The “Beer Summit” and What's Brewing: Narratives, Networks, and Metaphors as Rhetorical Confinement in the Age of Obama

Abstract

This article uses the Gates-Crowley-Obama “Beer Summit” to analyze narratives, networks, and metaphors as rhetorical confinements in the Obama era. The Beer Summit exemplifies a complicated cultural script, diverging slightly from the familiar pattern of analyzing textual backlash discourse as a dominant frame in which to understand racial discourse. This study explicates meaning in the discourse of the Beer Summit to interpret how agonistic rhetorical visions confine the rhetorical agency of President Obama. Specifically, the article explores Obama's rhetorical trope and range as that of a “unifier.” The presidency calls for its occupant to act as a unifier, but this article considers how Barack Obama's race is linked to his limited agency. Furthermore, to understand this confinement, this piece approaches the discourse through rhetorical networks and interprets tacit visual metaphors in social media.

Keywords:

• Barack Obama
• Beer Summit
• Henry Louis Gates
• James Crowley
• Political and Visual Rhetoric
• Racial Codes
• Racial Politics
• Rhetorical Confinement

Acknowledgments

He would like to thank Jim Klumpp and Emily Leonard for reading earlier versions of this article and he would like to thank Mark Orbe, Special Issue editor, and the anonymous reviewers of this article.

Notes

“Popular” used here means sentiment coming from those in the general public versus any alternative meanings.

Carter (1995), Glaser (1996), and Kenski, Hardy, and Jamieson (2010) offer excellent treatments of how racial conflict often plays out in traditional media.

The point regarding conflict is further demonstrated in that stories, linking Crowley and Gates as descendants of the same Irish ancestors were largely muted in the press.

“Irish immigration” is not referring to Scotch-Irish immigration to the American Colonies during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

See Charland's (1987) work on how audiences are “interpellated.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert E. Patterson

Robert E. Patterson is Assistant Professor of Management Communication in the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia where he teaches courses in business communication, public speaking, and rhetoric.