A Liteweight Issue: Non-Beer All-Stars Deserve Equal Time

The best comedy series on television, hands down, is the all-star beer TV commercials, featuring that zany, loveable, madcap cast of former star athletes and Bob Uecker.

My personal favorite is the one in which Uecker is in a bar, passing himself off as Whitey Ford, showing how he used to throw the curve.

“Hey, Whitey, I thought you were left-handed,” says one of the admiring bar patrons.

“Oh, yeah,” Uecker says, casually switching the baseball from his right to his left hand.

No matter how often I see it, I laugh every time. I mean it.

In fact, they should package Uecker’s commercials into a film festival, like they do for Woody Allen or Ingmar Bergman.

The all-star commercial concept is great. Who could not love Rodney Dangerfield, Bubba Smith, John Madden and the rest of the all-star booze brothers?

Now, however, the government is threatening to pull the plug on beer commercials. The Senate Labor and Human Resources subcommittee on alcohol and drug abuse is holding hearings. Religious leaders and others want beer commercials banned from television.

They contend that TV beer spots, especially the ones featuring celebrities, glamorize drinking and contribute to alcohol abuse.

I suppose that group has some valid points, but I would hate to see the commercials banned. They are part of our culture.

And the beer industry folks argue that they show restraint and taste by using only retired jocks in the ads.

Also, let’s give the Lite Beer commercial people credit for honesty. Most other beer spots seem to convey the message that drinking with your buddies after work automatically makes you handsome, young, slim, successful and constantly drooled upon by beautiful women who like the way you hold your mug.

The all-star spots have the courage to show that some beer drinkers, however loveable, are fat slobs, like Tom Heinsohn, John Madden and Marv Throneberry.

Besides, the all-star commercials don’t so much glamorize the actual drinking of the beer. They aim to entertain, get a laugh, create a positive image in your mind of their wacky characters. So when you wheel past the liquor section in your supermarket, you’ll chuckle and pick up a sixer of the brand the all-stars drink.

I don’t think banning the commercials is the answer. If we were to outlaw commercials for all the things that are bad for us, television would go out of business and we would all have to start reading books or something.

Besides, I drink beer and I don’t think I do so because Bob Uecker is a funny guy.

However, some kids and even some adults might be subtly influenced by the commercials, which do glamorize beer, and I think something needs to be done.

I think the answer is not to ban the commercials, but to create a balance of exposure to alcohol. We need commercials showing other aspects of beer drinking.

The standard public-service messages will never do the trick. You’ve seen ‘em. The star athlete is in uniform, posed in front of his dugout, hands at sides. He reads a cue card with all the emotion of the directory-assistance robot operator.

What we need is a new series of commercials, similar to the TV spots for Lite Beer. The spots would feature a wacky, zany cast of former star jocks and coaches. Call them the no-beer all-stars.

The no-beer all-stars could be people like Don Newcombe, Bob Welch and Ryne Duran--big leaguers who actually battled alcohol and won. Let them tell their stories.

Or the ads could be lighter, they could feature some real ex-Lite Beer all-stars, who could be lured to the other side by fatter contracts.

How about a commercial featuring the all-stars waking up the morning after the big golf tournament or camping trip? All-stars staggering out of bed with hangovers, groaning, searching for lost wallets and shoes. Hilarious stuff.

There are probably even tasteful ways to present an attractive picture of non-drinking. So that kids who watch a lot of TV and associate drinking while having fun, will also be able to associate not drinking with having fun.

There is one little catch to this proposal for equal time. The beer and wine people spend about $750 million a year on their television and radio commercials. In order to get equal TV exposure for the no-beer all-stars, somebody would have to come up with $750 million.

Meanwhile, I plan to sit back, in the front ro-o-o-ow, and enjoy Bob Uecker’s Lite Beer commercials. And, to prove that I can’t be influenced by a TV commercial, I’ll be drinking another brand.