Sen. Ted Cruz — often accused of that nastiest of Texan insults, being “all hat and no cattle” — is portraying outrage at a rumored change in the USDA’s recommendations about healthy levels of alcohol consumption.
In the video segment below, Cruz stands hatless in front of a number of beer-bellied Texans in hats and rails against “these idiots” who want to share information and research about the potential ill effects of alcohol consumption. Cruz doesn’t want to hear it from the nanny state, and he wants to drink beer — especially on camera. And he won’t stop at two beers either, the Senator vows.
Cruz awkwardly reaches for a brew in a clumsy execution of his pre-staged shtick, twists open the cap and takes a defiant teenager-like swig. The men behind Cruz then take swigs too, in rehearsed synchronized mimicry like some slow pudgy cowboy version of Beyonce‘s backup dancers.
The Senator says the people recommending he consider the reality that alcohol may be damaging can “kiss” his derriere. After his sip, Cruz attacks Bud Light.
(Note: Shiner beers, which Cruz promotes here, are rare in the microbrew world for having twist-off caps, so Cruz didn’t have to operate a bottle opener on film.)
Cruz: If they want us to drink two beers a week, they can kiss my … pic.twitter.com/cu17K9yMmx
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 31, 2023
Current alcohol consumption guidelines from the USDA recommend not more than two drinks a day for men, or 14 drinks a week. (Women are better off, as per the guidelines, limiting consumption to seven drinks or less per week.)
But in an interview that appeared in the Daily Mail, George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, suggested those guidelines may change, as alcohol’s effect on health continues to be studied and evaluated.
Koob suggested the research might indicate it would be smarter for men to have just a couple of drinks per week, and that future recommendations could reflect that idea. The Mail, predictably, characterized it as “Biden’s alcohol czar” warning Americans that “strict new guidelines” might be effected.
Guidelines, of course, are only suggestions with no enforcement — as proven by the tens of millions of Americans who each day ignore the current guidelines, imbibing far more than the recommended two drinks daily.
[NOTE: The NIH estimates that “more than 140,000 people (approximately 97,000 men and 43,000 women) die from alcohol-related causes annually, making alcohol the fourth-leading preventable cause of death in the United States behind tobacco, poor diet and physical inactivity, and illegal drugs.”]
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