Woke America: From ‘King of Beers’ to ‘Queen of Beers’

**Note: The following piece reflects the opinions of the author writing in a personal capacity. 

Last week I had one of those WTF moments where I literally could not believe what I was seeing. I’m betting you saw it too and that your eyes are still stinging like somebody spritzed you in the face with Tabasco sauce.

“Dad, come here and check this shit out!”, my college-aged son yelled from the back porch the other night.

He was on his phone watching an Instagram video of some chick in black gloves daintily sipping on a can of Bud Light.

“Ok”, I said.

“Dad, that’s a dude.” 

“No…WTF?!” came my fatherly reply.

“Wait, it gets worse”, he said as he tapped the screen again and now I’m watching this dude/chick frolicking in a bubble bath in a purplish top in front of a display of enough blue Bud Light cans to make a grown man puke. In the background, there is some kind of Euro-techno-crap music playing.

“Dammit!”, I said. “You know I can’t unsee that now!” He got an evil grin on his face as if he enjoyed torturing his old man.

I couldn’t stop staring at it though. In the same way, people can’t take their eyes off a car wreck. There were over-the-top Vogue-type dance moves, bubble blowing, crazy smiling, and cackling…air piano playing. This was some seriously weird shit, and trust me, I’ve seen some strange stuff in my day.

I shook my head slowly, turned, and walked silently away, never to be the same again. My boy was laughing his ass off.

Before that night if you would have caught me off guard and asked me what I thought of when somebody mentioned Bud Light, I’d probably envision a jock at a frat party wearing one of those plastic party hats with a can of the brew strapped to both sides and a straw running from both cans into his mouth. Bonus points if there was a pickup truck anywhere in the background.

But that was in the “before times”.

It got me thinking of my Dad and how they marketed the King of Beers in his day. This is what I found.

One member of my peer group saw the Bud Light ad and went literally ballistic. His name is Bob but you probably know him better as Kid Rock. Please don’t watch the video if you are easily disturbed by automatic weapons or words that begin with the letter “F”.

pic.twitter.com/dSmCGySoul

— KidRock (@KidRock) April 4, 2023

Bob is pissed because Anheuser-Busch turned America’s King of Beers into the Queen of Beers overnight apparently thinking all beer-drinking Americans would be cool with that. They are not.

Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for personal freedom of expression, just leave my beer out of it, thank you very much.

Personally, I think that the folks at Bud should have stuck to the middle ground they found back in the mid-’90s with the frogs who said “Bud” “Weis” and “Er”. This ad ran during halftime of Super Bowl XXIX.

It’s kind of boring, but at least it didn’t stir folks into a frenzy and make them want to shoot stuff up.

And as far as transitioning goes, I think I’m making the full transition over to whiskey drinker.