HUFFINGTON
09.09.12
FOOD FIGHT!
of the fair’s trademark pork chops
on a stick.
“When he first offered to get me
a beer I was thinking, ‘How many
people does this guy meet every
day? 1,000?’” said Brad Magerkurth, 42, the brand manager
for Artisan Beer Company who
Obama met at the Knoxville coffee shop. “But it’s cool he can still
relate to people on a basic level ...
Beer brings people together.”
A beer routine, along with stops
at greasy spoon diners and burger
joints, has also arguably helped
Obama quell whispers of elitism
and blur memories of his comment about the price of Whole
Foods arugula in 2007. While
American beer comes in elegant
varieties—such as the Goose Island 312 that Obama once gave
British Prime Minister David
Cameron—it also works as an
equalizer, a form of relaxation beloved by all classes and ages.
“[Beer’s] post-Prohibition status as an alternative not just to
strong liquor but also to the stiff
Puritanism of total abstinence is
now being harnessed in interesting ways by Obama’s campaign
team,” said Warnes. “They’re
making insinuations not just
along the lines that Mitt Romney
“We sell cheese
and smoked meats
and delicious homemade turkey breast.
Nothing about
that is partisan.”
might be a bit aloof, but also that
the Tea Party might be prim and
proper and uneasy with the simple, affordable and harmless pleasures of ordinary American life.”
Of course, for some, the act of
drinking a beer is less cool than it
is slothly or indulgent, criticisms
the President would likely want to
avoid in any context. When news
of the homebrew first surfaced
last year, White House staff noted
that the Obamas themselves—and
not the American taxpayers—were
footing the bill.
If Obama’s current drinking strategy taps into the classic
American desire to indulge, Romney’s food habits are awakening
an even-older striving towards
chaste virtue. At a Father’s Day
pancake breakfast Romney hosted
in June in Brunswick, Ohio, he,
his wife, two of their sons and a