Bud Light has gone woke. Can you believe it? The tried-and-true, most America-hell-yeah beer ever apparently has an agenda, and folks are angry, by god.
Earlier this month, in a seemingly innocuous move, Bud Light partnered with trans activist and TikTok sensation Dylan Mulvaney. The 26-year-old is best known for her Days of Girlhood series of videos, where she’s documented her gender transition since early 2022. On April 1st, Mulvaney shared a video announcing some sort of beer-sponsored March Madness contest, and — to everyone’s dismay — that Bud Light sent her a tallboy with her face on it.
This made rock/hip-hop/country artist Kid Rock really mad. So mad he put on his MAGA hat and shot up a bunch of beers. In a video uploaded to his social media channels on April 3rd, the 52-year-old “American Bad Ass” said, “Grandpa’s feeling a little frisky today …” and proceeded to blast cases of Bud Light with a semi-automatic before adding, with a middle finger raised, “Fuck Bud Light. Fuck Anheuser-Busch. Have a terrific day.”
He hates those cans!
The backlash landslide continued from there, with conservatives across the country boycotting the brand — mostly by buying it and pouring it out or violently destroying it in one way or another and documenting the whole ordeal on social media. “Hey, let’s stop supporting Bud Light by buying Bud Light and fuggin’ it up! We’ll show them!”
An interesting thing to note is that Kid Rock’s down-home fan base is rallying behind a man who basically built his career on a false narrative. “I ain’t straight outta Compton, I’m straight out the trailer,” he proclaimed in the late-’90s hit “Cowboy.” The truth is, though, that Mr. Kid, whose real name is Robert James Ritchie, was raised by well-to-do parents in a 5,600-square-foot house that sat on five-plus acres in a suburb of Detroit. His father owned several successful car dealerships, and Kid spent his younger days picking apples on the Ritchie orchard and helping care for the family horses. A real cowboy, that guy, just like the song says — but an affluent one who had a personal tennis court, indoor jacuzzi room, and five-car garage at his boyhood home. Hmm.
Another note of interest: Many boycotters boast they’ll now be drinking Corona (owned by Constellation Brands, which has publicly supported LGBTQ events — a Corona Pride rainbow flag can be found on its website). Or Coors (whose parent company, Molson Coors, has a variety of long-standing equality-focused programs, including Tap Into Change, which has raised more than $600,000 for LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS nonprofits since its inception). Or Miller (also owned by Molson Coors and has contributed $450,000 to the LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Federation as part of the brand’s Open & Proud program). People are blindly boycotting Bud Light by switching to brands that also support diversity and inclusion! Gasp!
The fact that a pretend blue-collar Kid started this whole mess by murdering cans with a rifle when gun violence has become a national epidemic astounds me. And so many right-wing celebrities have gotten in line to bash the brand alongside him. What are they really pissed off about? Freedom of choice?
Could this have been a marketing ploy drummed up by Bud Light to rile and stir the public? We all know Bud is the equivalent of piss water, but allies everywhere are heading out in droves to buy the stuff to, eh, boycott the boycott. “We don’t like your beer, but we like what you’re doing! We’ll show them!”
Maybe we should take a second and figure out who “they” are. Who has the agenda? What are we supporting with our dollars? What is proven with mindless boycotts?
Trans rights and gun laws have been at the forefront of news cycles for months. Somehow, Kid Rock of all people brought beer into the mix of things that divide us. It’s all about as nonsensical as his lyrics. Bawitdaba it is.