America, the Beer-tiful.

Of all the boneheaded displays of tone-deafness I've ever seen or, heard, the most egregious might be the recent rebranding by the Belgian owners of Budweiser who have temporarily changed its name and its packaging to "America."

This has to be some sort of a misbegotten stunt, I said to myself when I saw it. But no, in all seriousness, they are wrapping their Belgian-owned selves in a foreign flag and banging our drum with it.

I can't even go into the "copy" on the can, which takes America's National Anthem and uses it to sell. They appropriate our national credo--E Pluribus Unum. Or words like "indivisible," which, I'd imagine about one person in 100 could actually define.

This is dumb writ large and with tens or hundreds of millions of advertising dollars promoting it.

My guess is that right now  90% of Americans think that Budweiser is still brewed by an American-owned company. That percentage, IMHO will plummet after this affront is on the air and on our shelves. 

The hypocrisy of this re-packaging is as monumental as it is dumb.

Look, if you're owned by someone else--whether you're a beer, a car company or an advertising agency, the owner takes some of the profit. In Bud's case, that means profit leaves our country. That's just the way it goes. Hasn't Trump made hay saying this must stop?

I don't know the branding firm responsible for this monstrosity of stupidity--they're called "JKR," which I hope stands for "Just kidding, really."

My guess is this will be a colossal failure. That Bud will pull the promotion by Memorial Day and dozens of jobs will be lost.

Of course, it could be worse.

They could have rebranded Bud, "New Jersey."