I need to tread lightly here, as my own wife is a blonde. Two new television commercials by Atlanta’s Red Brick Brewing play on the stereotype of dumb blondes. Funny or insensitive, I’m staying out of it.
Beer In Ads #291: Bud Keeps Cool When The Game Gets Hot
Tuesday’s ad is for Budweiser from 1982, showing sports equipment and announcing Anheuser-Busch as a “proud sponsor of the 1984 Olympic team.” It’s one of the few ads showing beer in a paper cup, which I guess continues the sporting theme.
John Stuart Mill On “Sin Taxes” & Prohibition
The British philosopher John Stuart Mill was, besides being “particularly ill” on “half a pint of shandy,” a big proponent of the concept of free will, as the song says. In his book On Liberty, he also argues in favor free speech and, 150 years ago, was against minimum alcohol pricing as if it were today, which is why I bring it up.
In today’s UK newspaper, The Telegraph, British writer Brendan O’Neill argues convincingly against minimum pricing on alcohol in a piece entitled ‘Minimum alcohol pricing’ is a Sin Tax designed to punish poor people for the crime of getting hammered.
The British government has been discussing minimum alcohol pricing for a number of years as a way of stopping binge drinking, defined as uselessly there as here. O’Neill sees it rather differently, as “an assault on a certain kind of boozing, the kind indulged by the less well-off who prefer to drink lager or cider and let their hair down rather than quaff chardonnay and discuss Tunisia. The very term “binge drinking” — and bear in mind that, for a man, binge drinking means downing a paltry four pints in a night — is designed to conjure up images of the non-wine-drinking classes, who swig on bottles of beer with no sense of control or decorum; who scoff and down and binge rather than sip. Them, not Us.”
And that brings us back around to John Stuart Mill. I hadn’t seen these quotes before, but they’re brilliant. In On Liberty, he addressed this very issue by calling such price hikes a de facto “sin tax” because, then as now, it’s a regressive tax that punishes the poor for not behaving as some people might want them to.
Here’s what he wrote:
“Every increase of cost is a prohibition, to those whose means do not come up to the augmented price.”
And:
“To tax stimulants for the sole purpose of making them more difficult to be obtained is a measure differing only in degree from their entire prohibition, and would be justifiable only if that were justifiable.”
As O’Neill concludes, that’s simply “prohibition through the backdoor, targeted at those whom the political classes consider to be reckless and self-destructive.” On this side of the pond, it’s all that moralizing plus anti-alcohol groups trying to convince us it’s about safety and “the children” and saying that raising the price will fix all our problems, and the economy to boot. Problem is, it never works. It’s just another attempt at Prohibition. Prohibition Lite, perhaps, but the aims are the same.
Next Session Opens A Can, Bottle, Cask Or Keg
Our 48th Session will be hosted by Simon Johnson of the Reluctant Scooper. His topic is “Cask, Keg, Can, Bottle?,” or as he describes the question:
The method of beer dispense often raises the hackles of even the most seasoned beer drinker. Some evangilise about living, breathing cask as being the one true way. Others heartily support the pressurised keg. The humble tinny has its fans. Lovers of bottled beer, either conditioned or pasturised, can be equally voiciferous.
Perhaps you think that one method magnifiies a beer’s impact. Perhaps you won’t try a beer if it’s dispensed in a way you don’t agree with. Perhaps you’ve tried one beer that’s been dispensed every which way.
The question is simple but your answer may not be: Cask, Keg, Can, Bottle: Does dispense matter?
So tap a keg, pull a pint, pop a cap or open a can of whoop-ass on the next Session on Friday, February 4.
Beer In Ads #290: Coors, His Truth Is Marching On
Monday’s ad is for Coors from around 1990, featuring the painting by artist Ellis Wilson entitled Funeral Procession. It was painted in the 1950s and currently hangs in the Aaron Douglas Collection in the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana.
The painting became well-known in 1985 “thanks to its appearance in the plot of an episode of The Cosby Show in 1985, during the second season of the long-running series. In the program, Mrs. Huxtable acquires the painting—which is ostensibly by her “great-uncle Ellis”—at auction, paying $11,500. At the end of the episode, Dr. Huxtable hung the painting over the living-room mantel, where it would stay for the duration of the series.” Coors used the painting for an ad celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The ad uses the slogan “His Truth Is Marching On” with a subtitle “In memory of the dream …”
Here’s the original painting:
The Results Of Targeting Alcohol?
There’s a debate going right now about whether images and rhetoric that are extreme and potentially violent in nature can be responsible for actions taken by the people who view them. Obviously, the recent tragedy in Tuscon, Arizona is what sparked this debate, but it’s nothing new. Some people who are against people having legal access to abortions have painted the physicians who perform them as evil murderers and other people who have heard that message and internalized it have murdered abortion doctors. It’s happened more than once. If you’ve studied semiotics, you understand that at a minimum symbols and signs have power. Almost everything is a sign, both words and symbols, that is they mean something, often different things to different groups of people depending on how they’re framed or used. Dean Rader, in the San Francisco Chronicle, had an interesting piece applying semiotics to the events prior to, and leading up to, the Tuscon incident and assassination attempt in Palin, Crosshairs, and Semiotics: The Signs of the Times.
