I have a confession to make: I love the Fourth of July.
I've heard a lot of chatter about the harms of fireworks, the polluting effects of charcoal grills, and the questionable ethics of celebrating a country whose Supreme Court seems intent on stripping us of our long-established rights. I hear all that, and I raise you the inalienable joys of hot dogs and beer.
Beer has, weirdly, been at the forefront of the culture wars lately. If you've somehow missed out on all of the Bud Light discourse, the long and short of it is that the company sent some beers to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, prompting a conservative boycott. That prompted some predictable outrage from predictable corners. But the drama didn't end there: Two Anheuser-Busch executives took a leave of absence, and Mulvaney criticized Bud Light for failing to stand behind her as the spectacle escalated. What has made the boycott especially ridiculous is that Anheuser-Busch has sponsored Pride events for decades. And it's not just conservatives who have been upset. In 2002, we noted backlash to the corporatization of Pride, including by Anheuser-Busch, in this very magazine.
But conservatives don't seem to care that the company's support of gay rights, even if it is performative allyship, is nothing new. Their boycott likely contributed to Bud Light's decline in sales, which recently resulted in the company being supplanted by Modelo as the bestselling beer in the US.
I am not the first person to point out that Modelo is the tastier beer. Really, taste is the only measure by which we should be deciding which beer to buy. As Mulvaney's rebuttal to Bud Light showed, these companies don't actually care about LGBTQ people. Budweiser and Target are simply trying to make a buck. What's more American than that?
—Abigail Weinberg
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