"The Beer Summit"

I really don't know what to think about this "Beer Summit". Every time I hear or read about it I sort of twitch a bit and my right eye flutters like I have a sty. Bilateral sit-downs between Obama and a host of foreign leaders in recent months have gotten less attention than this fucking thing - taking place at a picnic table on the White House lawn. Is this the Twilight Zone? Is that a sign post I see up ahead?

"It started out as a casual suggestion: three guys working out their differences over a beer" so said the LA Times. Yea, but this is the President of the United States we're talking about, a cop and a Harvard professor and "race relations expert" crying "racial profiling" - not three college buds from Dartmouth talking about that time one of them made out with the other ones girlfriend.

The image of the president trying to use a beer-drinking session to mediate an ages-old, highly volatile dispute has given new definition to diplomatic mission. Or has it? Is meeting to discuss an ages-old, highly volatile dispute over a few brews on a picnic table downplaying the seriousness of the issue? I don't know. I just think it's fucking weird. It's sort of like when you say "No" and expect someone else to say "Yes" but instead they say "Apricot". I sort of get a little tick and I twitch a bit. Fact is Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard professor , was wrong. James Crowley, the police sergeant who controversially arrested Mr. Gates, was not racially profiling anyone. He arrived on scene having no idea if the subjects were black, white or green.

Now we're arguing over the choices of beers - no one picked an American lager and yadda, yadda, yadda. Red Stripe is brewed by London-based Diageo PLC. Blue Moon is sold by a joint venture in which London-based SABMiller has a majority stake. And Bud Light? America's beer is made by Anheuser-Busch which was bought last year by a giant Belgian-Brazilian company called InBev.

I don't know what to think, really. I'm at a loss. What's next a President with a mustache who smokes cigarettes openly?