Docent Geleuter

Beer pong as we know it today was called "Beirut" in the late 1970s and 1980s and was a departure from the more popular paddle based "paddle pong" drinking game made popular at Dartmouth College in the 1960s. Beirut was spread at the onset of the Lebanese Civil War in the 1970s and early 1980s as a way to drum up support for US intervention in the Levant. As colleges became coeducational and young men desired a way to show off their masculinity to campus females, gameplay that mimicked targeted aerial strikes of fixed defensive positions was created and called "Beirut" and became intertwined with the concept of masculinity. By the 1990s, calling this game Beirut fell out of fashion among both conservatives and liberals. The US lost many good people in Lebanon - Marines, State, CIA, civilians - and some conservatives felt calling the game Beirut disrespected our people and many liberals thought the idea of naming a drinking game after aerial strikes was in poor taste from the beginning. Today, within the Republican Party, the split over Israel largely exists on the Beirut/beer pong generational line. Boomers and older Gen Xers who played Beirut in the 1970s and 1980s want the US continuously involved in the Levant but younger Gen Xers, Millennials, and Gen Z Republicans who played "beer pong" and not "Beirut" want the US to stop getting involved in the Levant altogether.