Supreme libations derive from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcicial aquatic ceremony!

There are lots of reasons today's royal wedding annoyed the crap out of me. From a political standpoint, I find the monarchy--stripped of any actual power as it may be--abhorrent. As a father, I find the notion of little girls looking up to a princess to be ridiculous. And as a fan of the WGN Morning News, I was annoyed that 75% of what I watched this morning was taken up by live coverage of the procession.

But this is a homebrew blog, so I just wanted to take a second to point out one huge, beer-centric reason to be offended by the wedding: there will be no beer there. (Sorry, BrewDog; I'm assuming that includes your Viagra-laced beer brewed especially for the occasion). As reported by respected British beer scribe Pete Brown, a spokesperson for the royal family declared that beer "isn't really an appropriate drink to be serving in the Queen's presence at such an occasion." I don't think I need to tell my two readers (hi Mom and Dad!) why that is a completely absurd statement. While I'm a huge critic of Barack Obama (and lest you start making assumptions, I was a huge critic of George W. Bush, too), at least I can take pride in living in a country where our leader intentionally chooses to hash out issues over a cold beer rather than avoiding it for fear it will make him look like a commoner. It seems like a slap in the face of Britain's awesome brewing tradition, and I have to assume that somewhere, J.W. Lee, John Bird Fuller, Henry Boddington and Barclay Perkins must be humming "God Save the Queen" (and I'm not talking about this version; I mean this one).

On a side note, I stole the image above from an old Chuck Sudo post on Chicagoist.com. I assume the pictured woodcutting has entered the public domain, but if you happen to come across this, Chuck, and it turns out you actually did the woodcarving yourself, I owe you a beer at this year's Drinking & Writing Festival. ;-)