#883 Generic Times

Back in the early eighties, around thirty years ago, we were coming off some pretty hard economic times. The Arab oil cartel had not long before inserted itself into our consciousness by throttling America’s throat with high oil prices.
Fortunately, America learned its lesson and vowed never again to be under the thumb of foreign oil.
Um...
Interest rates for home mortgages were at the unheard of highs of 12 percent or more. Inflation was in double digits too. Times were tough.
So America buckled down and got plain. We were told in the seventies to whip inflation now. It was still unwhipped by the early eighties but we had a better answer. Generic branding.
Generic products were just like regular products except the labels on the cans and boxes weren’t fancy. They were just white with black block letters.
If it were better generic stuff, it would have black cursive letters.
In any event, if you wanted a can of corn, you didn’t have to pay for all that fancy label artwork that had a picture of corn waving in a beautiful meadow somewhere. Nosiree, Joe Corn-eater bought his can of corn that just said CORN in black block letters and saved money in the bargain.
It was just corn goldurnit, take your fancy label-schmabel and stick it up your Madison Avenue New York Blue state elite artsy-fartsy backside.
We told the government to butt out, not bail out.
We just tightened our belts made from genuine American cow leather and ate boring FOOD and washed our laundry till it was grey with a box of detergent that just said DETERGENT and drank our beer that just said BEER on the label and rode that storm out.
Real Americans had endured tougher times and didn’t need no fancy labels to sugarcoat the fact that existence SUCKED, but you get by day to day with a little bit of hope, an occasional garage sale and a generic BEER.
You would never ever see a generic micro-brew.
Or a generic latte.
When the going got tough, the tough got...plain labeling.
America, ya gotta love it.