last-minute, pre-election special:
WIT MEMO ENDORSES
KERRY!
. . . TERESA, THAT IS.
Matt Drudge probably thought he was Sticking It to Teresa
Heinz Kerry, and by extension her hubby John, when he briefly
posted these photos of the ketchup heiress and candidate
for First Lady quaffing a beer and bearing a clutch of the same,
with the smarmy caption "First Lady of Fun" and a link to a sarcasticWashington
Times article
belittling Heinz's apparent appreciation of some of life's pleasures, and
her ability to afford as many of them as she'll ever want.
Drudge doubtless fancied that he was being cute, but for Wit
Memo - and probably others - those photos decided the election.
Like many Americans, Wit Memo was
squarely in the "undecided" category when it came to the upcoming
Presidential election: both major party candidates seem like nice, patriotic
men, they both represent the same capitalist system, and they're not too
far apart on the issues.
But now, the choice is clear.
We have an historic opportunity, unprecedented in modern times, to install
in the White House a First Lady who not only loves beer,
but who loves beer to the point that, in the home stretch of a heated and
ugly race for the Presidency, she's not afraid to be photographed swilling
the stuff, and toting it around in nearly-respectable quantities. And not
just any ol' beer, but beer poured from a brown long-neck bottle bearing
a shape and a label of the sort typically associated with finer specimens
of the brewer's art, including the products of America's great craft breweries,
and the longtime European masters. And to top it all off, she's drinking
her tasty-looking brew not from the bottle, not from a cheap plastic cup
or clunky bar pint, but from an attractive glass clearly designed specifically
for the appreciative consumption of beer.
A First Lady who, despite her famous champagne budget, opts for
Wit
Memo's quaff of choice, and, moreover, with a nod to Wit Memo's
notorious
beer glass fetish.
To paraphrase that TV commercial, it's all about beer. What could be
more important, ultimately, than beer? Beer is the basis of human civilization.
We homo sapiens love beer so much that thousands of year ago we nixed the
nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle and settled down to till the land so
we could grow a steady supply of the ingredients. (Other supposed bases
of civilization, like the 
ballyhooed
"family unit," came much, much later.) Beer has long been properly regarded
as a healthful, nutritious and sustaining beverage, conducive to good times
and productive conviviality (see Hogarth's "Beer
Street"). More recently, beer -especially dark beer- has been
scientifically shown to be good
for the heart.
What could more pleasurable, more inviting, and more evocative of good
cheer and happy times, than a tall, foam-capped glass of 
crisp,
golden
Pilsner? Or a dimpled half-liter mug of malty, reddish, Oktoberfest?
Or a gold-rimmed goblet of Belgian Trappist Ale? Or a curvaceous
pint glass of nourishing, dry Irish Stout? Nothing!
And finally, what's the point of killing The Terrorists if, at
the end of the day, we can't toast our success, and the brave soldiers
who valiantly defend our way of life, with a glass or two or three or four
or more of our favorite beer, a pleasure that would earn a lashing
or a stoning in the fascist theocracies that those same terrorists would
impose?
It wasn't for nothing that Kaiser Wilhelm said, "give me a
woman who truly loves beer, and I will rule the world"... and who knows 
more
about beer, or about trying to rule the world, than Germans?
Not to take anything away from the current First Lady - she seems like
a nice sort, if a tad on the dowdy side, and she's raised two fine daughters
capable of navigating the rip tides of modern American culture, and she
did it without keeping them sealed away in a glass bubble somewhere. But
she's a teacher-cum-librarian (yawn) who helped drive her
man away from the
Nectar of the Gods. And a choice
between a multilingual, world-traveled gourmand who loves beer,
and
a school marm who'll be shushing us every time we get a little rowdy, is
no choice at all.
The differences reflect on their men. Should Wit
Memo ever manage to corner enough of the
Long Green to
purchase an overnight stay in the Lincoln Bedroom, we'd want to
be hosted by a First Family who would ply us with quality beer from their
private stash, and serve it in proper glassware to boot. On that score,
we'll chose a President whose wife swills suds over a world-famous
teetotaler
any day of the week. It's a sad and well-known fact that the current POTUS
can't Hold His Liquor, any more than the
last one could behave
responsibly around
tail. And what's worse, it appears that "Dubuya,"
in a gross violation
A.E. Houseman's sagacious dictum that "malt
does more than Milton can, to explain the ways of God to man," turned to
religion as a means of getting away from the innocent and
salutary pleasures of grain and grape.
So this coming Tuesday, here at Wit Memo,
we won't be voting our heart, or our mind.
We'll be voting our glass.