There Will Be Bud
“It isn’t every day that you see right-wing Americans wildly celebrating the fact that a Mexican brand is now the best-selling beer in the US.” But then again, it also isn’t every day that you see people shooting cans of Bud Light. Sadly, the Bud Light boycott over a campaign featuring trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney leaves a taste in one’s mouth that’s even worse than the one left by the product being boycotted. James Surowiecki in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Bitter Truth About the Bud Light Boycott. Or how a small thing can become a big thing in the age of social media: “With the Bud Light boycott, right-wing influencers spread the message and reinforced it day after day, and the video clips of people shooting at cans or throwing out cases of Bud Light gave people a sense that this was a collective movement. In that sense, what the boycott most resembled was a viral social-media fad like the ice bucket challenge.” Sadly, the Bud Light boycott has been effective, which means it won’t be something easily nipped in the bud. Ultimately the point of the boycott is “not just to get Bud Light to back away from its partnership with Mulvaney, but to deter other companies from adopting any similar association in future.” Right now, the fear is bud curdling.
+ Of course, this boycott isn’t taking place in a vacuum. The anti-LGBTQ movement has been building for years, sweeping up politicians who have no problem punching down to lift themselves up, even when it requires a complete reversal of their pre-campaign views. Trump repeatedly celebrated the inclusion of transgender women in his beauty pageant. “In since unreported radio and television interviews from spring and summer 2012, Trump celebrated the interest in a 23-year-old transgender woman named Jenna Talackova participating in a Canadian pageant. He then later effusively praised the winner of the Miss USA pageant, Olivia Culpo, for saying that transgender women should be allowed to compete. Trump, then the owner of the Miss Universe pageant, would go on to cite the possible participation of transgender women in Olympic sports to justify his decision to end a ban on transgender pageant participants.”
+ These movements don’t come from out of nowhere. Well-funded Christian group behind US effort to roll back LGBTQ rights. “Since it was formed in 1994, Alliance Defending Freedom has been at the center of a nationwide effort to limit the rights of women and LGBTQ people, all in the name of Christianity … The organization counts among its sometime associates Amy Coney Barrett, the supreme court justice who the Washington Post reported spoke five times at an ADF training program established to push a ‘distinctly Christian worldview in every area of law.'”