I bring this up because anti-alcohol and neo-prohibitionist groups have been painting alcohol as a great sin and inherently evil literally for decades. That includes both harmful propaganda and rhetoric along with graphic symbols, such as the banner used by one group showing a bottle of beer as a syringe, attempting to equate beer with heroin. The result of that, I believe, is that the average person does believe that drinking is a “sin” and that people cannot be trusted not to abuse it so therefore it must be highly regulated, taxed, demonized and marginalized. The other thing that such an incessant parade of propaganda might cause is the incident that occurred near Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Friday afternoon.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinnel, an unidentified 32-year old man with a metal pipe several feet long and two inches in diameter walked up to a beer delivery truck making its rounds at Mid-Town Groceries and ordered him to stop delivering the beer. When the deliveryman continued doing his job, our wingnut began smashing the beer, and spent about thirty minutes destroying roughly $2,000 worth of beer — possibly Milwaukee’s Best. While he took pipe to beer can — and the intrepid deliveryman tried to get him to stop without getting beaned with a big metal pipe — he ranted about the evils of alcohol, and “scolded the deliverymen for bringing what he called ‘poison’ into his neighborhood.”
That’s the same tactic Carry Nation employed, smashing up bars — private property — with a hatchet just because she didn’t like what they were doing. It’s something she was celebrated for, but it’s still vandalism and without trying to sound overly dramatic, terrorism. My OED defines terrorism as “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims” and Merriam-Webster calls it “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.” Whether wielding a hatchet or a lead pipe, it’s using violence to promote your ideas and get your way.
Where did the Milwaukee man get the idea that beer is “poison” and it was acceptable behavior to smash someone else’s property? To me, that’s a great question we’ll probably never know the answer to, because this story’s not quite big enough news that we’ll likely see a follow-up report. Did these ideas infect him through years of neo-prohibitionist propaganda? Through the subtler, but no less effective, way in which so many take it for granted, thanks to our policies and laws, that drinking is “sinful” and that demonizing it only appropriate? With anti-alcohol propaganda so pervasive it seems quite unlikely to me that he came to this notion on his own. I take it for granted that he is indeed a lone wingnut and no neo-prohibitionist group will claim him as one of their own. But it makes you wonder. Rhetoric and symbols are powerful weapons that can influence just about anything, so why not a violent hatred for alcohol and the people who deliver it?
Beer In Art #112: Max Liebermann’s Beer Garden In Brannenburg
This week’s work of art by German artist Max Libermann. The painting, Beer Garden in Brannenburg, was created in 1893 and is currently in the Musee d’Orsey in Paris, France.
Though it’s referred to by the title “Beer Garden in Brannenburg” or “Biergarten in Brannenburg,” according to the Paris museum, the actual title is “Brasserie de campagne à Brannenburg” or “Country Pub in Brannenburg.” Here’s a description of the painting from Musee d’Orsey.
During his visit to Italy in the spring of 1893, Liebermann stopped in Bavaria, very near to Brannenburg. There he found the tables of a pub set out in the shade of some tall trees, the subject of a number of his paintings. That same year, the young painter Erich Hancke, met Liebermann and discovered the still unfinished Country Pub in Brannenburg as well as the preparatory works for the painting, in particular a sketch in black chalk. Having decided to paint this motif, Liebermann “drew it again, in a larger format and in much more detail In its turn this drawing was transposed on to canvas using a grid”. Astonished that such an unspontaneous method should have been used, so at odds with the look of the painting, Hancke was even more surprised when hearing the painter talk about the small figures in it: “First the shape must be there, he said, and then it has to be taken away”.
In general, it is the space, punctuated by the rows of trees with sunlight filtering through, which is the constant subject in Liebermann’s work. However, when this painting was done, this motif was never used in a pure landscape, but accompanied, like here, by a scene bristling with anecdotal details and movements. This characteristic places Liebermann’s work in the same area as Menzel (1815-1905), who has a similar acute sense of observation and an ability to reproduce scenes of everyday life.
There’s a biography of Max Lieberman at his Art Directory. You can also see more of Liebermann’s paintings at the WikiGallery, Zeno and also the Canvaz. There are also additional links at the ArtCyclopedia.
Guinness Ad #51: Guinness Grenades
Our 51st Guinness poster by John Gilroy was, like last week’s, probably from World War 2, and shows a group of soldiers practicing their grenade throwing, with one of them substituting a bottle of Guinness for a grenade. Their commanding officer certainly looks surprised to see the Guinness fly.
Here’s a slightly different version showing one additional soldier.
BN Winter Brews Festival Announced
January is usually a slow time for beer in the Bay Area, so it’s nice that last year the Brewing Network stepped up and put on a great new beer festival featuring winter beers in Oakland. They’re back again and this year it will be held in a new location at the Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park in Berkeley, just two blocks from the Downtown Berkeley BART station.
The 2nd Annual Winter Brews Festival will be held on Saturday, January 29, 2011, from 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. “Tastings will feature a wide variety of local brews and unique innovations from some of the best brewers around, many of whom will be pouring their own beers giving visitors an opportunity to learn more about how the beer is made.”
Tickets are $35 before the event, or $40 at the gate, and include unlimited pours and a commemorative glass. Advance tickets can be purchased online. For more information on the event, visit the Brewing Network website.
Beer In Ads #289: Albion Brewery, We Lead The Way
Friday’s ad is for the Albion Brewery in Leeds. I’m not sure when the ad is from, though I believe the brewery was founded in 1897 and closed in either 1933 or 1948, the UK National Archives isn’t sure. If the truck is any indication it’s got to be pretty early in the history of automotive transportation. And at some point they stopped giving driver’s licenses to lions, didn’t they?
