The New Yorker has a nicely written piece about how Anheuser Busch InBev, a company not made in America, has decided to change the name of its Budweiser flagship brand to "America" for the rest of this year, in what it says is a recognition of the patriotic fervor that will engulf the nation during a year which the Olympics will be played (though not in America) and a presidential election will be held.
"The new beer can looks like a sleek, jingoistic bullet, or like a metallic Old Glory, on steroids, its eyebrows plucked into a mishmash of modern fonts, made up to star in an over-loud summer blockbuster," the story says, adding, "The America evoked by the can is an America that ... exists only in advertisements. You find it in commercials for pickup trucks and lawnmowers, jeans and mass-produced beer."
I think it is an assessment worth reading ... here.
"The new beer can looks like a sleek, jingoistic bullet, or like a metallic Old Glory, on steroids, its eyebrows plucked into a mishmash of modern fonts, made up to star in an over-loud summer blockbuster," the story says, adding, "The America evoked by the can is an America that ... exists only in advertisements. You find it in commercials for pickup trucks and lawnmowers, jeans and mass-produced beer."
I think it is an assessment worth reading ... here.
- KC's View:
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I must concede that probably the reason I liked this piece is that it reflects some of my own attitude toward the renaming. From the moment I read about it, it struck me as a hard-core cynical play on the emotions of customers ... as if a great American company, having been sold to a foreign business, was now reduced to pandering in order to reclaim the perception of its birthright. The beer is no more or less American for having changed its name ... though it does reflect the belief of a notable American, who once said that "a sucker is born every minute."
