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Now Those Foreigners Are Trying to Take Our Beer!

Posted by Thers, Whiskey Fire at 8:14 AM on July 13, 2008.


This aggression will not stand.
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Someone allegedly named "G. Tracy Mehan, III" at The American Spectator laments, for purely sentimental reasons, the possibility that a Belgian conglomerate might purchase Anheuser-Busch.

I believe in free markets, free trade, creative destruction, fierce business competition, and shareholder value.
I also believe in my hometown company, Anheuser-Busch. I believe in family business, local institutions, free beer on brewery tours, Clydesdale draft horses, and Grant's Farm, the Busch family estate with an authentic (or close enough) Bavarian Bauernhof stable and courtyard with little motorized trams to cart you around....
My high degree of angst is caused by the $46 billion (that's with a "b") tender offer by the Belgian brewer, InBev, to buy out St. Louis's trademark business which, for the moment, has been rejected by the brewery's board of directors. In countless churches throughout the city, worshipers pray, devoutly, that this is just not a negotiating tactic in quest of a more generous offer. Just say no!
This proposed transaction puts my economic principles at odds with my sense of rootedness in time and place.

I grew up with guys in South St. Louis who, if they were able to land a job at the brewery, thought they had died and gone to heaven. Good pay, great benefits and free beer-within limits. Landing an A-B beer distributorship was the stuff of myth and legend. Cindy McCain chairs Hensley & Co., one of the largest such operations in the country.
Yes, globalization is coming home to roost. Holy bats in the Bauernhof! Do I have to abandon my free-market, free-trade principles? Probably. Can I reconcile myself to a Belgian takeover of my town's premier business and cultural icon? Of course not.
No sir, you Flems and Walloons, this Bud's not for you.
This is stupid, sure -- but it is it any dumber than any other doctrinal schism? Well, yes, probably. Fewer people are as likely to die as in the Albigensian dust-up, in terms of immediate causes. But that just goes to show a lamentable lack of dogmatic fervor: some An-TWERP is going to STEAL YOUR SHITTY BEER, and you're not willing to burn him at the stake, or perhaps the griddle? (Waffle joke: accomplished.)



The point is that neither nationalism nor "free-tradism" in this account are anything more than dogma. Which is what they are in pretty much every other "conservative" depiction of same, but usually not so clumsily.



Everything's for sale, kid. Even your prejudices. Especially your prejudices. Get used to it.

Digg!

Tagged as: beer, trade, wing-nuts, hypocrisy, anheuser busch, budweiser

Thers runs Whiskey Fire.


Return to PEEK  » Post Tools: email EMAIL print PRINT 16 COMMENTS PERMALINK
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I hope the deal goes through.
[Report this comment]
Posted by: thedigitalfrenzy on Jul 13, 2008 8:59 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Firstly, Budweiser isnt that good a beer. Secondly, if InBev buy AB, then we are going to be presented with a vast array of beers that we cant get in the US at the moment. As a lover of beer, I can trade one mediocre beer for a plethora of better libations.

Slainte.

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There's already a Budweiser in Germany
[Report this comment]
Posted by: YogiBear on Jul 13, 2008 9:41 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Probably make it a better product. I read somewhere that, until WWII, even American brews like Bud tasted good. Then due to rationing of the grains or hops or whatever for the war effort, the beers got watered down. After the war, the beer companies figured people were used to it, so why go the extra effort? Candy companies do the same thing. After they get you hooked on the product, they cut the level of real chocolate and goodies and pour in the corn syrup.

For the other Bud.

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I used to know this guy...
[Report this comment]
Posted by: lexicon on Jul 13, 2008 4:05 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
...back in my college days. he was the boyfriend of my girlfriend's roomate.

Besides being a bit of a cad, he also happened to work in the university chemistry lab, where he would operate million-dollar chemical analysis equipment.

He often sat around without much to do, so one day, he put two samples into the machine.

The first sample was poured directly from a freshly-purchased can of...you guessed it...budweiser beer.

The second sample was obtained by urinating into a graduated flask.

He ran the tests, and lo! the only difference WHATSOEVER between the two, was:

Where there was alcohol in the beer,

There was formaldehyde in the urine.

Otherwise, not a whiff of difference between them.

I thought that was rather interesting.

lexicon

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Busch is a Hypocrite
[Report this comment]
Posted by: edith on Jul 13, 2008 5:43 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It's hilarious hearing the Busch family and their hired politicians from Missouri blathing about family owned businesses. Busch gobbled up Yuenling of Pennsylvania, one of if not the oldest extant US beermakers a few years ago.
In general, European beer and the microbrews made in the US by smaller brewers are far better than the watered down junk like Budweiser or Michelob.

Don't the politicians have something better to do like keeping Chinese and Korean goods out of the US so we can create manufacturing jobs in the US? No, that would be against "free trade" with nations that have no labor laws or environment laws that are enforced.

