Catching up with Stan's blog: a few days ago, he commented on a recent wave of writing-about-women-and-beer (that's my abbreviated version of his content). Worth visiting to see his comments and links to others'.

I'll just add: ain't nuthin' new under the sun. Since beer came back 74.5 years ago (the 75th anniversary is coming up in April), brewers have wrestled with the women-and-beer problem:

Market to women-as-the-household's-main-shopper?
Market to women-as-women?
Market beer-with-food and thus to the people who do most of the household cooking?
Sell the beer in seven-ounce-cans? (Idea being that women have smaller stomachs...)
Sell the stuff in pink cartons? (One brewer tried that in the 1950s; the carton was shaped and designed like a small gift, complete with printed ribbons. So cute....)

Many brewers in the 1930s hosted cooking demonstrations and luncheons in department stores, hoping to persuade women that beer was dignified, wholesome, and fashionable. Others touted beer's virtues as a hair conditioner, hoping that women would buy one six-pack for the bathroom and one for the frig.

And of course the whole "low calorie" thing began life in the 1930s as a way to persuade women that beer was not fattening.

So the brewers really have been there, done that.

But mostly what they've done is market beer to (very) young men, and do so using tits and tanktops. And the reason they've done so is because Americans infantalize drinking.

And as long as that remains true, well, I doubt marketing -- for or to women or anyone else -- will change much.

But we can hope.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 09:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Meat is much on my mind these days, thanks to my work-in-progress, a history of meat in America from just after the Civil War to today. (Tentative title Carnivore Nation: Meat and the Making of Modern America, or something like that...)

Anyway, there was a fascinating piece by Mark Bittman in yesterday's New York Times, "Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler."

Check it out. (It's amazing that the Times is so generous with its content. That newspaper is a national treasure.)

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 08:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Several months ago, I noted that another beer book was due out soon. It has now been published and the final version has a different sub-title than was advertised pre-publication:

It's BREWING BATTLES: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN BEER, by Amy Mittelman.

As near as I can tell, it's a POD book and apparently only available from the publisher or from Amazon. But hey, Amazon is one of the greatest creations of the past century, sooooooooo............

Anyway, the book is out, and the first eight or nine pages cover colonial brewing, something that will make many people happy.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 08:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't watch much football (as far as I'm concerned, the game is a cure for insomnia). But my husband watches playoff games, and yesterday he watched the game in Green Bay. (Packers versus some other team. The other team won.)

I was in the room, but I was reading the Sunday newspapers and not paying much attention to the game.

Until an Anheuser-Busch commercial came on. "Hey," he said. "You need to watch this!"

I watched the commercial in question. And then I put down the newspaper and watched the rest of the game, waiting for more of the A-B ads to air.

I don't know the final score of the game, but I can tell you ALL about those Anheuser-Busch commercials.

The theme of this particular campaign (which A-B rolled out just a few weeks ago) is "The Great American Lager." It's a bit of a departure from the usual A-B ads in that it features a guy in a suit who does nothing but talk. No farting Clydesdales. No cute dogs or animated frogs. No babes in bathing suits. Just a guy talking about the company's oldest brand, Budweiser.

You can read some press coverage of this new ad campaign here and here. (And probably plenty of other places as well; just google.)

So what was the guy saying? If you've read my book Ambitious Brew, his words sounded, um, familiar.

The company pioneered the use of refrigerator cars. Check.
Lager's translucence leaves no room for error. Check.
Bud is a superb example of a national classic, the American-style lager. Check.

And so on. Large chunks of the script sounded like they'd been lifted straight out of the book. Sure, a few words had been changed here and there so that the text sounded more conversational -- but the gist of it is all there in chapter two.

In that chapter, which is based on substantive and original research, I argued that a handful of nineteenth-century brewers, most notably A-B and Pabst, developed a unique American style of lager. That Anheuser-Busch (and Pabst) was a prime mover in the shift away from Bavarian lagers and to American-style beers.

I also argue that Budweiser was, and is, a pioneering masterpiece of this particular style of beer. Even people who hate Bud (and A-B) have to admit that it's not easy to achieve the kind of consistency that A-B achieves with every batch of Bud.

I hasten to add that I'm NOT accusing A-B of stealing my work. It's not like the people there didn't know all of this already.

But it's almost as if the book, written by an outsider with no connection to the company, served as a kind of affirmation that freed them to promote Bud in this specific way, with this specific, coherent narrative that, well, comes right outta chapter two. Or maybe my narrative worked as a kind of light bulb: "Oh! We've now got this other story we can tell about Budweiser."

(And yes, for those of you who are wondering, many A-B executives have read the book. Carefully and thoroughly.)

Soooo.........for the first time in my life, I'm planning to watch the Super Bowl. I have no idea who's playing, but I can't wait to see the commercials.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 02:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm not keen on passing on internet sites, because god knows there are too many and too many people emailing each other links to sites -- but even I thought this was way too funny to pass up.

Cow abductions!

Tip 'o the mug to my buddy Danielle Schaaf. Who can also be found here. (Although not often enough... she's a very funny woman.)

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm not much on you-tubing, passing on funny stuff, or the internet in general.

But I gotta pass this on from my buddy Jay Brooks. As he says, once the image is in your head, it ain't goin' nowhere.

It's at Jay's blog as an entry for January 8th titled "Rhinodrinking."

But here's a direct link to the video.

After I watched it, I googled the "idea" and discovered there are entirely too many people in the world with too much beer and time on their hands.

Warning: do NOT watch while ingesting liquids.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 03:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, so much for all of that.

