{"id":21249,"date":"2016-05-12T08:33:06","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T12:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=21249"},"modified":"2016-05-12T08:33:06","modified_gmt":"2016-05-12T12:33:06","slug":"sneering-at-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2016\/05\/12\/sneering-at-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Sneering at America"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"3059681-slide-s-0-budweiser-renames-its-beer-america\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Budweiser recently announced that it would rename its beer \u201cAmerica\u201d for the duration of the US election season. The rebranding was described\u00a0as a testament to the \u201cshared values\u201d of Budweiser and America, and their marketing firm Fast Co<\/em> stated: \u201cWe thought nothing was more iconic than Budweiser and nothing was more iconic than America.\u201d Who can disagree with that? No one, because it doesn\u2019t make sense. But that\u2019s beside the point.<\/p>\n

Negative responses to the re-branding have generally taken two forms. First, folks on social media are gleefully pointing out that Budweiser is owned by a Belgian corporation. While there is some obvious cognitive dissonance happening when a Belgian corporation brands\u00a0itself as America\u2019s beer, they\u2019re certainly not unique<\/a> among products manufactured overseas that use American patriotism as a marketing tool. At least Bud is brewed in the US. But a second response to the announcement is the evergreen accusation that Bud both tastes like nothing and tastes like piss.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never been able to sort those two claims out. To be fair, I\u2019ve never tasted piss. But I have drank my share of Bud and, while its no flowery and bitter double IPA, it does in fact taste like beer. It\u2019s light, and the \u201cdrinkability\u201d of Bud Light was a long-time marketing slogan. Whatever your opinions of cheap, light beers they are undeniably the object of scorn by beer enthusiasts everywhere.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a bartender. In my book, rule number 1 of bartending is that you don\u2019t judge people for what they drink. A few months ago,\u00a0a man came in with his friends and\u00a0ordered a Diet Coke with vanilla vodka. His friend immediately started shaming him for ordering a \u201cbitch drink.\u201d There\u2019s always a calculation for me about whether or not to make the personal political when I\u2019m behind the bar. As in all hospitality, my pay depends on not pissing people off. I asked myself, should I call this guy out for shaming his buddy? At that point he had a $50 tab running, so it was a risky decision. But yes, I decided. I should.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t be mean to people for what they drink. I didn\u2019t make fun of you for ordering Grey Goose even though most people can\u2019t tell the difference between that and well vodka.\u201d Yes, I am aware of the irony in my snarky\u00a0I\u2019m-totally-not-shaming-you jab. Still, it made me mad. People of any gender should be able to drink whatever the hell they want. You just paid $11 for a drink that you probably couldn\u2019t differentiate from a $6 drink. Grey Goose drinkers, please send your hate tweets to @bsummitgil<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When I hear someone scorn cheap domestic beers, I cringe. I admit, I used to be the worst about this. But now, they\u2019re my go-to when I\u2019m pacing myself for a late night or when my wallet is light. I even cut my beer-drinking teeth on Bud Light. Still, for years I cracked jokes about cheap domestic beers tasting like piss and\/or water. And I have come to believe that most of this sneering is not really about the supposed quality of the beer; it\u2019s about the supposed quality of its drinkers.<\/p>\n

Cultural theorist and working-class intellectual Raymond Williams wrote of his experiences at Cambridge:<\/p>\n

\u201cI was not oppressed by the university, but the teashop, acting as if it were one of the older and more respectable departments, was a different matter. Here was culture, not in any sense I knew [as a working-class person], but in a special sense: the outward and emphatically visible sign of a special kind of people, cultivated people. They were not, the great majority of them, particularly learned; they practiced few arts; but they had it, and they showed you they had it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Resources of Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Williams was asking a simple question: why were these supposedly revolutionary Marxists at Cambridge sneering at the very people they purported to liberate? When they spoke of the \u201cbadness\u201d of so-called \u201clow culture,\u201d that of the British working class, Williams wondered \u201cwhere on earth they have lived. A dying culture, and ignorant masses, are not what I have known and see.\u201d Culture, Williams argued, was ordinary<\/em>. It was not confined to the museums and music halls and Cambridge courtyards. It was in the tavern songs and labor newspapers and beach trips just as much as it was anywhere else.<\/p>\n

Growing up in a working class neighborhood, raised in a working class family, I have distinct memories of bottles of Bud in the fridge, the cooler, and the built-in cup holder of our second-hand La-Z-Boy. I remember being sent to the kitchen for another round of beers, passing them out to a room of grizzled welders and mechanics. They were a permanent fixture at mud bogging and fishing trips. They were a ritual for the men in my life when, after a long day of physically taxing labor, the first beer was opened, the cap flicked\u00a0somewhere near but rarely into the trash can across the room. They\u2019re not all fond memories. But I have a deep psychic connection to that label. It was a part of my\u00a0culture. It was extremely significant, and entirely ordinary<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A recent essay<\/a> excoriated the \u201csmug style in American liberalism.\u201d I won\u2019t delve into the knitty gritty of the essay and the subsequent criticisms. But look no further than any Facebook page with \u201cliberty\u201d or \u201cfreedom\u201d in the title to see just what many working-class Americans think of liberals. Entitled. Elitist. Snobbish. Out of touch. Smug.<\/p>\n

Even Budweiser knows it. Their 2015 Super Bowl commercial<\/a> turns the table on beer snobs, deriding \u201cpumpkin peach lagers\u201d sipped by men with waxed mustaches, juxtaposed with\u00a0pickup beds brimming with cases of Bud. Their 2016 Super Bowl commercial<\/a> features sports teams and physical laborers; it\u2019s not \u201csoft\u201d and it\u2019s not a \u201cfruit cup.\u201d It\u2019s for \u201cpeople who like to drink beer.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s impossible to separate the beer snobbery that characterizes so much of the social media response to Bud\u2019s announcement from the broader classism and disdain for \u201cordinary\u201d people who like beer that is cheap and easy to drink. And with Donald Trump\u2019s recent joke that his candidacy inspired the rebranding, plenty of people are taking the opportunity to ridicule Bud drinkers and Trump supporters in the same breath. Countless tweets and Facebook comments on how unsophisticated “redneck”\u00a0Americans like shitty beer and shitty politicians demonstrate just how alluring this narrative is.<\/p>\n

Budweiser is not a good company. Its move to Belgium was in no small part an effort to pay a ridiculously low tax rate. Its numerous OSHA violations put manual laborers\u2014the same demographic that it so often markets to\u2014in serious danger. It has a history of union disputes and unfair labor practices. But the most widespread criticism Bud faces is its taste and, by extension, the \u201ctaste\u201d of its consumers. Sneering at the tasteless masses is a time-honored tradition in this country. It\u2019s as Merican as apple pie and, well, Budweiser.<\/p>\n

Britney is on Twitter<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Budweiser recently announced that it would rename its beer \u201cAmerica\u201d for the duration of the US election season. The rebranding was described\u00a0as a testament to the \u201cshared values\u201d of Budweiser and America, and their marketing firm Fast Co stated: \u201cWe thought nothing was more iconic than Budweiser and nothing was more iconic than America.\u201d Who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1931,"featured_media":21251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2016\/05\/3059681-slide-s-0-budweiser-renames-its-beer-america.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1931"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21249"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21255,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21249\/revisions\/21255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}