Obama Beer Summit
Don’t call tonight’s “beer summit” a “beer summit.” That’s what President Obama is saying an hour before the beer summit meeting with professor Henry Gates and Sgt. James Crowley. Lowering expectations? Probably. Will his statements diminish the wild media interest in the beer summit? Nope. CNN and MSNBC both have a ticker on their networks with a countdown until the beer summit begins. What’s wrong with calling it a beer summit? “It’s a clever term but this is not a summit, guys,” he said to reporters following a meeting with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of the Philippines. “This is three folks having a drink at the end of the day, and hopefully giving people the opportunity to listen to each other. And that’s really all it is.” “This is not a university seminar,” he said. “It is not a summit. It’s an attempt to have some personal interaction when an issue has become so hyped and so symbolic that you lose sight of just the fact that these are people involved, including myself, ...