George, I also read Sowell’s piece on the history of Budweiser, though I’ll have to admit, I was disappointed. While traveling and studying in Prague last summer, I happened to learn a lot about the pub culture of the Bohemian region. All of the pubs are sponsored by a particular regional beer. Although each pub serves many different varieties of beer, they only focus on one in particular. The reason for this is because the sponsoring beer brings the pub new glasses, advertisements, and beer every few days (think an alcoholic version of the 1950s milkman).
At any rate, I happened to have one of my first Czech beers at a pub sponsored by Budweiser, the original Czech beer (even older than the currently popular Pilsner Urquell, which is mistakenly labeled as the oldest Czech beer because, I suspect, of it’s world-wide popularity). Locals told me that Budweiser, aka Budvar, (pronounced Boodvar) had its name stollen by American brewers during communist rule. Legend has it that communists, believing that capitalism would eventually fail, initially did not care that Adolphus Bush used the name in America. Their lack of foresight has caused long standing trademark disputes.
I think this adds another dimension to the whole idenity fiasco in Budweis.
