What Would Jeebus Drink?

Dear Guinness & Co.:

I am writing to apologize for any correspondence you receive from the few-score idiots calling themselves "One Million Moms" regarding the use of the Christian hymn "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" in the Guinness commercial titled "Empty Chair". (Herewith please find the e-whinge they instructed me to send you.) 

Apparently their deity so vehemently detests human consumption of alcoholic beverages...

...that he turns purple and froths at the mouth when even a crap song like LotEA is associated with the practice. As always with such folks, this is pure hearsay: the deity in question absolutely never turns up to represent his own wishes. We're meant to take the word of persons whose DSM5-criterion-meeting intellectual disabilities are paraded for all to see with each new protest and boycott they launch. (Like this one...)

Some years ago I subscribed to emails from the American Family Association (of which fake Christian group are offshot the fake Christian One Million Morons) on the principle that one ought carefully observe what one's enemies are up to. With today's laughable protest I feel secure in terminating that surveillance: this particular enemy is just too silly to take seriously. I trust you feel the same.

My only complaint is that you might have chosen a better, prettier, less effete and more original hymn than LotEA. My surmise is that Mr. Showalter's tune has lain, spread-eagle and lubed, in the public domain for the better part of a century, ripe for all takers: after all, one could hardly credit its melodic or literary qualities for its deplorable proliferation in the popular media—e.g., the movies The Human Comedy (1943), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Phase IV (1974), Wild Bill (1995), Next of Kin (1989), and most notoriously, True Grit (2010), which Coen Bros. joint was rendered nearly unwatchable by that incessant, insipid refrain. (Hey, but this is pretty kickass movie art, though, huh?)

 Should your advertising department wish in future to delve again into the 19th century tent revival canon, might I suggest "Softly and Tenderly" by Mr. Will Thompson? Or Ms. Fanny Crosby's "Blessed Assurance"?

Many thanks for your consideration; and more thanks, as always, for the exceptionally fine beer.

Who's been following the young career of Mr. Dato Foland? He of the ethereal gray eyes and unfortunate tendency, with Jessy Ares and fellow madrileño Damien Crosse, to stick his tongue out and make heavy metal hand gestures when you point a (non-porn) camera at him? Yes, that one.

I just ran across (an edited version of) this image of him on his Facebook page:

Hadn't seen that one before, but it immediately put me to mind of one of my favorite images of Jake Tanner:

Frankly, I think Jake still wins in all possible ways, but Dato is certainly no slouch.