“There is a bright line between drinking beer, which I gladly do, and which I fully embrace, and sexually assaulting someone, which is a violent crime,” he said. It was also the clue that more than just a simple declaration of beverage preferences was at work. “If every American who drinks beer or every American who drank beer in high school is suddenly presumed guilty of sexual assault,” he added, we’re all headed toward “an ugly, new place in this country.” Never mind that every American who drinks beer isn’t being presumed guilty of sexual assault. He made beer a cornerstone of a masculinity that was suddenly suspect, suddenly toxic, a paradigm of privilege and entitlement. He was fashioning himself as a persecuted Everyman and playing to Americans who saw themselves in the rebooted “Roseanne.”Hence all the beer:“I drank beer with my friends.

Source: New York Times September 29, 2018 18:44 UTC