Two years ago this month, transphobes got their knickers in a knot over Budweiser for signing transgender internet personality Dylan Mulvaney on to advertise their light beer. Mulvaney, a stage actor and comedian, had documented her transition on TikTok during the COVID lockdown, gaining millions of followers.
She became enough of a celebrity to snag an interview with President Joe Biden, raising the dander of the likes of Senator Marcia Blackburn (R-I Want to See Your Manager). Then Budweiser's parent company, Anheuser-Busch, entered the picture.
On April 1, Mulvaney shared a video promoting Bud Light as part of a partnership with the beer. She appears dressed as the “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” character, Holly Golightly, while joking about confusing the meaning of the term “March Madness.” While some people were celebrating sports that month, Mulvaney said she was celebrating a milestone with her “365 Days of Girlhood” series, the one-year mark since her transition. Bud Light gave her a custom can of their beer with her face on it to commemorate the milestone.
And the right wingnuts went, well, nuts.
Fox Noisemakers, Republican Congresskarens, and southern Governors called for a nationwide boycott of the beer. Bubbas TikTokked themselves running over cans of Bud Light with their pick-ups, and Kid Rock famously shot up three cases of the stuff with a semiautomatic rifle.
At the time, an Anheuser-Busch spokesman defended its partnership with Mulvaney, issuing a statement that the company “works with hundreds of influencers across our brands as one of many ways to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics."
Harvard Business Review reported that sales of Bud Light fell by nearly a third over the rest of 2023. The company's President of Operations loudly quit, blaming DEI for Bud's problems and joining up with anti-diversity activist Vivek Ramaswami (remember him?) to promote Conformity, Inequity, and Exclusion.
Two years on, we have a White House mandating trans-bashing, and Budweiser has hired Shane Gillis as their advertising spokesbubba. And in March, Anheuser-Busch announced that it would no longer be a sponsor of the LGBTQ+ Pride Festival in St. Louis, or anywhere else. The announcement of the end of a partnership begun in 1995 was a front page banner headline in St. Louis Post-Dispatch and has prompted a new boycott from the other side of the sociopolitical gulf. It has also left a gaping hole in Pride St. Louis finances.
"It was just interesting that the longest partner of ours for 30 years that they've been at the table with us and a true ally just decided to walk away after basically just saying that they just don't see the value in it anymore," Pride St. Louis President Marty Zuniga said Tuesday.
Now personally, I've never been a Bud Light drinker in the first place. It's yellowish water that foams a bit if you pour it enthusiastically, and I prefer something with considerably more body and flavor. Something that will satisfy my thirst after one or two mugs, say, a porter, stout, or lager. So my contribution to any boycott will be negligible.
Unless you calculate my boycott starting from my 18th birthday.