It is one thing to co-opt macro crap beer to the cause of good beer when it suits the statistics. But it really is another thing to make claims beyond anything that could be sustained by even the most optimistic spinning of numbers:

Present company excepted, people in the media barely write about it. The public is yearning for more knowledge about beer, and nobody’s giving it to them. Even though craft beer is more popular than wine in the US, every major newspaper has a wine column, and almost nobody has a beer column. What’s wrong with this picture?

Craft beer is more popular than wine? Really? Regular readers might think I wake up in the morning what I can write negatively about beer in new and exciting ways. It's not true - but it sure has been a bad stretch whether we are hearing from the fans or the established writers. That bad feeling whispering that I'm just a nattering nabob of negativity keeps coming back to me when I read more and more of the Hooray for Everything that is put out there. Here is the thing. It is not necessary. There is plenty of good news in the stats that no one needs to fudge the numbers. And there is plenty enough goodness in good beer that we can pass on the egos and neediness of front men or the call of overly priced tiny plates and tiny glassware. Why is what is real and actual of what is in the glass not enough? Have we come to this place slowly over time?

There could be ramifications. I'm reminded that it's an election year in the US. It's a nation married to the marketplace of ideas. People have a lot of experience in these days filtering what they are fed from what they actually accept. Could it be that one of the reasons that good beer is not taken seriously as it might be is because the story is not being told well enough to earn the consumer's trust? By the way, I agree with the suggestion that there should be as many beer columns as ones about wine - as long as it is not fan fiction but actual objective writing about what is good, what is not good and what offers the best value.