Budweiser’s newest Super Bowl ad was conceived and shot long before President Trump’s infamous “Muslim ban” was signed last Friday, but it sure has taken on a new relevance since then. The ad, called “Born The Hard Way,” dramatizes Anheuser-Busch co-founder Adolphus Busch’s journey from his homeland of Germany to St. Louis in 1857, where he met Eberhard Anheuser and the two began a long, refreshing, slightly bloated working relationship. At the time, German immigrants were distrusted by native-born Americans, who thought these for’ners needed to take their weird language and funny-smelling food back to where they came from:
If the company that literally re-named its beer America for a few months last summer thinks that hating immigrants is against its values, perhaps the ad will help Americans who support our current president’s xenophobic policies to rethink theirs. Or maybe they’ll just spew poorly spelled vitriol at the company on Twitter, and “boycott“ Budweiser by buying cases of Bud Light or something equally asinine. We’ll find out this Sunday, when the ad makes its TV debut during Super Bowl LI.