Kurt Schlichter – Yeah, No – We’re Not Ready to Forgive Bud Light

Kurt Schlichter – Yeah, No – We’re Not Ready to Forgive Bud Light

Kurt Schlichter‘s latest at Townhall is focused on Bud Light, but he nailed as clearly as anyone the reason why Bob Iger at Disney cannot and will not revive the Disney brand in his second stint as CEO:

“…none of the executives [of woke brands like Bud Light and Disney] want to have to explain to their peer group how they cater to normal Americans rather than to the weirdo contingent. They don’t want to apologize because they aren’t sorry. They don’t want to promise that they are not going to do it again because they totally will. Again, this woke crap wasn’t an accident or an anomaly. This is what they think. They think that guys can pretend to be women, and that’s a good thing, and they think that their consumers are idiots rather than just guys with terrible taste in suds. And they don’t want to make amends. They want to sweep it under the rug. ”  (bold, italics added)

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Yeah, No – We’re Not Ready to Forgive Bud Light

AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

Remember how we were boycotting Bud Light for trying to impose the cultural values of your standard Chardonnay-swilling divorced shut-in cat lady upon America? As you recall, Bud Light decided that it would celebrate some ugly dude who pretends to be an even uglier woman as some sort of hero, and then compounded it by having its wine woman – it’s always liberal wine women – executive explain that its consumers are a bunch of knuckle-dragging savages who are too stupid to understand the nuances of today’s society, which apparently means pretending dudes are chicks. It was obnoxious and gratuitously insulting to its audience and just caught fire. We are fed up with having giant faceless corporations trying to impose their garbage values on us, and Bud Light happened to step into the kill zone. And it got crushed.

So, whatever happened to that? What happened to the conservative unity? We finally took a scalp (a streak continued by the destruction of pinko Harvard’s reputation). Well, as conservatives often do, they have squandered their advantage for about 30 pieces of silver.

Bud Light looked at the conservative movement and did the smart thing. It paid tens of millions of dollars to a bunch of pseudo-conservative influencers to buy their acquiescence. It literally paid off a bunch of people whom we conservatives are supposed to respect to get them to tell us that, no, it’s all cool, it’s fine. Now, perhaps I am cynical. Perhaps they actually thought Bud Light had redeemed itself even before the suds corporation started stroking checks. Chet the Unicorn, who loves Bud Light, thinks so.

So, I guess we don’t need to be boycotting it anymore. Here, drink up this disgusting swell.

I’m not sure this flex is going to work. Now, I’m not Bud Light’s demographic because I like good beer, and I don’t have enough time left on the hourglass to spend it guzzling brew that does not taste appreciably different going in than I expect it does coming out. Bud Light didn’t lose me because it never had me. I might as well boycott Massengill Summer’s Eve – I’m not ever buying it either. But there are a lot of guys out there who, for reasons that I don’t understand, used to choose to drink Bud Light but have now made the choice not to. They should continue to make that choice.

As a Los Angeles trial lawyer, I love the cynicism of literally buying off conservative influencers to end the misery. Corporations need to do what’s right for the bottom line, I guess, though I would suggest that maybe not hiring people to market your crappy product wh hate your audience might be a better option. I would be mildly insulted if I actually cared what the head of the World Federation of Sweaty Men Rolling Around With Each Other thinks, though, apparently, the Bud Light guys believe that WFSMRAWEO is super influential. If you’re influenced by its business decisions, your judgment about culture and politics is probably just as bad as your judgment about beer. But Bud Light thinks buying out of the boycott is a great investment. And so do a bunch of conservative influencers, apparently.

So pathetic. I love all the lame explanations about how Bud Light is a great company and how it’s wonderful and how “Oh, we have to help out all these working guys who are working for Bud Light, and they shouldn’t have to suffer because the corporation they are part of wants to support an agenda that leads to the mutilation of children. Why do you hate the workers? Here, everybody have some crappy beer. Excuse me, I got to make a deposit at the Bank of Savings & Loan.”

The argument that this will hurt a bunch of guys who work for the company is not a good one. This thinking ties our hands, because there are always good people who work for every crappy company that wants to turn our society into a cesspool of gurgling perversions and weirdness. I’m not going to live my life like that scene in “Blazing Saddles” where the sheriff holds a gun to his head, and the townspeople let him escape because he’s just crazy enough to do it. I don’t believe in human shields. If we’re going to fight the culture war, there’s going to be collateral damage, and if you choose to work for a company that wants to make it easier to castrate young boys, because that’s what glorifying weirdos like Dylan Mulvaney does, well, I’m not obligated to care more about your employment prospects than you are about my society.

Tucker Carlson brought up a good point. He was observing it from the outside without taking a position, but he did mention that, at some point, maybe we should forgive. Maybe in theory, but forgiveness is not an entitlement. It’s not on a clock where you look at your watch and go, “Well, it’s been a half hour of not buying this crappy beer, so I guess all’s well and I better go get a 12-pack.”

Forgiveness requires a recognition of wrongdoing, an apology, and the making of amends. One thing I haven’t seen is anybody from Bud Light saying, “You know, we suck. We shouldn’t have glorified this weirdo and his whole bizarre agenda, and we shouldn’t have insulted and disrespected our largely conservative consumers. We were wrong to do that. That was bad, and we’re never going to do it again. We reject this whole trans weirdness, and we love you, our consumers. You’re the heart and soul of America. You built our country, you feed it, you fuel it, and you fight its wars, and you are great Americans, and we love you, and we’re sorry. We’re sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry,  and we will never do it again.” That would be a start.

And then there’s the making of amends. Paying $100 million to wrestling guys to hype your crappy brew is not making amends. Do you want to make amends? How about donating that $100 million to Alliance Defending Freedom? How about a chunk of change to some conservative content makers – it would be nice to have somebody funding some good conservative entertainment out there. How about something that actually shows that you recognize how wrong you were and that you want to make it all better?

But they don’t want to make it all better. The officers still have to get along with their 30-year-old liberal second wives – I don’t know if they actually have 30-year-old liberal second wives, but you know that none of the executives want to have to explain to their peer group how they cater to normal Americans rather than to the weirdo contingent. They don’t want to apologize because they aren’t sorry. They don’t want to promise that they are not going to do it again because they totally will. Again, this woke crap wasn’t an accident or an anomaly. This is what they think. They think that guys can pretend to be women, and that’s a good thing, and they think that their consumers are idiots rather than just guys with terrible taste in suds. And they don’t want to make amends. They want to sweep it under the rug. Their broom is a check.

And I’m just disgusted by the conservative influencers who play along. This was a great moment in cultural conservatism. This is when we all came together and said, no, enough, you shall not pass. But the minute Bud Light got out its checkbook, we got pseudo-conservatives turning to us with a straight face and saying, “Well, you know, maybe Bud Light got a raw deal.”

No, we got a raw deal. We got a raw deal from people who pretend they care about what we care about and instead care more about the almighty dollar. Millions of dollars is a lot of money, and I understand the temptation. And I understand some people are too weak to fight the temptation. But that doesn’t require that the rest of us go along with it. When you see some hack explaining why you should drink Bud Light, you should understand that the guy is not only aesthetically wrong about a terrible beer but is trying to manipulate you.

I was never going to drink Bud Light anyway, but maybe you were. Well, you’ve got a choice. Are you going to follow the instructions of the Titanium Bruiser or the Beefcake Brothers, or Bulk Bogan, and give up your boycott? Or are you going to be a man and stand up for what you believe?

There’s not as much money in that, but you’ll make a great return on investment in self-respect.