Brewed, Crude & Ballyhooed
Random Memorandum™ to The Three Stooges™ of the American ale industry — the slap-happy chappies from Chippewa — Messrs. Jacob, Jethro and Jasbo Leinenkugel: As scions of a legendary brewing family, surely you must have some notion of tradition. Why, then, do you persist in sullying your legacy and embarrassing yourselves and your relations with your cheeseball adverts? The dopey schtick, the over-played enthusiasm and pathetic mugging for the camera, all of it ‘tis more repellant than a vat of bug spray in your beloved north woods. Honestly, mates, your television and online “content,” as the marketing nitwits would have it, are about as funny as a fart at a funeral. Your ham-handedness on the radio is only slightly more bearable, as one needn't suffer the sight of your “beer mugs” as the tragic lameness spills out of your pie-holes. Let’s call a spade a small shovel here: You knuckleheads make a trio of car dealers look like the Marx Brothers. I venture that if one took the inanities in all the other ale commercials combined, it wouldn’t approach the level of awfulness that your adverts deliver. If you took the three worst writers from the three worst advert shops up north, hired them for a week, paid for their Usinger sausage lunches and pushed them to ply their tin-eared skills, they couldn’t deliver anything as bad as your current work. I keep hoping one of those giant anvils will drop from the sky, land on your cabin and strike you dead in one fell swoop. That would be funny! Now, perhaps none of this would matter if there was something to be said for your libations. Alas, ‘tisn’t so. I’ve sampled your Barely Weiss® and Lemonade Shandygaff® beers and am baffled at the appeal of these bloody concoctions. If I was crawling across the desert and a mirage — say, a pool filled with Leinie's Honey Nut Cheerio® — appeared, I’d sooner copulate with a cactus than submit to drinking that sugary shite. Perhaps you’ve sampled one too many fruity brews to know better. ‘Tis time to concentrate on beer making, not ad making. The bloody camera will never love you, and if you don’t change your ways, neither will I. Yours Truly, Constable Dooley®.