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As one clever poster on these beer devoted forums queried...
[Report this comment]
Posted by: ABetterFuture on Jul 13, 2008 7:04 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"Hey, can you tell me what the difference is between domestic beer and sexual congress in a canoe?"

Of course I had no idea, until he advised me that:

"They're both f*cking close to water."

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Bring It On...
[Report this comment]
Posted by: NoPCZone on Jul 14, 2008 12:21 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The American way in most mass market consumer products these days is to make it as cheap as possible and sell it with sex or some other image. Jesus- they put rice and all other kinds of crap into Bud.

I'll take a nice German wheat beer any day...

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It's a done deal...
[Report this comment]
Posted by: FAITHCARR on Jul 14, 2008 7:35 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
How's THAT for free trade?

It will be interesting to see if our NASCAR folk abandon the Bud.

What large brewery do Americans still own?

F.

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out of kaos comes order
[Report this comment]
Posted by: chiefwanadubie on Jul 14, 2008 8:59 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Before prohibition of alcohol, America. had thousands of breweries, and distillers, but afterwards America had 13 of each!!! Free enterprise lost, the gangsters won!!! Before the fake fuel crisis, America, had the big 3 auto makers, now Japan, owns G.M....In order to create a global economy, Americas wealth had to be redistributed, and the American people, had to be reduced to 3rd world status!!! Aren't we there yet???

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It's a St. Louis cultural thing
[Report this comment]
Posted by: gregs765 on Jul 14, 2008 9:29 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
As a native of St. Louis, I understand his concerns completely. No matter how monolithic A-B has become, it is a central part of the city's history and culture that cannot be ignored, even by a beer snob like me who usually scoffs at Bud Light. I grew up going to Busch Stadium to watch the Cardinals play, seeing the Clydesdale team pull that iconic wagon in parades, and taking part in various events A-B or the Busch family had sponsored. And just a few weeks ago I visited Grants Farm with my parents and drank free beer (their porter and wit aren't bad!). At 39 and living two states away, I still feel A-B is part of my St. Louis culture and identity. Despite the company's monopolistic expansion over the decades, they have remained loyal to St. Louis, and so the city has remained loyal to them. How many other big corporations can say that? And so this writer--like many other St. Louis residents--is genuinely afraid of InBev because they fear losing a big part of their city--a real source of pride and possibly the last big home-town company the city has.

So shun the Bud if you must, and feel free to grumble about A-B's beeropoly, but don't discount the cultural importance this company still holds for almost everyone in the St. Louis area. It may be a little misguided, but we'd all be better off if such community loyalty existed across our economy.

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Does this mean the Clydesdales will be replaced by Belgians?
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Walt K on Jul 14, 2008 1:14 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Schlitz was the beer company that had a Belgian 40-horse hitch back in the day. American beer companies make a pretty degraded brew, but they did save our draft horse breeds. (What I've heard on the reason the beer was lightened up during WWII was that women were drinking a higher percentage of it. We rationed sugar and petrol, don't think we were ever short of all the grain anyone wanted.)

Maybe they'll go for the European-style Belgian horses, the Brabant, which is hairier and more low-slung (the better to pull things) than its American counterpart.

MacTarnahan's makes a pretty god Scottish Ale, maybe they'll want the Clydesdales.

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InBev has a poor history
[Report this comment]
Posted by: spacestevie on Jul 14, 2008 4:55 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
When InBev bought out LeBlatts in Canada, the unions were shut out of the buyout process. InBev has a history of anti-Union and an indifference if not right harassment to its workers. This included documented incidents in its Brazilian plants of workers systematically humiliated if they didn't meet production quotas or obey company rules.

St. Louis has a little bit of business whiplash too. When May Co. bout out Famous Barr, we were told not to worry and that Famous was an institution, would always be here, blah, blah, blah. Well, all of our Famous Barr stores now carry Macy's signs and the "regional HQ" we were told would never leave was moved to Cincinatti. American Airlines promised much the same with TWA and again, St. Louis was left out in the cold again. Southwestern Bell moved out in spite of having just built a huge multi-million dollar corporate facility in the city.

So given this history, we in the city just don't believe the promises of the business community much anymore.

The article posted was shameful. This isn't about beer as much as it is about what will happen to the community charitable organizations that have come to depend on AB for donations, the workers who have come to depend on AB for jobs, and the people of the community who have come to depend on AB as a bedrock to build their lives on. Now the bedrock has proven to be just as vulnerable as any corporate entity and there is no security anymore. Once again, our city has suffered yet another in a long string of demoralizing humiliations.

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the real budweiser
[Report this comment]
Posted by: dadanbetty on Jul 15, 2008 4:54 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I have had the real budweiser beer in both Prague and London. This shit they call budweiser in the usofa is a fucking travesty. Wake-up people!

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With any luck . . .
[Report this comment]
Posted by: DJC on Jul 18, 2008 10:30 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
InBev will improve the quality of A-B beers.

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