Free Republic

The alcohol industry is forever foisting new “sensations” on the drinking public. They come and go. Designer vodkas flash and fade like hastily assembled boy bands; new beer genres wail for attention then spiral silently down the drain; strange liqueurs try to muscle their way into our shot glasses then scurry back to whatever faraway land they sprang from. It’s a crap shoot. But roll those dice they must, and for good reason. Who would have guessed wild-ass ideas like light beer and flavored vodka would have taken hold as they have? Who would have bet money that a medicinal...

There are a million ways to slight a rival's manhood, but to suggest that he enjoys Zima is one of the worst. Zima was the original "malternative"—a family of alcoholic beverages that eventually came to include such abominations as Smirnoff Ice and Bacardi Silver—and it has long been considered the very opposite of macho: a drink that fragile coeds swill while giving each other pedicures. That stereotype has persisted despite the fact that Zima's brief heyday came nearly 15 years ago. The brand was then hailed as a marketing coup, an ingenious way to sell beer—or rather, a clear, beerlike...

British men are being told to be alert to a condition that could "put them on the fast track to extinction". Symptoms of the "illness" that has been dubbed "mantropy" include a penchant for pedicures, fruit smoothies and small dogs. American Maxim, one of the biggest-selling men's magazines in the world, has defined mantropy as "a silent killer which strikes men in the prime of life". The magazine has been urging American men to be macho rather than manicured and to indulge their passion for cars rather than clothes. The campaign coincides with research that shows that men and women...