There were nearly 600 people at my caucus, well over the 200 or so who were there four years ago. Sadly, my guy (Biden) was not viable so I had to make an agonizing decision about what to do next.

My heart was with Obama, but my head knew this one fact: There is no dirt left for the Republicans to dig up on Hillary Clinton. But Obama? He’s still relatively unknown and they could, as one of my neighbors said last night, slice him into hash during a general election.

Plus, I’m worried that he’ll get elected and pull a Jimmy Carter “El Foldo.” That he won’t be up to the task. Whatever other complaints I have about Clinton, I KNOW she can do the job.

So I leaned toward Clinton, except for one other thing: The annoying precinct captain who was there working the floor on her behalf. I had three complaints:

1. her bullying tactics. The assumption at a caucus is that people arrive with a game plan in hand, and campaign representatives don’t start wooing people until after the first division. Then, if a candidate isn’t viable, candidate reps can start trying to persuade the non-viables to join their camp.

Not this woman. She was in people’s faces before they even got in the door. And she was loud. So loud, that I discovered, by over-hearing her hectoring a young kid.....

2. .... that she wasn’t even an Iowan! She was a New Yorker. Which means she shouldn’t have been serving as a precinct captain and she was supposed to leave the floor and stand in the observers’ corner.

3. She kept referring to “the Clintons.” In the plural. I got news for her: only one Clinton is running for office.

So thanks to this loud out-of-stater, I am wondering what kind of campaign Hillary Clinton is really running. Worrisome.

But in the end, my two fears (see above) won out and I stood for Clinton. Which, in the bright light of the sunny winter morning, I now regret. But whaddya gonna do?

I am also sad that a decent, honorable man like Joe Biden never stood a chance. It’s baffling. On the other hand, it was nice to know that there WERE so many great choices.

So it’s on to New Hampshire, and may John McCain win there. Seriously. Huckabee’s been scaring the shit out of me since he first moved on to my radar last July. With those dimples and doe-eyes, and “aw shucks” charm, he could easily win a general election.

Now THAT is a scary proposition!

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 02:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

....... politics are, well, what we're doing. Or at least what my house is doing. And talking. And thinking. And watching.

Random observations after spending the past month trying to make up my mind who I'll stand for on Thursday night:

1. The media are annoying. They spend all day, every day following candidates around, so, no surprise, they've heard the speech and the questions and they're bored. So they spend the events talking to each other or talking on their phones. If you're unlucky enough to be in the back where they are, lotsa luck trying to hear the candidates. I went to an Obama event Sunday, and mostly what I heard were two cameramen one-upping each other about their equipment.

2. Tim Russert is one of the exceptions to the above. He's so unassuming that he goes almost (but not quite) unnoticed. He leans against a wall and watches the candidate as if he, too, were trying desperately to make up his mind. Doesn't talk; doesn't check his cell or blackberry incessantly. Just watches and listens.

3. Andrea Mitchell doesn't stop talking.

4. The phone calls are maddening beyond words. On Friday, December 28, we got fifteen calls. On Saturday, December 29, we turned off each phone's ringer and turned the volume down on the answering machine. Relief. Should have done it a month ago.

5. The TV talking heads make caucusing sound so......... complicated. It's not. Plus they keep yammering on about how if your candidate isn't viable, one representative from each of the other groups will come and try to persuade you to join their.

I'm here to tell you: that doesn't happen. I've gone to every caucus since the first one in 1972. I've never supported a viable candidate, and I've never had someone from another group try to woo me. The assumption is that everyone has a second choice and they'll just wander over to that group on their own. Or, as I often do, the non-viables will sit out the proceedings.

6. The weather sucks and I wish we could do this in February or March.

7. Why why why do we have to do that on a weeknight? Why the HELL can't we do this on Saturday? (Yeah, okay, I know the answer: it's because the candidates want one last weekend in New Hampshire. Where the weather is no doubt just as shitty.)

8. It matters. And it's thrilling. I go to an event and see other ordinary people like myself listening and thinking as if it's the last chance we'll ever get in our lives. People ask great questions and the candidates (mostly) work hard to provide thoughtful answers.

9. We appreciate how hard these candidates work. And it IS hard work. They may appear at four or five events every day. They get up early , stay up late, and travel hundreds of miles each day. And did I mention how crappy the weather is?

10. Listen to the TV or read the paper and it sounds and reads as if only three Democrats are running. There are actually six. Two of whom (Dodd and Biden) deserve a hell of a lot more attention than they're getting. It's a bit heart-breaking to see such smart, dedicated, thoughtful men be so utterly ignored.

11. Don't believe the numbers. Accorrding to today's NY Times, 750 people showed up for Clinton event today here in Ames. I was there. There weren't that many people. 400, maybe. 750? No.

12. Bill Clinton could talk someone into believing in the Easter Bunny. He's smartand perhaps the finest public speaker I've ever heard. I suffered Hillary-passion for three days after hearing him. Happily, I'm old and cynical and eventually I came to my senses. (Don't get me wrong. She's also VERY smart and immensely capable and would make a great president. I just don't think she can win in November.)

13. Joe Biden is perhaps the most sincere politician I've ever heard. I get the distinct impression that he's decided that life is too short for bullshit, posturing, and posing.

14. And that's why on January 3rd, I will stand for Biden. He probably won't be viable, but in my heart I think he's the best person for the job.

I think ALL the Democrats would do a fine job, even a superb job (okay, maybe that's going a bit far). But Joe Biden has an incredible grasp on how things connect. He gets how soil chemistry, health care, nuclear power, the situation in Pakistan, and university research are all connected to each other. He gets it. He gets me on January 3rd.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)