Ale to the Chief

Finally. Gatesgate is finally over. Either that or it's just beginning. And I'm not sure which one I'd prefer. As long as it isn't in the damn headlines every single day, simply rehashing the same stuff over and over. But I suspect we're going to have to hear about this "beer bonding" that these three did for a while.

Has there ever been so many flapping gums that completely miss the entire point of what they're flapping about other than this beer summit thing? Oh, sorry President Barry. It's not a "beer summit". That's right. What did you call it? Oh, yeah. "This is three folks having a drink." So...what? Did Biden crash the party or something? Behold!

Good Lord, had I known Biden was going to be there, I would have been more enthused about the whole thing! Have you heard the guy talk when he's sober?! He is a sound bite per minute, that Vice President Biden is. Get a few drinks in him and look out! Maybe he'll get really drunk like Mel Gibson and call someone "Sugar Tits" (probably President Barry). Yeah, in my dreams that would happen! But I still couldn't help but hoping that's how this little powwow would turn out. My perfect scenario would have had them all (as Jimmy Fallon put it) "doing Jaeger shots out of Betsy Ross's thimble", followed by an exchange of words and everyone stripping down to the waist as a slight scuffle ensued and finally breaking up when Sergeant Crowley broke out his Taser and started showing folks just how Mr. Zappy there works. How GREAT would that have been?! Pretty great!

But alas, none of that was to be. ::: sigh ::: Instead, they all came together as one! Now, is it just me or is it a little odd that each one of them got to choose what brand of beer they wanted to drink? AND they all chose something different. Yep, everyone coming together as one and doing it separately, that was their goal! (By the way, I think that Professor Gates was making or retracting some sort of political statement with his choice in beverage. He had originally requested Red Stripe (a beer which hails from Jamaica and which I find extremely unpleasant), but then word had it that he was drinking Samuel Adams. Soooooo....did he start off with the Red Stripe as a statement of his heritage and then worry that was going to make him seem too radical and so he went with Samuel Adams, the great American patriot who was likely not a brewer of any sort of beer? I just found it interesting that he switched, is all.)

And they drank it out of mugs. And they had snacks in a silver bowl on the table. What the hell? All that was left for them to do was to join hands and start up a rousing chorus of Kum-Bi-Ya. Seriously, though, what's with the Chex Mix in the silver bowl? It's Chex Mix for cryin' out loud! You're in the ROSE garden. You're drinking out of GLASS mugs. You've got some crunchy snacks in a SILVER bowl. Y'all are wearing TIES. What a bunch of wusses y'all looked like. (Except for Sgt. Crowley. He looked rather uncomfortable with the whole thing. Not uncomfortable in the sense that he wanted to leave or didn't want to be there, but uncomfortable in the sense that he wished he could loosen his tie and that these other folks would do the same. It's hard to be relaxed and try to work things out when you've got a little noose around your neck.)

Up until the beer was poured into the mugs (which didn't even appear to be chilled! Have they no sense of the common man over there at the White House?!), this had been billed as being a "teachable moment". Yet when the "teachable moment" rolled around, the press weren't allowed anywhere near the pansies. (And they couldn't go around the flowers either!) They took a few pictures, just so that they can prove that it actually happened? But there was no audio. There was no video. None of that. We don't even know if they FINISHED their beers! Er, beer. I think they all had A beer. Well, whoop-de-whoop! They're animals!

So not only do we not know if they finished their beers or not, we have no idea what they talked about other than there were no apologies and that two men agreed to disagree. Too bad that one of those men couldn't have agreed to disagree as to whether he should show the other one his ID to prove that he lived in the house. Had it been that simple THEN I highly doubt we'd be having this discussion.

I'm having a hard time supporting President Barry on the decision to get involved in this. Yeah, I know he said that the police acted "stupidly". Why couldn't he just have explained that comment the same way? Just said that HE acted "stupidly" and went on with his day? No, he had to play the fake-peacemaker and act like he was mediating at the G-20 summit (only it would have been the G-2 summit and that just takes all the ooomph out of it for me).

If it was such a "teachable" moment, what did we learn? I'll tell you. We learned that it is apparently just fine to yell and scream and call someone a racist, a racist cop, a rogue cop and someone who shouldn't even be a cop and to say those things directly to media so that they will be heard by the entire world. That seems to be OK. And it also seems to be OK, after you're done running someone's character through the mud, to NOT apologize for calling them a racist. That seems to be alright as well. And finally, it would seem that after you've behaved as poorly as one did, you know, with all of the calling the other person "a racist", you can expect to go to the White House and sit down and have a beer with the President and Vice President. But you WILL have to stop yelling "Racist!" for a little while so that you can feign interest in what anyone else is saying. Deal? Deal!

What a joke. It makes me more aware of how politicians work. And President Barry is the KING of having things appear as if they're getting done or that some good is going to come out of something and then just quietly moving on to the next thing without even acknowledging how something else is going or how it turned out. He's very smooth that way. Or weaselly. Your choice. Do weasels drink beer?

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