonier? Could the level of awkwardness get any higher? Do Crowley and Gates feel used?

Ann Althouse reflects:

We don't get to hear anything they say, but somehow it's supposed to convey a message to America and the world about racial harmony. Look! These men can do that. Uh, what? Sit awkwardly in suits and sip from mugs?

The "RACE IN AMERICA: AFTER THE BEERS" frenzy of non-analysis on CNN was truly absurd.

One of the groups that not reflecting much is the "Black Community™" which is calling Sgt. Lashley an "Uncle Tom" for defending Sgt. Crowley.



It seems that whenever the “dialog on race” begins, the introspection must always lead to white guilt trips while black folks practice racial solidarity by ostracizing anyone with brown skin who says the unsayable.

Henry Louis Gates, Harvard Prof and all-around good guy has apparently been chosen by history and is congratulating himself ...

Sergeant Crowley and I, through an accident of time and place, have been cast together, inextricably, as characters – as metaphors, really – in a thousand narratives about race over which he and I have absolutely no control. Narratives about race are as old as the founding of this great Republic itself, but these new ones have unfolded precisely when Americans signaled to the world our country’s great progress by overcoming centuries of habit and fear, and electing an African American as President. It is incumbent upon Sergeant Crowley and me to utilize the great opportunity that fate has given us to foster greater sympathy among the American public for the daily perils of policing on the one hand, and for the genuine fears of racial profiling on the other hand.

It is incumbent upon Gates to get over himself.

Ann Coulter remarks (in repsonse to the claim that Gates would not stoop to using black slang:

Third, there's a video of Gates using the N-word all over the Internet, and in that short, three-minute video, Gates uses the phrase "your mama."

Here is Gates in 1996 using the "N" word and "mamma" while telling his audience that he got where he is because of affirmative action ...



Rush Limbaugh remarks on the "uncool" image that this entire episode projects:

I'll tell you, you know, this beer meeting today, he's starting to look like he's not cool, and I've always said that's he's a cold calculating guy with a chip on his shoulder anyway, but you know what he reminds me of? He's starting to remind me of Nixon walking the beaches at San Clemente in his suit and wing tips. Remember how uncool that was?

The risk to the Obama presidency – more so than to any President in my lifetime – is that this is a photo-op Administration. Obama is on TV daily; the imagery is incessant. It’s a way of keeping the pressure on the congress and keeping the faithful in line. But eventually some photo-op bombs and the substance of the administration comes to the fore. When that happens they two metastasize and the results will be devastating.

UPDATE: The Road to the Summit: