FUCK Budweiser: Your Basic Early Morning, Fed-Up Rant

IS THIS A RANT?

OOOH, YOU BETTER BELIEVE  THIS IS A RANT!…

I’m getting mightily SICK of our ongoing glorification of this industrially produced, foreign-owned, cheesy example of the American dumbing-down of a great beer style – the Czech Pilsner – that became, for 100 years, ALL we had to drink in this country under the term “beer”. I read a repost on Facebook, titled “The Girl who drinks Coors Light is the one that’s right“? For whom, exactly? One of those swaggering, posturing, cowboy wannabe throwbacks who live in the ‘burbs and drive pick-ups so they can pose as “country”, when they’re actually about as “country” as Woody Allen? This prefabricated grain-water is what we came to equate with “manhood”. For a century, we were told that drinking watered-down, sweet, piss-beer was somehow, inexplicably, linked to both manliness AND patriotism…and, until that day in 2008, when Anheuser Busch was sold to a huge Belgian beer conglomerate, and then bought out both Miller and Coors last year, the patriotism argument had SOME merit. Now, NONE of those largest-selling beers is American-owned. NONE…OF…THEM.

WHY can we not expend this energy used to exalt cynical, pablum-level corporate plonk-beer for, instead, CELEBRATING our own, American breweries and their FAR superior products? This business of BudMillerCoors – conveniently, all one company now! – being “manly” and “blue-collar” is particularly asinine. What’s more blue-collar: beer made by a huge, multi-billion dollar conglomerate, in computer-controlled 10,000 barrel batches, or beer made by your own neighbors, friends, maybe even your own family? And “manly“? The Number One complaint about craft beers, from the legions of Neanderthal dishwater-drinkers, is that craft beers are “too bitter!” How is it “manly” to admit that you can’t drink something because it’s too bitter for your precious little tongue? I responded to the link above, yesterday, and opined that the girl in the photo, far from establishing her bona fides as a Good Ol’ Gal, is displaying her bad taste and low horizons. I said that a man who finds that attractive is a slacker yoyo. And the response to that was immediate and venomous. I didn’t say those things about ANY of the people responding but ALL of them took it VERY personally. WHY? Because someone questioned their tastes? Because someone dared to challenge a lifetime of assumptions that were handed down from their parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles; tastes that were taught to them and that they never once stopped to question? Asinine…

Adolphus Busch, founder of Bud: wouldn’t even drink his own beer and called it “that slop”.

People don’t come out of the womb with a hankerin’ for Budweiser. Kids, in particular, love big flavors. They grow up eating nachos and Cheetos and burgers and pizza…NONE of which leads logically to drinking watery, flavorless adjunct Pilsner, that is so swamped by those food that you might as well be drinking water. People are programmed to drink BudMillerCoors. They find it in their family fridge and watch Mon and Dad and their uncles and aunts mindlessly slugging the stuff down and think, “That’s what beer is“.  That knee-jerk repetition kept those wimpy-ass beers unchallenged for over a century…until beers with real flavor came along and craft brewing flourished and people found out, “Hey! I don’t have to settle for that insipid shit, anymore!” And AB/InBev is on the way out and they don’t even know it because we like these new, carefully crafted, great-tasting beers BETTER…and we are NEVER going back.

My neighbors who make beer…you have some, too.

It’s like this: REAL Americans gamble their REAL livelihoods, their REAL prosperity, their REAL futures to open small, independent breweries. They work themselves to exhaustion – ALL of them – because there is no other way to make it happen. They are brave and resourceful and self-reliant and gambling on their own abilities and the good faith of their communities, and CONTRIBUTING – in MAJOR ways – to the economy of their home states. Craft brewing is NOT some effete hobby. It’s not a dalliance. And it pumps BILLIONS into our own national economy – real dollars, generated by REAL Americans. When you advocate for these corporate lowest-common-denominator beers, you turn your back on your friends and family, your community, and your own best interests. You say “My self-image as a Good Ol’ Boy is more important to me than being a good citizen” and, sadly, there are a LOT of people who think that way…and won’t even admit it to themselves.

NOW is the time to KILL Budweiser, Miller, Coors, AB/InBev, and all the cynical, bean-countin’ suits who care NOTHING about you and this country and EVERYTHING about their bottom line. Drinking these shit beers is NOT manly or patriotic and they absolutely CAN be stomped ruthlessly out of existence…and all YOU have to do, and URGE ALL your friends to do, is…Drink Better Beer.