Brow Beat: Slate's Culture Blog

Bonding Over Brewskies in the Movies

President Obama will meet with Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. at the White House on Thursday for what's being called the "Suds Summit." The three men plan to gather ‘round a picnic table, share a few beers, and, in this relaxed atmosphere, work out their differences. No one can say whether Obama's gambit will work, but to celebrate the great tradition of bonding over brewskies, Slate presents the top five beer-sharing moments from movie history.

5) In The Sure Thing, a classic '80s romantic comedy, John Cusack decides to drink his holiday blues away at a bar. After chatting up two strangers, he buys one a spritzer, the other a beer, and the three break into a drunken, but sweet, rendition of  "The Christmas Song," commonly known as "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire."

4) In the 2007 bromance Superbad, two bumbling cops (played expertly by Seth Rogen and Bill Hader) invite a nerdy but charming teenager who calls himself "McLovin" (real name: Fogel) to knock back a couple at a bar. Before McLovin can take a sip, he first has to capture a bum that the cops couldn't quite catch—of course, he's rewarded with a couple extra brewskis for his efforts.

3) A group of British ambulance workers separated from their unit must trek across Africa in Ice Cold in Alex. Their leader, Captain Anson (John Mills), keeps up morale by describing the cold lagers they'll be able to drink when they reach Alexandria. In the climactic scene, a bartender lovingly pours bottles of Carlsberg into chilled glasses for the parched travelers. Rumor has it they used real lager and that Mills was pretty tipsy by the end of the shoot.

2) National Lampoon's Vacation takes the prize for the most disturbing-yet-adorable beer-sharing scene. Chevy Chase, through broken glasses and tears, tells his son, metal-mouthed 'tween Anthony Michael Hall, how much he loved sitting down for a beer with his dad when he was younger. Then he pulls a can out from his pocket and initiates young Hall to the secrets of lager drinking: "Don't let Mom smell it on your breath."

1) In The Shawshank Redemption, Tim Robbins barters tax advice for beer. He gets three for himself, and three for each of his buddies. "A man," he says, "working in the outdoors, feels more like a man if he can have a bottle of suds." Morgan Freeman's narration chimes in once they're perched on a roof, swilling away: After drinking that "Bohemia-style" brew, they all "felt like free men."

No, Fat People Won't Pay for Health Care Reform

The recent push comes in the wake of a report published Monday in Health Affairs that purports to compute the annual medical spending attributable to obesity. According to author Eric A. Finkelstein, "obesity is the single biggest reason for the increase in health care costs" in the United States, contributing $147 billion to our national tab in 2008. A similar study from a few weeks ago pinned California's budget problems on the $41 billion cost of "obesity and inactivity.") Predictably, media outlets have jumped on the story.

This isn't the first time we've been led to believe that we can pay for universal health care by taxing fat people or making them lose weight. During the presidential campaign, both Obama and Hillary Clinton were asserting that preventing obesity could save the Medicare system a trillion dollars. But the idea that a national diet could solve all our problems is purest fantasy. (Or should I say pie-in-the-sky?) If we were really dedicated to cutting healthcare costs—if pinching pennies were a more important goal than making people well—then we wouldn't tax soda and cheeseburgers. We'd subsidize them.

The fact is, fat people aren't breaking the bank at all—they're saving us money. While it's true that someone who's grossly overweight might rack up bills for obesity-related ailments like diabetes and hypertension, those added costs would be more than offset by his shorter lifespan. The rest of us tend to suck more resources over the duration of our slim and fruitful lives on account of all the expensive degenerative diseases we develop in our
bonus years. That's not to say we shouldn't try to prevent obesity. But let's stop pretending it's a reasonable way to pay for health care reform.

(For a more detailed discussion of this topic, see my piece on the fat tax from February of last year.)

Obama's Failed Autobot Policy

One of the strangest moments in Transformers 2—and there's plenty of competition, this being a movie in which John Turturro recommends that a robot's scrotum be the target of an airstrike—comes when we learn that the president of the United States is none other than Barack Obama. You thought Obama already had a lot on his plate? Turns out when he's not worrying about the GM bankruptcy or the latest from Tehran; he's trying to keep a lid on a supersecret alliance between the U.S. military and the Autobots.

Obama is only referred to in passing, in a news report, and we never see his image. But the movie paints an unflattering portrait nonetheless. Galloway, the Pentagon official sent by the administration to oversee the goodly Autobots, is a short-sighted fussbudget. Wielding a letter of authority from the president, he essentially shuts down the operation, accusing heroic Autobot leader Optimus Prime of being more trouble than he's worth to the taxpayers of the United States. This is a short-sighted move to say the least, a rash decision that endangers the mission to rid Earth of the evil Decepticons. Way to go, Barack.

