“Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith…
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name”

Sympathy for the Devil? Well, I think it is safe to say that Sam Adams Founder and Brewmaster Jim Koch is not the Devil that he has recently been made out to be, but perhaps somewhere along the line as he built up his beer empire he did make a deal with dear old Mephistopheles.

It was the spring of 1999, my senior year of college. As he had done in previous years, Jim Koch invited the senior class living in my dorm (the dorm he once inhabited during his college days) to tour the Sam Adams Brewery on Mass. Ave in Boston. It was a glorious experience as Jim personally toured us through his brewery explaining the intricacies of crafting the perfect lager and freely answering all of our questions. I recall his comments on the importance of the right hops, on the coloring of the bottles (brown lets in much less light than green and is thus better) and his profound distaste for light beer. “There will never, EVER be a Sam Adams Light,” proclaimed Mr. Koch. According to Jim, Light Beer hardly even deserved the label “beer”.

We ended our tour that day with unlimited drinks in the Sam Adams Brew Pub and toasted Mr. Koch over and over again for his hospitality. Heck, Jim even had postcards with the postage pre-paid that we could freely mail that day from the pub. I remember sending one to my parents: “Hey Mom & Dad, Thanks for putting me through college. I finally know what I want to be when I grow up. I want to be Jim Koch!”

Fast forward to the early months of 2002. Lo and behold, there he was, my hero, Jim Koch, smiling that lovable Garfield-like smile, hoisting a bottle of everybody’s favorite Boston lager. To my horror, the caption turned my pride to shame, “Sam Adams Light: Taste the Revolution”. Tell me I did not just see that. My mind raced back to 1999 and Jim’s immortal words, “There will never, EVER be a Sam Adams Light.” My hero had failed me, another great selling out for the almighty dollar.

Back in the present day, Sam Adams is entangled in a catastrophe. A prominent sponsor of those Howard Stern copy-cats Opie and Anthony and their “Sex in Public Places” contest, Jim Koch suddenly finds himself sponsoring a couple having intercourse in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Consequently, a number of pubs in Boston (most notably J.J. Foley’s) issue a ban on Sam Adams products. The Media jumps on the story, the Catholic Church and the religious faithful are up in arms, and even Boston’s own Metro shows Foley’s owner pouring out a bottle of Sam’s in protest. The Boston public is outraged and screaming for Koch’s head on a platter.

Now I’ll be the first to admit, Jim Koch’s local institution may not be the hometown local brewery it once was, but for goodness sake, cut the man some slack. Is Mr. Koch really the Devil he has recently been made out to be or is that Devil really the same invisible hand that was shaken not only by Jim Koch, but by nearly every other big business entrepreneur in our beloved capitalist country’s history? If you want to boycott Sam Adams, you might as well boycott every large corporation operating in American today, everyone from Disney to Microsoft to Phillip Morris. Instead of focusing on Jim Koch and his attempt to get some advertising for his company, our attention and scorn (especially from the Media) should be on scumbags like the Anthrax hoaxers, the Catholic priests who fondle children, and those Enron cheats who actually have affected all of our lives with their underhanded lying and robbing. Jim Koch may no longer be my hero, but in my book, he is still O.K, and certainly not worthy of all the cheap shots and bad branding he has received. Martha Stewart, on the other hand…now that’s a horse of a different color.