A tale of two columns.

21 June update: This round goes to the Liteweights, as Mr. Mug Shot is no more.

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“You do not change what I write!"
-- John Reed, played by Warren Beatty, in the 1981 movie "Reds"

I write a weekly general interest column for the New Albany Tribune, a fortnightly beer column for Louisville Eccentric Observer (LEO), and a quarterly beer column for Food & Dining magazine.

To greater or lesser extent, I maintain two blogs: NA Confidential (life in New Albany) and Potable Curmudgeon (life in the beer business).

Generally speaking, I’ll provide a link to the Tribune column each week on Thursday at NA Confidential, and a link to the LEO column every other week on Wednesday at Potable Curmudgeon. Since Food & Dining does not maintain an active web archive, those articles are published in their entirety at Potable Curmudgeon on a delayed basis.

This week, the LEO and Tribune links are running together, following this explanation. If you follow my periodic ranting on Facebook, you already know the reason, and therein lies a story.

Basically, the top brass at LEO proposed to censor the column I wrote for publication this week, citing my reference to my own business (necessary to tell the story, and also offered to readers sans the establishment’s actual name) and my mention of Miller Lite (even when humorously altered, and even when it was the specific product mentioned by my on-line critic).

This presumably happened because roughly two years ago, the Louisville branch of Anheuser-Busch Thin-Skinned 800-lb Multinational complained about something I wrote; former LEO editor Cary Stemle thought so little of it that he didn’t even tell me until much later, but those who've subsequently occupying his chair evidently have established a new policy, paraphrased:

One mustn’t tout feel-good real beer and craft beer culture by harmful and factual comparison to bad beer and the excesses of macro beer culture, and one mustn’t offend any potential advertisers, because even though we at LEO egregiously attack errant nitwit politicians, mountaintop removal companies and wretched taste in popular culture, those entities probably weren’t planning on advertising with us, anyway, and after all, beer’s amusing, but not really important enough to waste anyone’s personal integrity defending.

I’m exaggerating just a bit -- a wee bit -- although that’s the gist of it.

I spent about five minutes pondering the blatant hypocrisy, shrugged, withdrew the column, added a few words to bring it to 900, and resubmitted it as the weekly Tribune column, where it appears today, entirely uncensored, courtesy of a local newspaper that in this case possesses far bigger balls than LEO’s, which will continue to term Jim Bunning a son-of-a-bitch while prohibiting (for example) earnest and revealing commentary on a nefarious corporation (A-B InBev) that currently seeks legal changes to deny craft brewers self-distribution in Illinois.

But what the hey: You want someone to take down Justin Bieber or Rand Paul, you know exactly where to look.

Meanwhile, I wrote a completely different LEO column, and within it cleverly insulted a LEO advertiser (the carpetbagging Top of the Hops beer festival) without anyone at the office catching it. As Steely Dan once noted, "Throw out the little ones/And pan fry the big ones/Use tact, poise and reason/And gently squeeze them."

Because so many people have told me that they read and enjoy the LEO column, I’ll continue to submit whatever emasculated Pablum the staff desires, make it as relevant as I can to a real world denied my scrutiny by the Man/Woman, and go on cashing my checks -- even if I have to take a shower after each cha-ching.

As for the Tribune: Thanks, guys. In the year and a half I’ve been submitting columns, only once in my memory has Steve "Coach K" Kozarovich overruled me, and that was in May of 2009 when I proposed to run four consecutive East German travel epics. He was right that time, and the Tribune is far better than it used to be.

In the Tribune, June 17: BAYLOR: Still killing: The scourge of L.I.D.S.

In LEO, June 16: Mug Shots: It’s Christmas in July

Photo credit

A holiday Mug Shot: "Smoke 'em on up, Santa."

Here's my biweekly LEO article for Christmas Eve: Mug Shot: Smoke 'em on up, Santa.

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“You’re such a Grinch,” said one of my friends recently, presumably intending it as a form of rebuke.

I responded, “Thank you very much.”

It all goes back to finding out that Santa Claus doesn’t exist. As an incredibly gullible child, the discovery took a while, but when it finally occurred, I disavowed Christmas on the spot. It was only a short step to outright atheism, and both revelations came from being consciously misled by so-called authority figures. Once they’ve lied to you about Santa, anything is possible.

Considering that Santa Claus is a myth, can we really know anything about his personal lifestyle choices?

I ask this question because recently, one of my helpers designed an NABC promotional poster depicting Santa Claus smoking a cigarette. The illustration was borrowed directly from 1950s-era advertising copy. In the end, you probably didn’t see it, because most of the posters were taken down, ostensibly because, “you can’t show Santa Claus smoking!” Someone else asked, “What if children see it?”

Hmm. Would that be the same children who aren’t legally permitted to drink beer in the first place?

Am I to conclude that we can cram as many images of bikini-clad Swedish beauties onto cardboard as possible, with no ill effect whatsoever on children and adults as pertains to the larger issue of female self-image, but we must protect the reputation of a completely fictional character?

But I do celebrate the holiday after a fashion. Christmas Eve is the occasion for the annual “shopping” expedition of Roger and the lads. We’ll make appearances at Bluegrass Brewing Company (St. Matthews) for lunch, followed a bit later by a visit to Cumberland Brews, with a stop at ear X-tacy falling conveniently in between.

If you’re out and about today, look us up. Happy holidaze, folks.

It's a cigarette, people -- and Santa Claus does not exist!

Legend has it that the Curmudgeon is undiplomatic. This notion should be consigned to Trotsky’s historical ash heap, because I’ve waited a full week to write about something that annoyed me tremendously at the time. Now, my heels cooled, I can comment intelligently.

The basics: John Campbell designed a poster to promote NABC’s seasonal tapping party at Flanagan’s Ale House. The poster, which used advertising copy from the 1950’s, showed Santa Claus smoking a cigarette.


John put up bunches of the posters, and then others took most of them down, ostensibly because, “you can’t show Santa Claus smoking a cigarette.”

Among those removing the posters was someone from our wholesaler, who replaced the offending images with a generic event announcement.

Well, thanks at least for that substitution. The problem is that all the imagery is lost.

Another response relayed to me was this: “What if children see it?”

Would that be the children who aren’t legally permitted to drink beer in the first place? Or, are we saying that at some level adults, who by this point should understand Santa as a purely fictional creation, might be offended by the image of a puffing St. Nick?

Are we saying that NABC can display images of as many bikini-clad Swedish beauties as can be crammed onto cardboard, with no effect whatsoever on children and adults as pertains to the larger issue of female self-image? Yet, hasn't this been the mass-market choice of action since the advertising first hatched and began telling lies?

The fact that smoking Santa was also intended as a subtle commentary on Louisville’s smoking ban makes the censorship even more questionable. The poster was carefully calculated in a number of ways. It was designed to make several statements, none of which can be judged by the viewing public if it is tossed in the garbage can.

Listen up, all and sundry.

The Curmudgeon, in both private life and as a businessman, does not take kindly to censorship. It runs counter to everything I’ve advocated throughout my life. Edginess, dissent and creativity (not necessarily in that order) are the fundamental tenets of the craft brew revolution. I’m going to regard this as a one-off miscalculation, and hope that the next time something comes up, we all talk about it first.

It’s better that way.