Budweiser Doesn't Get a Pass
Women are worth far more than Anheuser-Busch's political donations.
Over the weekend Donald Trump Jr. encouraged people to end their boycott of Bud Light because of Anheuser Busch’s political donations. I agree with him on a lot of things, but not this.
Per Open Secrets, the company has donated fairly equally to Republicans and Democrats. In 2020 employees donated more to Biden than to Trump and the organization itself donated a significant amount to Democrats.
Donations aside, why should we give a pass to Anheuser-Busch? I ask this as a proud, former St. Louisan who lived three blocks away from AB’s giant, all-brick St. Louis City compound. One of my favorite memories is sitting on my deck in the summer evenings, staring at the Arch as the scent of hops and barley wafted into my yard on a warm breeze. It was an icon, an institution before its sale to InBev in 2008. Executives made the decision to hire an incompetent ad VP and they are eager to be absolved of their mistake and the women who were mocked in the process are just supposed to get over it for the price of some political donations?
“Put some ice on it,” as Bill Clinton would say.
Except it’s not that easy. This was never about beer in the first place.
Earlier this same weekend the New York Times claimed that it was the “religious right” who fabricated the trans issue out of the ether:
It wasn’t the “religious right” who sought out everyone in locker rooms, bathrooms, in schools, gyms, spas, sports teams, in the military, everywhere — we were all minding our own business when men dressed as women suddenly demanded access to our spaces and to treat our sports teams like JV. It was the trans activist community who did the seeking. The “religious right” also weren’t the only people to respond. Some of the worst abuse in this debate is leveled at liberal women by men who abusively use the level of female discomfort as a measure of make-believe bigotry.
J.K. Rowling simply said that women exist and militant trans activists threatened to kill her.
This isn’t about beer.
It’s about phrases like “menstruating people.”
“Pregnant people.”
“Birthing people.”
It’s about teenaged girls who are raped in high school bathrooms by legal-age males cosplaying as female.
This isn’t about beer.
It’s about how women have been told all of their lives to listen to their gut instinct, that heavy, sinking feeling when something is off — and now they’re being brainwashed by society into believing that this fear wasn’t a biological response to a history of well-documented criminal statistics involving women after all, but just basic bitch bigotry.
This isn’t about beer.
It’s about women who work their entire lives training, competing, perfecting their skill only to be shoved off the podium by a male whose only advantage is biological size.
It’s about a multi-generational cottage industry of “feminism” that used women for votes and returned the favor by serving them up on a silver platter to an antichrist of wokery.
It’s about how men who don womanface — and protest their uncomfortableness at having to share spaces with other men — demand accommodation at the expense of women’s comfort because out comfort is now an afterthought.
This isn’t about beer.
It’s about how our young men are being emotionally blackmailed into believing that they are bigots if they don’t seek to date men who present as women as much as they seek to date actual women.
It’s about erasing the amazing, unique traits of the male and female sexes for uninspiring, boring androgyny.
It’s about a multi-generational cottage industry of “feminism” that convinced women they were hurt and used women for votes and returned the favor decades later by serving them up on a silver platter to an antichrist of wokery.
This wasn’t a female-centric Ulta ad, like with so many other of these partnerships, it was Anheuser-Busch. This partnership signaled a new stage in mainstreaming the caricature of women.
Don’t make us feel like annoying, third wave feminists by leaving us to defend ourselves alone and compete against political donations. Women are worth more than that.
Do not ask women — your female friends, your sisters, your wives, your mothers — to look the other way as a major corporation takes the biggest step yet in normalizing the mockery of women because said corporation donates to some Republicans. Don’t make us feel like annoying, third wave feminists by leaving us to defend ourselves alone and compete against political donations. Women are worth more than that — and last I checked, suburban women are still a valuable demo.
This is not a mistake merely dismissed with a soulless non-apology from executives who know and knew better, regardless of how the CEO wants to invoke his prior service, or rush out ads heavy on nostalgia, as a way to lessen the blowback.
If Anheuser-Busch wants to truly mend fences here — why not make an ad with the same heart as their most recent one but instead featuring female athletes?
Why not just issue a straight-forward apology where you just, I don’t know, man up? The same courage that guided its executives in other areas of life should well serve this purpose.
Or would that hurt AB’s ESG score?
A quick note on this idea that conservatives/Republicans need to stop fighting culture wars.
Ten years ago I said that conservatives are the true punk rock, the true against-the-grain anti-establishment types:
The problem is that too few of us were throwing punches. Despite the belief that political activism began the day they were born, some of the right-leaning activists demanding that conservatives stop fighting cultural issues don’t realize an important fact: the reason we’re in this position is because conservatives at large only recently began fighting cultural issues.
Agreed. Someone from the top had to approve the ad campaign. Now they are seeing what happens when you go woke.
So wholeheartedly agree. Weird messaging from Trumpworld where Jr is defending them but America First is trying to fuel and fund off the controversy.