I'm in Ireland right now, which means that I'm watching the RTE broadcast of the World Cup. This in turn means that the ads I'm seeing on Irish television are not the same as those I would be seeing if I were watching the World Cup in the States. My guess is that the ads Budweiser--the official beer of the 2006 World Cup, and the only beer you can get at World Cup games--is running in the U.S. differ substantially from those I'm seeing over here.

There are a number of them. They go like this: Each ad features a sports newsroom with two American broadcasters who are --here's the funny part! -- really, really stupid about soccer. So they say things like, "And coming up, the third half!" or "It hit one guy on the head and then it bounced and hit another guy on the head -- I mean what are the chances of that happening?" or "Why are they talking about nutmeg at a soccer game?" or "'What did you think of the diving?' 'Diving? I thought we were watching football'" -- and on and on. I haven't got the lines word-for-word, but that's their gist.

So we have Anheuser-Busch, an American company, trying to sell Budweiser, an American beer, to Europeans by mocking Americans. The irony, of course, is that European soccer fans don't want to have anything to do with either the watery swill or the aggressive marketing with which Anheuser-Busch is favoring them.

"Watery swill":couldn't have described Budweiser much better,Erin.Having said that,the warm,brown,Anglo/Irish swamp water isn't much better.Give me Germany and Bohemia(even Alsace)!

Before their game against Portugal, ESPN showed Dutch fans in Germany cheering and drinking... Corona.

Guinness does the same thing in their marketing in the US, which, if you didn't know, features Joyce-era Dubliner caricatures speaking in ridiculously over-the-top Irish accents, though not *real* Dublin 4 or anything of the like, talking about how much easier it would be to drink beer out of a bottle or carry them six at a time.

Budweiser sold in Europe is also brewed in Europe, mostly in the Netherlands. It has a higher alcohol content and is brewed from a richer malt than American Budweiser, and with European-grown hops.

It's actually becoming quite popular in parts, even in Ireland.

Cin cin