Haven't our fighting men and women endured enough hardship?

Miller High Life: "Sweat-sock juice, burnt popcorn-flavored beer."

Disclaimer: I don't know Anthony Ash, but his letter in this week's Louisville Eccentric Observer (LEO) is both funny and perceptive. As he points out, the intrinsic cluelessness of hip has never been so painfully -- and tastelessly -- obvious.

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Champagne of Beers?

I couldn’t help but notice in Sara Havens’ Bar Belle Christmas List (LEO, Dec. 19) an expressed desire for PBR not to be hip. I won’t spend any time defending Pabst — after all, they are still milking that one blue ribbon they won in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

However, Sara, I think your comment about PBR is what I would call misdirected animosity.

So let me bring to light the real perpetrator of undeserved hipness and the bane of logic … Miller High Life. I recently returned to the glorious world of fine drinking after a year of liquor hiatus (guys do the dumbest things for a woman), and as I walked into a local watering hole for the first time, what did I see but a sea of bar patrons drinking Miller High Life. I see this phenomenon everywhere I go now.

Did I miss something during my year off? Did Buckaroo Banzai send me beyond the 8th dimension?

After all, the last time I saw someone drinking this sweat-sock juice, burnt popcorn-flavored beer in the past 20 years was my basement-dwelling neighbor who spent his days sniffing glue and watching reruns of “Petticoat Junction.” So I came to the depressing conclusion that somehow, somewhere, someone seriously in need of therapy decided that it is “hip” to drink the Champagne of Beers (giggle), and much like the African Anteater Ritual dance, it is undeserving of its popularity.

Now, somebody get me a Kostritzer before I die.

Anthony Ash, Louisville

Maybe Miller could post yellow stars on the door so that they could tell the difference.

I’m so old that I can remember a time when Pabst Blue Ribbon genuinely was a workingman’s beer, while at the same time, Miller “Champagne of Beer” High Life sought to convey a more upscale image, albeit at a price point only pennies higher than PBR.

Having long ago cannibalized High Life in order to seize the MGD demographic, the spin doctors tending to the shareholders atop the SABMiller multi-national penthouse have since busied themselves repositioning Miller High Life as an icon of numbed-down populism, and that’s ironic, since Pabst has become the hands-down favorite beer of people with money who should know better but choose today’s emasculated PBR for the very same reason that Che Guevara’s bearded visage stares out from their wristwatches.

If Miller’s latest television protagonist weren’t African-American, he might serve as body double for Ed Anger of the late and lamented Weekly World News, one eyebrow jauntily cocked as he rages at the villainy of snooty bistros and the corporate poseurs at Whole Foods, both of which are guilty of daring to vend the common man’s High Life alongside overpriced burgers, watermelon martinis and imitation tofu milkshakes.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s heartening in a way vaguely reminiscent of Erin Brockovich that humble beer truck drivers are trained by SABMiller to enforce an ideological purge of uppity establishments, but what baffles me is how the captive bottles of Miller High Life ever came to be languishing in such trendy, upscale wastelands in the first place.

Isn’t it true that the very same wholesalers now dispatching these blue-collar superheroes to rectify crucial stocking issues previously sent salespersons to the very same establishments to collect orders for the very same cases of beer?

If not, then how did these places procure their stocks? The black market?

When the truck driver reclaims the wayward cases of High Life, are refunds being issued? Isn’t he actually undoing the handiwork of a yet another poor schmuck who accepted the initial order? What of the commission, or in this case, the ransom? Couldn't the salesperson be issued with a list of characteristics to help judge the customer so as to ensure that Miller High Life reaches the proper segment of the marketplace?

Oops, ‘scuse me. I forgot that drinking, not thinking, is the final goal here.

Today’s discussion questions:

Why do mass-market breweries express open contempt for their target constituencies?

Worse yet, why do the target constituencies forever acquiesce in being insulted?