Club Stella-Sophisticate; Also, Equalizing Our Extradition Treaty With The U.K. Would Benefit Both Parties

STELLA ARTOIS, MARKETING SENSATION (THOUGH YOU MIGHT WANT TO ASK THE BRITISH ABOUT IT FOR AN INTERESTING COUNTER-POINT...)

Mrs. Hasslington and I went to a Minneapolis bar last night that was so self-consciously "hip" and "trendy" I was surprised it didn't display a registered trademark after its name on its outside sign. Come to think of it, the bar didn't even have an outside sign; for anyone standing on the street outside of it, its name was nowhere to be found. I guess it's one of those places that are so self-referential they don't seem to think they need to advertise their presence to folks from the "proletariat" who happen to pass by; with this place, I guess you're either in the know, or you're not. (I wasn't "in the know" about it until last night.)

You know an American bar is trendy when over half of the beer drinkers gathered there are sipping Stella Artois from gold-rimmed goblets that give communion chalices used in Catholic masses a run for their money. Now, in the interests of putting all of my cards on the table, I have no problems with either Stella Artois (which I think is a fairly nice Belgian lager) or people who sip it oh-so-preciously out of gaudy goblets. I do wonder, however, if such folks realize that, while it is basically marketed as the "sophisticated, erudite lager drinker's beer" here in the U.S., it has been referred to for years in the U.K. as "wife-beater" (which leaves very little to the imagination) and is often consumed in almost impossibly large quantities by those for whom life has not worked out according to plan, to put it delicately.

Stella became a marketing success in the U.K. years before it took off in the U.S., and though it was initially advertised as "reassuringly expensive" in the U.K. (I'm not joking about that tag-line), it wasn't too long before lager-headed soccer hooligans and the like were disrupting normal societal patterns in outrageous manners due to the side-effects of drinking a dozen or more bottles of Stella in about an hour's time. So though people dressed in expensive business clothes (on a Saturday evening) and projecting a sort of naive, affected "worldy sophistication" at one another are indeed enjoying the initial exotic image of Stella here in the U.S., I think it won't be long before Stella will be seen by most Americans as just another "Joe Average" beer (just as happened in the U.K.), along the lines of American beers such as Bud, Miller, and Coors. Then the marketing gurus will have to find another interestingly mediocre beer to dress up as the next path to social enlightenment.

By the way, at that trendy bar I drank one of the first Stellas I've had since I returned to the U.S. last autumn, though not by design. Someone was kind enough to buy it for me.

LET'S EQUALIZE OUR EXTRADITION TREATY WITH THE UNITED KINGDOM

In 2003, the Bush Administration pushed for and won a new, unbalanced extradition treaty with the United Kingdom, and of the many complaints directed at the United States I encountered when I lived in the U.K. (some warranted, many not), that was one of several about which people were most consistently vociferous. I don't blame them, because The Economist gets it right in its July 26th-August 1st issue when it states the following: "[The treaty] is seen as unfair because it has made it easier for America to extradite criminal suspects from Britain (with low requirements for evidence) than it is the other way round."

Now this may seem to be a minor point in the minds of many folks, and it can of course be argued that the United States ought to have an easier time extraditing criminal suspects from its closest ally in the age of international terrorism. (I agree with that latter point.) Yet the problem most Britons have with the scenario is not with that aspect of the treaty, but rather with the lack of reciprocal ease for the British government when it attempts to extradite criminal suspects from the United States.

This is both a legal and, perhaps more importantly, symbolic point of contention between two ostensibly "friendly allies," and it has contributed to a lot of internal and increasingly public British anger directed at the United States and its government. The treaty was forced through in 2003, when the Blair-led government erred on the side of giving the U.S. leeway in these matters without having the teeth to argue thoroughly and publicly enough for an equalization of the process. (It was put into effect during the tumultuous initial stages of the Iraq War, so it was done amidst other headline-grabbing goings-on.) Most Britons, however, disagreed entirely with Mr. Blair's handling of the issue (as they still do), and the post-Blair British government's recent grumbling about it is beginning to better represent the will of the British people.

Senator Barack Obama made the right move when he told the British press that he is generally in favor of equalizing extradition rights between the two countries and will look into the issue quite soon after entering the White House, should he become the next president. (Again, he is against weakening the U.S.'s rights, but he is for strengthening Britain's rights so that each country has an easier time extraditing criminal suspects from the other.) This would do a lot to ease some of the tension, at both the government and social levels, between the two countries (in particular, it would help to ease tension between the United States government and the British public, which could be helpful in the future should the U.S. government come to the conclusion that further options need to be explored insofar as extradition rights with its allies are concerned, and should the British government feel the need to listen more closely to its people regarding the issue). It would also be symbolic of the notion that the United States is ready to turn to a new page in its relationships with its various allies. Conversely, by doing this while also not decreasing the U.S.'s ability to extradite criminal suspects, another equally strong message would be sent, that being that the U.S. is not in the business of selling away the farm (so to speak) simply because it has a new chief executive.

I applaud Senator Obama's stance on the issue. I hope that Senator McCain views the scenario in a very similar manner, though it's difficult to tell because he has been more hesitant to address it. The time has long since come for him to do so.