But then, if I drink a beer, I will drink "a" beer. To me, it's like drinking a loaf of bread. Very filling. I can't relate to people who buy a six or 12 pack and sit down and polish the whole mess off. That's just too much brew.

It was a cute ad. It wasn't designed to make you drink beer, it was designed to make you CHOOSE BUDWEISER if you happened to be a person who liked to drink beer.

It is a cute ad. I agree.

But if an equally cute ad was for guns we would freak... and fewer gun owners shoot people than Budweiser drinkers drive drunk.

When a product is associated with constant tragedy, day after day, yet remains as cute as we (as a nation) consider alcohol it speaks to some powerful advertising and myth-making and political clout.

It wasn't so long ago that we had cigarette ads about how it was a healthy habit that made you strong and attractive.

Today we view those ads with a kind of horrified irony.


I support legalizing all drugs, or darn close to all, but I recognize that social ills are attached to them and would be shocked to see them sold as the bonds that keep family together, or whatever.

I grew up in a cultural atmosphere where that didn't happen...where the "norm" was to not drink too much or too often. To stray from the paradigm didn't make one cool, it made one an embarrassment, an asshole.

If you are raised in a "lager lout" or "booze hound" atmosphere, you will take that to be acceptable and desirable. You will be rewarded with backslapping and cheers when you get shitfaced and stupid, and you will find it good.

Children learn what they live.

The social ills come from the social lessons that are taught from a very young age. Monkey see, monkey do....and the same goes for kids and their parents and extended families.

That's what I got out of it.

Second, no matter how many people in the US think rice beer is good, when the advertisements for a national championship sports event become more important than the actual sports event, we're done!

US football is nothing more than a sleazy excuse to promote shitty rice beer. For Christ sakes! There are more commercials than there is play. Why? Because a fucking play lasts at most a minute or so (often less), and what follows is a few minutes, often with yet another commercial.

That's why people who watch the championship match of US football often talk more about the advertisements for the game than the actual game.

I rest my case.