{"id":14437,"date":"2015-03-23T14:06:33","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T01:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=14437"},"modified":"2015-03-25T02:01:11","modified_gmt":"2015-03-24T13:01:11","slug":"a-rededication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2015\/03\/23\/a-rededication\/","title":{"rendered":"A rededication; a short rant elaborated"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are few things more banal and trite, in this strange world of unpaid keyboard-rattling, than the ‘Apology For Not Posting More Often’ post. So let’s not<\/em> have one of those. In any case, I’m not really<\/em> sorry; the time off was more than called-for, in the circumstances, and oddly enjoyable, in its own way. Besides, I was hardly on another planet and out of the loop entirely; shorter-form stuff on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a> kept me entertained and let me vent when necessary. But the combination of the extended sabbatical and a recurring pattern of responses \u2014 that I both observed and (apparently) provoked \u2014 that left me wanting to plant a flag, of sorts, on my way back home; to point at something that’d been murmuring unpleasantly in the background a while and say down with this sort of thing<\/a><\/em>. As I vented once, late last year,\u00a0in lieu of a proper table-flip:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/phil_cook\/status\/539276454563819520<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/phil_cook\/status\/539276587250638850<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/phil_cook\/status\/539276699137880064<\/p>\n

As a way to deflect negative attention, I’ve been seeing this (and its close relatives)\u00a0quite a lot \u2014 i.e., way too much. To me personally, it happened most bewilderingly when I pointed out some pretty bloody basic grossness by the guys at WilliamsWarn<\/a>; and a version of the same popped up, perhaps more inevitably, a\u00a0few times when I’d given Moa a gentle prod<\/a> for whatever was their nonsense de jour<\/em>. Geoff Ross, their CEO, eventually retreated to some bizarre form of economic patriotism<\/a> rather than listening to people who would perhaps quite like to buy his company’s beer but can no longer bring themselves to reward him with their money.\u00a0The impulse to see criticism as an\u00a0attack<\/em> is apparently strong one in us humans,1<\/sup><\/a><\/a> poor bewildered monkeys that we are.<\/p>\n

Really, though, it’s your closest friends who’ll tell you when you have schmutz stuck in your teeth. Acquaintances and strangers probably couldn’t give enough of a fuck to bother, and usually can’t be relied upon to point out when you’re behaving like a bit of a dick. In a more-perfect world, your friends wouldn’t hesitate. In any particular domain, it is entirely possible \u2014 likely, even \u2014 that the infamously grumpy curmudgeon or recidivist ranty bastard is, at heart, a disappointed optimist, pissed off that some frustratingly tenacious crapness is marring something wonderful. The beer business \/ community \/ scene \/ whatever is an excellent<\/em> place; there’s a reason I’m still here after a decade-and-change \u2014 I just can’t fathom why the fuck we’re still dragging along boring old sexism and other miscellaneous bullshit.<\/p>\n

The world \u2014 the “beer world”, sure, but also, you know, the world-world<\/em> \u2014\u00a0is a delightfully morally complex place.\u00a0This bites in two interesting ways, for present purposes: 1) carping on about one action or aspect of a company while praising another is\u00a0perfectly<\/em> possible \u2014 I’ve raved about Yeastie Boys’ beers and business model for almost exactly as long as I’ve kept poking them in the ribs about better-labeling where everything comes from2<\/sup><\/a><\/a> \u2014 and 2) you don’t have to back any particular dog in a fight to comment on the dust-up as it happens. Hell, you don’t even need to cheer for “your” dog, to the extent that you have one; in my time at Garage Project, I had my disagreements with decisions of theirs both minor and major and voiced them as best I could.3<\/sup><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

\"Moa<\/a>
Moa Pale Ale<\/a>, in its misbegotten aluminum bottle \u2014 rather neat, but made (at silly expense) for the airline market and now suprlus to requirements<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More generally, there just isn’t always a side worth cheering for. To take two recent examples from \u2014 who else?4<\/sup><\/a><\/a> \u2014 Moa, their clashes\u00a0with Air New Zealand<\/a><\/a> and Cloudy Bay<\/a><\/a> are perfect illustrations. When Moa’s contract to supply the national carrier’s flights was terminated early, their detractors had predictable\u00a0Schadenfreude\u00a0<\/em>and could be seen engaging in few celebrations, but the airline’s decision wouldn’t have had anything to do with rejecting Moa’s longrunning grossness and instead everything to do with a dumptruck full of money from Lion and a sadly backwards way of thinking about how to put together a beer list; nothing praiseworthy, there. Likewise, it was impossible to have any sympathy for Moa in their struggle to get resource consent for their brewery expansion; they wailed about how key its location was to their identity (while happily contract-brewing their flagship beers elsewhere), aggressively pissed-away the money from their IPO<\/a> that was earmarked for the project, constantly fudged the truth about its scope and made obviously-bogus comparisons to the winery up the road. But Cloudy Bay \/ Veuve Cliquot, in turn, acted a bit the bully and were\u00a0also<\/em> bullshitting pretty hard themselves about their operation and its neighbourhood\u00a0\u2014\u00a0they’re hardly a quaint little Ch\u00e2teau<\/em> in an unspoilt valley: this was two large-scale corporate booze-producers trying hard to play\u00a0the underdog. Why\u00a0pick sides?<\/p>\n

There’s plenty of room left for more criticism\u00a0and<\/em> more optimism.\u00a0They make a great pair, and together can do some real good. This is, like I said, an\u00a0excellent<\/em> little corner of the world \u2014 in terms of geography and market share \u2014 but pretending it’s perfect, that every actor has the best of intentions, and that we’re “all in this together” to an extent that people feel obligated to speak only in niceties just won’t help anyone. If you see something5<\/sup><\/a><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 good or bad \u2014\u00a0say something.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>1:<\/strong> Us New Zealanders<\/em> in particular, perhaps. It’s certainly a trait you hear speculated-upon quite often, and the Eleanor Catton Fiasco<\/a> earlier this year would probably count as evidence. But I’m honestly too much of a Mongrel Cosmopolitan to much notice or comment on border-by-border variations among us.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>2:<\/strong> Serendipitously, I noticed yesterday that the new labels now wear their provenance proudly<\/a>. I claim precisely zero credit for this.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>3:<\/strong> Although not well enough, I think, on reflection. At least not well enough in public. The incredible awkwardness of saying things against the people who sign your paycheck (even in the wider context of obviously being a fan)\u00a0is my only real excuse, here, and I guess my meta-point is\u00a0that awkwardness shouldn’t exist<\/em>.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>4:<\/strong> Wait. Am I their nemesis, or are they mine? (Neither, of course, really; they’re just a seemingly never-ending source of Useful Lessons and Examples.)\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a>5:<\/strong> A phrase with unfortunate ties to an MTA \/ Homeland Security campaign<\/a> that sits way too close to useless scaremongering<\/a> and which carries an utterly insane trademark symbol everywhere<\/a>, but still;\u00a0is catchy.\u00a0\u2191<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are few things more banal and trite, in this strange world of unpaid keyboard-rattling, than the ‘Apology For Not Posting More Often’ post. So let’s not have one of those. In any case, I’m not really sorry; the time off was more than called-for, in the circumstances, and oddly enjoyable, in its own way. … Continue reading A rededication; a short rant elaborated<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meta","category-blahblah"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14437"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16420,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14437\/revisions\/16420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}