"Bud Light partnership with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney Prompts Right-Wing Backlash," reads an NBC headline.
No wonder so many Americans do not trust the news media.
If many Americans are taken aback when shown Bud Light's new spokesperson Dylan Mulvaney — who has documented her transition into womanhood on Tik Tok — it's not necessarily because they are far-right politically; it could be that they are not sure that transitioning is in her best interests.
There's also concern that adolescents are being told to question their birth-assigned gender — not after talking to a parent, therapist or doctor — but by way of a prompt on Tik Tok or another social media platform that pings on their cellphones.
Mulvaney is 26 — so she's old enough to decide what to do with her body. (Mulvaney goes by the pronouns she/her and they/them — and I'm picking the pronouns that are singular, not plural, because I think words are supposed to make things clearer, not more confusing.)
Also, as Mulvaney at times sports elbow-length gloves and blouses with big bows from the June Cleaver era, you can't help but wonder if she's real or if she's punking the world and laughing Holly Golightly-style all the way to the bank.
She has a right to do either and be who she is. It's a free country.
Not that Bud Light HQ is laughing or cashing in. Vice President of Marketing Alissa Heinerscheid explained her decision-making last month on the podcast "Making Yourself at Home."
Her goal, said the vice president, was to "evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand," which to her means "inclusivity."
Heinerscheid added, "This brand is in decline. It's been in decline for a really long time, and if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand there will be no future for Bud Light."
As a newspaper veteran who has watched the industry's decline in circulation and readership, I've lived the Bud Light scenario from the inside.
Desperate managers search for a way to turn the big ship around. Often, they glom onto a gimmick that makes them look desperate and their product appear trivial — and that doesn't help the cause.
Said marketing swells don't listen to their customers.
They conduct focus groups to decide what their customers should like.
Oh, and they think that what they're doing is helping because they see heads nodding in agreement inside their bubble. That's their "inclusivity."
It doesn't help Anheuser-Busch that this campaign coincides with a growing public awareness of pressure being used to push children across the gender divide.
The good intention of prompting all children to feel accepted also can lead kids to attribute their anxiety to gender dysphoria when that is not the cause.
Last year, during her 221st day of publicly transitioning, Mulvaney sat down with President Joe Biden for a discussion about transgender issues.
There was no mention during their talk about the huge spike in female transitioning recently. As The Guardian reported, the U.K.'s National Health Service found a shocking climb — from 250 a decade ago to more than 5,000 in 2021 — in adolescent biological girls seeking referrals to gender clinics.
There was no discussion of what critics call "social-compassion gender dysphoria."
They voiced no sympathy for adults who as teens underwent surgeries that cut off their breasts — and only later realized that what they thought was a transition turned out to be an irreparable mistake.
It was all happy talk and magical thinking.
Debra J. Saunders is a fellow with Discovery Institute's Chapman Center for Citizen Leadership. She has worked for more than 30 years covering politics on the ground. She has also covered politics in Washington, D.C., as well as American culture, the media, the criminal justice system, and dubious trends in our nation's public schools and universities. Read Debra J. Saunders' Reports — More Here.