Denver Broncos fans didn’t need another reason to despise New England after the failed Josh McDaniels experiment, but Boston Mayor Tom “Mumbles” Menino gave us one this week anyway. In discussing his friendly wager with Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, Mumbles proved he knows less about beer than he does about football. And for a guy who once named a Red Sox catcher when trying to recall the name of an “ionic” Patriots kicker — “Varitek splitting the uprights” — that’s saying something. Or mumbling. Or something.
“I mean, you know, Colorado beer? It hasn’t even made it east yet,” Menino said in an interview with the Boston Globe. “Sam Adams has made it to the west and Harpoon has made it out there, but Colorado Rocky beer? Uck.”
Like Bill Buckner in the World Series, cost estimates for the Big Dig, Sen. John Kerry against George W. Bush, and Bill Belichick disciples with their video cameras, Mumbles showed us one thing Chowderheads know how to do better than win championships: blow it.
Anyone who knows beer knows that it’s not even a contest when it comes to comparing brews from Colorado and Boston. Saying we don’t produce great beer is like saying that Napa Valley isn’t wine country. Or that the New York Yankees aren’t the best franchise in baseball history.
And we have to wonder why Hancock considered a beer bet with the Boston mayor to begin with. Not only is Menino reportedly a teetotaler, but the Patriots play in suburban Foxborough, which is to Boston what Castle Rock is to Denver.
We can’t tell you who’s going to win the game tonight, but we can tell you this: Anyone lucky enough to find their way to Colorado — or at least to find one of our remarkable beers — is the real winner in the end.
Skyrocketing tuition. After four years of tuition increases ranging from 8.8 percent to 9.3 percent, University of Colorado Boulder officials unloaded a doozy this week: a proposal to increase tuition by 15.7 percent next year. As the Daily Camera reports, that means tuition for a full-time student in the College of Arts and Sciences would jump from $7,672 to $8,875. To say state financial support for higher education is lacking is an understatement, but CU officials are going to have to explain this one carefully. Because the increase exceeds 9.5 percent, state approval will be necessary. We’ll be paying close attention.
It’s not “just words.” We close this week with an elegant idea brought to the national conversation last weekend by Sen. Mark Udall. Speaking at an event held to commemorate the victims of the Tucson, Ariz., shootings last year, the Colorado Democrat said: “It’s a simple concept. Words matter, and these days you don’t hear our elected officials using words to bring us together. Too often words are used as weapons.”
Short Takes is compiled by Denver Post editorial writers and expresses the view of the newspaper’s editorial board.