The hardly subtle suggestion here is that Obama is a lousy commander in chief. This characterization has led some to wonder whether Transformers auteur Michael Bay might have been taking a potshot at the president. When asked about it recently, Bay said he intended the reference as an affectionate shout out. He explained that he'd bumped into then-Sen. Obama at the Las Vegas airport after seeing him at a campaign event, and they'd had this exchange:

I said, "Hey, I saw you the other night, and I liked what you had to say. I really like hearing your stuff." I introduced myself, and he said, "What do you do?" "I'm a director." He said, "What movies?" I said, "Oh, these movies..." He said, "Oh, you're a big-ass director. I've seen a bunch of your movies." So that's why I decided to put him in.

I'm inclined to believe Bay's story. There's nothing in Transformers 2 to suggest the director contemplated the meaning of anything—he probably just assumed Obama would find it awesome to be president of a big-ass summer blockbuster. And it is sort of an honor, if you think about it. Presidents—some feckless, some brave—are stock characters in Hollywood's summer fare. Usually, however, they're thinly veiled caricatures—Donald Moffat's Reaganesque President Bennet in 1994's Clear and Present Danger is a personal favorite—rather than actual sitting presidents. Brow Beat readers, can you think of other summer blockbusters that have featured the real POTUS? Post your examples in the "Fray."

Today's Google Trends: Obama Kills Fly

If we are what we Google, then Google Hot Trends—an hourly rundown of search terms "that experience sudden surges in popularity"—is the Web's best cultural barometer. Here's a sampling of today's top searches. (Rankings on Hot Trends list current as of 11 a.m.)

No. 1: "iphone 3.0 release time"; No. 12: "iphone 3.0 update download"; No. 22: "when will iphone 3.0 be available"; No. 35: "ipod touch 3.0 update"; No. 43: "is iphone 3.0 out yet?"; No. 62: "apple 3.0"; etc. It seems an iPhone update comes out today? The iPhone OS 3.0 firmware update was announced back in March and features a number of small to substantial upgrades. Earlier this morning, the update had yet to appear on the Internet, with iPhone users apparently Googling away their frustration. A little after 1 p.m. ET, the update went live, though it remains to be seen whether Apple's servers can handle the influx.

No. 15: "Obama Kills Fly." In this case, a video is worth a thousand Googles:

No. 89 "Firebird Suite." If you haven't gathered as much already from Google's enigmatic front page, today is the birthday of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. (He would have been 127.) Although Google's home-page illustration alludes to the Russian-folklore-based Firebird Suite, the discordant Rite of Spring is perhaps Stravinsky's best-known work, both for its musical qualities and for the scandal it caused at its 1913 première. More recently, a film about Stravinsky's brief love affair with Coco Chanel closed this year's Cannes.

Dumb Moments From NBC's "Inside the Obama White House"

As demonstrated by Vulture, by Vanity Fair, by very fine work in the paper of record, by your vituperative correspondent himself, NBC Entertainment has transformed itself into a marvelous object of derision. (Tune in tonight for the debut of The Listener! It’s Bringing Out the Dead meets Medium meets general anesthesia!) This week, NBC News, feeling left out of the fun, got in on the act of degrading the airwaves. Congrats to Steve Capus and his team for reminding viewers just how awful television news can be.

It was one thing on Monday, when, on local late-night news shows, NBC affiliates devoted perhaps twice the time to the launch of Conan’s Tonight Show that they did to the end of GM as we know it. But Monday was followed, as according to custom, by Tuesday and Wednesday, when the network ran a two-part special hosted by Brian Williams and titled Inside the Obama White House. Many have compared BHO with JFK, and the precedents for this program do, indeed, date to the "new frontier"—A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy and a hand shandy by Judith C. Exner.

Speaking of Mafia molls, the special’s dumbest moment was the tracking shot showing Obama walking the portico as if he were taking a date into the Copa 'round the back way. Maybe. There are so many bits of ridiculousness here that it’s tough to pick a favorite. The pulsing dance music scoring a shot of Rahm Emmanuel opening a door? The adrenalized zooming on envelopes labeled "top secret"? The segment pretending to offer an “anatomy of a talking point” that could have been approved by David Axelrod himself?

The president’s opposition couldn’t have been giddier at seeing "the media" so blatantly submerged in "the tank." And his supporters would have been better off spending those two hours reading How to Watch TV News, which ought to be required reading for high-school students, with its clear analysis of a journalismesque business always dancing the "Madison Avenue shuffle." Seriously, NBC could have provided a greater public service by showing Bo play on a PuppyCam.