Fox News host: “The terrorists have won,” railing against Sam Adams beer ad

If you missed it this weekend (and you probably did because you have a life), Fox News guest host Jessie Watters (a producer on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox show) asserted that “the terrorists have won” because craft brewer Samuel Adams was purposely leaving god out of a Declaration of Independence quote in its television commercials.

“Why name a beer after Samuel Adams? Because Samuel Adams signed the Declaration of Independence,” the bartending actor says in the commercial. “He believed there was a better way to live: All men are created equal. They are endowed with certain unalienable rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Smooth, flavorful, we bow to no kings. Samuel Adams Boston lager. Declare your independence.”

Three talking heads on the Fox & Friends show expressed their unhappiness that the leading craft brewer had not included the phrase “endowed by their Creator” in the commercial.

“When political correctness takes over the beer advertising industry, the terrorists have won,” said Watters. “I mean, this is absolutely outrageous!”

The story is pretty much a non-issue — the Beer Institute advises against using religion in its marketing purposes, said Sam Adams — but for shits and giggles we thought we’d let the internet sound off on the issue below (interspersed with some fun quotes from the hosts of the Fox & Friends show).

Fox & Friends Jessie Watters (Watters is joking here)

“You know, maybe it’s because Sam Adams was the tea party guy — he started the Boston Tea Party — maybe the tea party’s being targeted here.”

The Raw Story’s David Edwards

For its part, Sam Adams has reportedly explained that the Beer Institute Advertising Code advises against using “religion or religious themes” for marketing purposes.
But co-host Clayton Morris wasn’t buying that.

“If the beer code ethics code guideline, whatever bogus organization that is has more authority than our Declaration of Independence,” he argued, “why don’t you just pull out the Declaration of Independence and say, ‘I’ve got this document here. Does this trump yours?’”

Newshounds Ellen Brodsky (an admittedly anti-Fox site)

Fox News Jesse Watters may not mind having his readers regularly discuss assassinating President Obama and he has personally stalked a young, female blogger because she dared criticize Bill O’Reilly’s sexism, but when it comes to beer ads, he’s found religion. So long as he can exploit it for political gain, that is. Because he actually announced, without challenge, that a Sam Adams beer ad that referenced the Declaration of Independence without mentioning “endowed by their Creator” was a sign that “the terrorists have won” and that the tea party has been “targeted.”
…

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to make a point of buying Sam Adams beer next time, and I’m going to consider it an act of defiance against these anti-American, hate mongering propagandists.

Fox & Friends Jessie Watters

“Yeah, you can have a bikini cat fight in the pool with hair pulling and all that nonsense, but don’t put God [he gets cut off here, but we assume he was going to say ‘in an ad’],” Watters quipped.

The Inquisitor:

Is this something like the fake War on Christmas that Fox tries to get us pumped up about every year? I just don’t understand how there’s any evidence here that the terrorists have won. The beer makers haven’t done a thing wrong. They’ve tried to get a nice feel-good Fourth of July Declaration of Independence thing going on — and Fox & Friends have thrown cold water all over it. If there’s something wrong with this commercial, you’ll have to set me straight because I just don’t see it.

Fox & Friends guest host Anna Kooiman:

You can use America to sell beer apparently, but not God.

MSN:

Bad news, freedom lovers: The terrorists have won. So says “Fox & Friends.” But why, you ask? Because in a new Fourth of July-themed ad, Sam Adams edited the Declaration of Independence (“which Samuel Adams signed and helped author,” the beer-makers note) to omit the fact that our “unalienable rights” were endowed by a creator. Sam Adams says industry guidelines prevent them from including religion in their advertising, but that rationale wasn’t enough for host Jesse Watters: “When political correctness takes over the beer advertising industry, the terrorists have won.” Really, Jesse? Really?

Wonkette’s Doktor Zoom

By now, we’re pretty much used to Fox News’s routine freakouts over how there’s a War On Christmas (and by extension, on Jesus and America), but the holiday-weekend hosts of Fox & Friends upped the ante today with a complaint about a beer ad that neglected to give God his due. And here we’d have thought that using God to sell beer would be, you know, a cheapening of religion, but what do we know?

Feel free to leave your thoughts below.