We're an American Brand
We're an American Brand
We're coming to your town, We'll help you party down
We're an American Brand
- Grand Funk Railroad, We're an American Brand

Look, I understand it's band, not brand, but I can't help how I've always heard the song. And what else would you expect from a band named after a Canadian railroad company, Grand Trunk Railway? Was that supposed to be somebody's idea of a joke?

Well, it's not funny. Not anymore.

Haven't you heard? The American Brand no longer exists. Or, if it does, it's as a sick simulacrum of an imitation of an ersatz lifestyle that itself never really existed outside of a cathode-ray box that, incredibly, costs almost exactly the same today as it did in 1955... minus the cathode tube, of course.

Don't believe me? Just ask Ralph Lifshitz. But we'll get to him in a moment. Like Grand Funk Railroad, the American Brand promises two things: one, it's coming to your town (its ubiquity is what allows it to lay claim to the title "American Brand" in the first place), and two, it will help you party down. After all, that's what brands do: they help us party down.

What is the American Brand?

So, what is the American Brand? Perhaps it's Disney (DIS) and Mickey Mouse. But are we really prepared to say that a cartoon rodent with clown shoes and kid gloves represents something crucial about what it means to be American?

Let's think about that for a split second. Then we'll take the family down to one of Disney's flagship entertainment centers anyway: "Real-life" replicas of cartoon kingdoms stuffed with merchandise manufactured by workers in Chinese and Vietnamese factories.

Maybe the American Brand is as simple as an iconic pack of Marlboro cigarettes. Except they'll kill you with lung cancer, we're told, or cripple you with emphysema. And if you, like Altria Group (MO), manufacture them, we'll sue you, label you a grim executioner of hapless nicotine junkies and pass law after law banning their public consumption.

In 1987, I owned a Cadillac DeVille manufactured by General Motors (GM), a 16-foot long symbol of American might and power. At least that's what it meant to me.

That illusion didn't last long, however. Already living on the brink of poverty at the time, it was all I could do to keep the car in gasoline (with crude below $20 a barrel at the time), since it got 7 miles per gallon in the city, 11 on the highway.

Unsolicited, Chevron (CVX) sent me a special credit card that said "preferred customer" on it. Heh. I'm sure they preferred that all their customers drive cars with such hideous gas mileage.

Even today, more than 20 years later, with gasoline impossibly pricey for many Americans, it defies all logic and human decency that GM still makes a car, the Hummer, that gets similar gas mileage: 10 miles per gallon in the city, 14 on the highway. No wonder the company is edging ever-closer to the brink of bankruptcy, their stock price at a 50-year low.

Or maybe the quintessential American Brand is Anheuser Bush's (BUD) Budweiser? It's the "King of Beers" they say, the "Great American Lager." Too bad the company is about to be acquired by Belgium's InBev, whether they like it or not (and for the record, they do not).

InBev's website says that the company's dream is "to become the best beer company in the world as measured by profitability." Seriously. It says that. I can only assume attaching that grim-faced caveat -- "as measured by profitability" -- means things such as taste are a little lower on the list of priorities at InBev. With over 200 beers in more than 100 countries, that essentially makes them the Soylent Green of brewing companies. Congratulations, InBev: Beer is people.

Who is Ralph Lifshitz?

This brings us to Ralph Lifshitz.

Who is Ralph Lifshitz, anyway? Born in the Bronx in 1939, Ralph Lifshitz is better known as Ralph Lauren, creator of the Polo Ralph Lauren (RL) clothing brand. If we really want to identify the American Brand, we need look no further.

Lauren built a billion-dollar empire catering to the cultural inferiority complex buried deep within our national psyche. We may live in a tiny studio apartment in what used to be a tenement on the Lower East Side, but -- thanks to Ralph -- we can dress like the Earl of Sandwich just back from pheasant shooting.

Oh, relax. It's easy to take potshots at the high- and low-fashion set; it's not like they don't know they're targets. But there's no denying that there's something uniquely American about the Ralph Lifshitz story: The transformation, the self-invention, the sheer gall it takes to sew together an American business empire out of the projection of an idealized high-society English manor lifestyle that never existed in the first place.

Yes, that's truly the American Brand.