Beermen in America: A South Lawn saga

by Mark Silva

There are so many potential "teachable moments'' in the sharing of a few cold beers outside the White House this evening - with the president, the Harvard professor and Cambridge police office embroiled in a debate over racial profiling in America meeting at a South Lawn picnic table at six.

But one of the lessons may be about the beer they are drinking, and what it says about America -- or maybe just men.

"There is another teaching moment here, which is about consumer choice,'' says Anat Baron, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker, former executive in the alcohol industry (though allergic to alcohol) and producer of BEER WARS, a film about the domination of beer-making by giant, multinational corporate interests.

"I feel like the president had an opportunity -- like he does with everything he does -- in making a choice,'' Baron says of President Barack Obama's choice of brew tonight - Bud Light, the biggest selling, by many accounts blandest, brand of a foreign-owned American giant. "He is supposed to be the change president.''

It's not only the president who has passed up an opportunity to promote one of the 1,500 smaller and independent craft brewers who comprise only a small share of the American market - about five percent. The president's guests have stated their preferences for some big corporate brews as well.

The police sergeant has ordered up Blue Moon, the White House says. It comes from Golden, Colo. - sort of.

"There is something called the Blue Moon Brewing Company, but it is actually part of the Coors Brewing Company, which is part of the MillerCoors,'' Baron, former general manager of mike's hard lemonade, said in an interview with the Washington Bureau's Swamp. "The Coors Brewing Co. is part of Molson-Coors. Blue Moon is brewed in Toronto by Molson.... I wonder if Sgt. Crowley even knows. He probably thinks Blue Moon is a great American-crafted beer.''

As for Red Stripe, the professor's apparent brew of choice - it may enjoy the exotic island aura of the good Jamaican brew that it is. But it's owned by the world giant of the liquor industry, Diageo, makers of Guiness stout, Harp beer and more - not to mention Johnnie Walker scotch and Crown Royal whiskey, Smirnoff vodka, Captain Morgan rum and Tanqueray gin.

"The bottom line is, two of the beers being consumed today aren't even made in America,'' Baron says. "Bud is made in America, but it's owned by a foreign company'' (InBev, a Belgian mammoth best known here for Stella Artois).

"The most interesting thing is, the president choosing Bud Light'' Baron notes. "The president makes choices... My take on it is, he is trying to be the populist president, and Bud Light is the popular choice.''

But, "here is the president who is supposed to be the president of change,'' the filmmaker says. "And there is a change going on (in beer-making in America) but then he is going with the safe choice.''

Even the biggest of the many small brands that have blossomed in America -- Sam Adams -- accounts for a mere one percent of the market, she says.

And light beer, well that was the invention of a company, Miller, which was owned by a tobacco maker, Philip Morris, that saw how popular "low-tar" cigarettes had become, particularly among women, and turned the strategy to beer-making.

"Bud Light is safe,'' Baron says. "No one is going to make fun of you for drinking Bud Light.. But in this day and age, when there are 1,500 small breweries in America and we have a president who talks about entrepreneurship, he could have made a less safe choice....

"I don't know Barack Obama personally,'' she adds. "My guess is, he's probably not a Bud Light guy. Why can't he have a local beer? There are so many great breweries. They're trying to make him into a normal guy - 'Look, he has a dog.' They're trying to make him look like a normal guy, but he's not.''

The rally around some beer carries all sorts of connotations, according to this woman who ran a $200-million operation in what, she laments, is a "male-dominated'' industry.

"Part of it is, the beer culture is just very male. It's a very macho industry.... It's the old slapping of the hands on the back,'' she says - and that also goes for the meeting at the White House today, called to defuse the tension surrounding the president's public declaration at a prime-time news conference that the Cambridge police had "acted stupidly'' in arresting the professor in his own home, an incident which the president called emblematic of racial profiling in America.

"They're meeting outside. It's going to be casual,'' Baron says of the planned beer summit outside the Oval Office. "I'm kind of, on the one hand, fascinated by all this attention to the beer they're drinking. The president is trying to bring attention to racial profiling, and this teaching moment, but all of a sudden people are talking about what they're drinking...

"This is what they're doing at the end of the day, getting together for a beer,'' Baron notes. "That's what guys do.''