The Super Bowl was trotted out yet again last week, an event that would have entirely escaped my attention if it hadn’t been for an agricultural brouhaha surrounding a Bud Light commercial. Forgive me for not actually seeing the commercial in real time, or even going back and watching it after the fact; I spared myself this optical indigestion by hearing it blared through the headlines.
From what I’ve been able to decipher, Bud Light aired an ad pushing against corn syrup, and America’s grain farmers–who were all ears–took umbrage. Turns out this country ain’t big enough for two golden nostrums! Of course a social media showdown quickly ensued (cue bow-legged lobbyists flourishing limp-wristed pistols at the Not-OK-Corral). Trigger fingers were triggered! Tweets were fired! Facebookers liked/didn’t like certain posts! In short, it was another 45 minute news cycle.
Here’s my world-weary take on it:
Farm Poem #3
Bud Light is at war with agribusiness,
A super bowl of big mouths:
King Corn versus the King of Beers,
Where farmers score points by
Pouring soil down the sink.
How fitting, a battle down the tubes,
On the tubes, in our tubes–
Nostalgic as milk and Cheerios,
But different.
No! The same!
Take your bowl of beer and grain
And slurp it up your corn hole.
Dilly dilly, silly!
We are what you eat.
Kings are always
The first to inform us
There can only be
One king.
Very well thought/ written, Forrest. The two Kings metaphor, is excellent— the competing grain producers, compete in grain alcohol by the grain they produce– Beer: wheat, barley, hops, bitters….vs. the Corn Lobby: high fructose corn syrup (#1 cause of the diet driven childhood diabetes and the ethanol additive “fuel” which does not reduce the US of petroleum based fertilizers (the crude oil is said to no longer be imported, to synthesize fertilizer to grow….corn to make fuel ethanol, and the net energy to do this is not saving us anything- hence the lobbyists preserving their clients bus.) So, in a sense it is also– Grain neutral (or corn whiskey)… vs. a food, beer with a lot lower % alc. by volume. As a 10 year returning pro-musician/writer, former chemist who grew up in FL farming community and trained biochemist– thank you! Well done.