The joy of venting, or why civilization is at a standstill.

Perhaps the classic Coors Light television ad of recent years depicts a mumbling husband transfixed by the shiny blue mountains on his revolutionary cold-activated bottle of beer. His wife tries in vain to share the results of her similarly color-coded pregnancy test, no doubt gleaning a fresh perspective on the veracity of her chosen sperm donor. We can only hope that she does the right thing before it’s too late.

In keeping with this winning theme, which epitomizes the strange and ultimately self-defeating megabrewing marketing strategy of making its target audience look as much like blithering idiots as possible (come to think of it, such honesty may actually be commendable given the excesses of advertising … and the reality of the audience) the Silver Bullet now boasts a new twist.

It’s venting.

This time, the attractive female with Bride magazine in hand looks on sympathetically as her personally selected Ken doll concocts a flimsy excuse about a close friend in need of “venting,” which she encourages in the assumption that men actually do share hankies and their innermost secrets. In fact, the “vent” in question actually is another revolutionary development, this one a newly configured can top that “lets air in” and permits the beer to be poured far more quickly while the men watch football.

Poured into what? Here’s where this exercise in forgettable marketing become interesting. The ad shows the beer cascading from the can into the air, presumably to make the point that the carbonated urine is falling into a glass, pitcher, bucket or leftover Rally’s sack. However, our closing glimpse of the "venting" party shows four men dumping the insipid liquid directly into their mouths, as is the custom in America, the land that manners forgot.

C’mon, why even pretend?

Coors suggests that you can drink its Rockies Perrier faster if you vent. As I’ve noted many times before, lowest common denominator advertising like this one is what makes like harder for all of us, because it amounts to an open invitation to prohibitionists and health fascists to attack swill purveyor and craft brewer alike.

Even as we cringe, a new generation of Coors Light ads is hitting the airwaves: Code Blue. As the mountains turn blue, men from all walks of life answer their cell phones, drop what they’re doing, and race to become mass-market beer lemmings.

That’s just embarrassing. Is this why the world is racing ahead of us?

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?

Great Taste of the Midwest program ad, 2007.

What’s a curmudgeon to do?

I tend to avoid the wasteland of television, but as a selective pro sports fan, watching the big games means witnessing more inanity than any human should be forced to endure.

This year’s NBA playoffs are being marred by what might be the single most vapid playoff jingle ever (“Right now”) run ad nauseam by ABC, leaving the sole option of muting early and often – 100% of the time when Bill Walton is doing “color” commentary …and, of course, during Miller Lite commercials.

In this year’s nominee for most consistently offensive televised beer ad, we’re shown a totalitarian vision of thousands of mass-produced Miller Lite units rolling through one of the company’s sterile beer factories as the immaculately costumed employees gather to celebrate Miller Lite’s first place finish in the World Beer Championships.

The category? American-style Light Lager.

If you’re new to all this, such a triumph looks impressive at first glance, but be aware that such made-for-mass-market-swill categories are among the more surreal in the beer judging pantheon. In essence, the American-style light lager designation as a standard in any competition calls for the judge to consider all the prime aspects of beer – body, flavor, malt, hops – and then to determine whether the light beer being examined has had each component successfully neutered, if not entirely removed.

(Drum roll please): In the end, the un-beer-iest of the contestants wins … and the banners are hoisted for the approbation of the clueless.

A female acquaintance once noted that drinking light beer is indeed comparable to love on the beach, but with no hope of orgasm – something she said was far too common in her life.

The televised world of swillocracy shilling makes the fast food, monster truck and deodorant ads seem sensible and well meaning – and that’s frightening.

But White Castle doesn't serve beer.

My sporadic forays into television viewing are reserved for big ticket sporting events, and because these come along quite seldom, I’m spared the inevitable mind softening that accompanies the tube as universal American babysitter.

Whether it’s been six months or six days between viewings, the seemingly unalterable six-pack advertising mentality of America’s bloated corporate megabrewers never ceases to amaze – apparently owing to a target consumer group’s infinite capacity for self-abnegation – or, put simply, dumbing down.

So it was that last evening I saw SAB Miller’s new High Life blurb, wherein a Miller beer truck hurries to a posh eatery to rescue cases of High Life. In such a manner is swill being duly re-globalized owing to the unpardonable sin of being sold at the kind of joint that would vend an $11.50 hamburger.

I’m so old that I can remember just a few years ago, when Miller’s own supermarket positioning and pricing decisions for High Life came very close to destroying the brand’s value, but attention spans apparently are short in American corporate brewing’s inner sanctums.

Permit me to note (yet again) that many, perhaps even most, of the neo-prohibitionist regulatory difficulties faced by all segments of the beer business stem entirely from megabrewing’s stubborn insistence on low common denominator advertising strategies: Cheap beer as the virtual guarantor of anti-social behavior.

Up market wins; down market loses. The wine people understand it. Can you name a single wine maker at any price range who would poke fun at an up-scale eatery’s decision to include it on the wine list?