Sometimes a Beer Is Just a Beer

When the Washington Post has to follow up with an editorial on the "racial politics" of beer after last week's "beer summit" hosted by Obama, you know people are thinking too much . . .

Fast forward a few millennia, and it turns out that beer may prove an apt metaphor for America in the Age of Obama: Like the nation, the brewing industry struggles with racial complexity; like the nation, it still has a ways to go.

Still, it is a measure of how far we've traveled that the most notable beer campaign of recent years focused on black men: Anheuser-Busch's "Whassup!" ads could have been created only in an era when MTV had made hip-hop a staple of the suburbs, and when Americans could not only imagine but also elect a black president. The ads' actors reunited last year to shoot a revised version in support of the Obama campaign.

I don't think the brewing industry struggles with racial complexity. I think it just wants to sell as much beer as it can. And, like other manufacturers, it uses different means of advertising to sell to different demographics.

Although a couple of years back, Coors did advertise here in Santa Ana with a billboard featuring the caption, "Las viejas estan de los pelos." Never did quite understand that.