VV 1`ou justjust listenT l iove An

cans all over the place, all along the road.
.'HOUTs 6 MURMURS
BUDS
DY
'We
IAN FRAZIER
call them. And he drank Bud!The dog
did. Or you were supposed to thinkhe
did. I mean, it was just a commercial,
where you can't show any person or
dog actually drinking. But that's not
which is said to be a natural by-product
of the best domestic hops and beech-
the point. The point is this: Spuds
MacKenzie was a moral dog. The
moral fibre of that [ttle animal practi-
wood aging.The original moral recipe is
a secret, though.
Next round is on you. Remember?
You dont? O.K., put it on my tab. "I
love you, man." Novr', I knoat you remember that guy. Loved his friends so
much he was drinking all their Buds?
A desperate alcoholic destroying all
his personal relationships? He was morahty, plus a beer ad. And, I'll tell you,
after I saw that ad I felt so moral that I
You're too young to remember Spuds
MacKenzie. The Budweiser dog, funny
as hell, this dog danced in conga lines
with beautiful "babes," as we used to
our own company culture and moral
responding to recent
-AnheuserBusch,
in the National Football League.
scandols
\ n fait,wait,wait! Listen, O.K.? Will
V V 1'ou justjust
listenT
l
iove
An-
heuser-Busch like a brother.I ve known
this company all my life, or since I was
eleven, when my buddies and I got some
Buds and drank them. Simply a great
the strictest Anheuser-Busch moral
code is being imbibed.
What other company hired the theologian PaulTillich to give it its own private moral credo? I'll answer that question for you: not a single one. Not even,
technically, Anheuser-Busch-but
that's not the point. Anheuser-Busch
did not actually need Paul Tillich or
Reinhold Niebuhr or UThant or any of
thern to provide it with a solid foundation in the moral universe, because it
had a pretty great morality already,
are not yet satisfied rvith the league's
handling of behaviors that so clearly go
:gi:1"
That's not the point. The point is that
with every sip of Bud, every t'welvepack, every case or car trunkful of Bud,
never again committed insurance fraud
except once. That was the uplifting
effect Anheuser-Busch had in one
mart's
life--my own.
But. That. Is. Not. The. Point! Point
is,look at the larger picture. Anheuser-
Busch is our moral beacon shining in
the fog, and it is also the fog. Beacon or
fog, take your pick,whateveryour mood
might be, this company is both. Mosdy
it's a beacon, though, and we should be
very grateful.It's that shining brewery
on a hill thatJonathan Edwards wrore
about so movingly while plastered. I m
getting choked up again. I'm right, arent
product, a reai American brand. But
that's not the point. What my buddies
and I consumed , wly back when, just
before gym class in fifth grade, along
with a few shots of Old Overholt, was
t
I
4
!
I
5
r
3
!=
the Anheuser-Busch moral code. Kids
today don't have that, maybe because
theyte not drinking enough Bud-but
what do I know? I m just one guy in a
huge world. AX I'm sayrng is, the Anheuser-Busch rnoral code is a part of
me.That I dol<now.
cally jumped offthe TV screen at you.
He was an inspiration to me, and to
everybody, dog or human.I'm sorry,I get
choked up when I think of the moral
fineness oi'Spuds lVlacKenzie, and of
the Anheuser-Busch company. Let me
give you another example. Pine Ridge
Indian Reservation, South Dakota. Just
across the border, in Nebraska, a little
town called Whiteclay sells more Budweiser to the Oglala Sioux than you've
ever seen in your life. Budweiser beer
I,Tommy? Of course I am.
Those great big Anheuser-Busch
Clydesdales with their huge haunches
and big, gorgeous, shaggy feet pulling
that beer wagon through the snow every
Christmas: can you get more moral than
that? Tommy, what're those feet called?
Those great big,gorgeous, shaggy horse
feet the Clydesdales have, with all the
r,vhite fur or hair orvvhatever? Fetlocks?
Beautifi,rl! Tommy, you're a genius. Fet-
locks! Spuds MacKenzie sometimes
used to ride those horses. too. Remember that? r
THE NEV YORI(ER, JETTTEMDER
29.2OI+
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