DECLINE IS A CHOICE: Bud Light: from Spuds MacKenzie to Dylan Mulvaney.

[Anheuser-Busch’s Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid:] “It’s like we need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand. What does evolve and elevate mean? It means inclusivity,” she opined. “It means having a campaign that’s truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter and different. And appeals to women and to men. And representation, isn’t it the heart of evolution?”

She went on: “We had this hangover, I mean Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach.”

This corporate jabber and diversity talk might wow the sisters and woke crowd. It makes many of her actual beer drinkers want to barf.

Born into a high-powered lawyer family with connections extending from Texas to Southern California and the East, she attended Groton, Harvard and then Wharton. Alissa is the ultimate brand manager and Prep-Woke Girlboss.

Alissa talks in fluent psychobabble: the trendy drivel of her finding emotional safe spaces to process her feelings, the listening and empathy, the journey and trials. In this self-scripted narrative, she overcomes uncertainty, hardship and suffering to be the best in her field, catnip for aspiring female managers. She professes to be a beacon, “bringing women along with me and inspiring the next generation of female leaders to keep moving forward and pursue careers in male-dominated industries.”

But does Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid, Anheuser-Busch’s vice president for marketing Bud Light, by far the nation’s biggest beer brand, know her product or her customers? Does she even like them? At least she could pretend.

Alissa seems like she’d be very comfortable kicking back a Deschutes microbrew at the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club; not so much in some godforsaken tavern off I-90 with one beer on tap, take it or leave it. Bottoms up, honeybunch!

Heinerscheid has a done a brilliant job shifting the brand’s customers overnight. I’m sure it will do fine:

And already, people are finding important alternate uses for the product!

Whoever put "for rectal use only" stickers on Bud Light…. wins the internet today. 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/WaoeGiIFNX

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) April 17, 2023

APOLOGY LIGHT: Anheuser-Busch CEO offers flat apology following Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney backlash.

Anheuser-Busch’s top executive on Friday offered an apology flatter than a day-old Bud Light as the beer giant reels from the backlash over its sponsorship deal with controversial transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO Brendan Whitworth said in press release titled “Our Responsibility To America.”

“We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”

Whitworth finally broke his silence over the brewing controversy but made no mention of the sponsorship deal with Mulvaney — which has led to calls for a boycott of the nation’s largest beer company.

He also didn’t address reports that senior executives were kept in the dark about the Mulvaney rollout.

Instead, Whitworth said he was “focused on building and protecting our remarkable history and heritage.”

“Moving forward, I will continue to work tirelessly to bring great beers to consumers across our nation,” said Whitworth, a Harvard Business School graduate who served in the Marines and was a CIA officer.

The $132 billion beer company has seen its market value plummet by some $5 billion since the campaign was launched April 1.

As Matt Walsh tweeted in response to Whitworth’s non-apology apology:

The statement won’t satisfy their conservative customers because there is no apology or acknowledgment of wrong. And it won’t satisfy the Left because it doesn’t affirm transgenderism and admits at least (without using the word) that the trans issue “divides people.” They had a few options in dealing with this PR crisis. Out of all the options, they chose the one with the biggest downside and no upside. Geniuses.

The result was a spectacular ratio on Twitter last night: Bud Light resumes tweeting but gets majorly ratioed as Twitter users dunk on the woke beer brand.

RILEY GAINES SLAMS NIKE FOR DYLAN MULVANEY PARTNERSHIP, TORCHES ‘FAUX-FEMINISM’ IN WAKE OF SFSU INCIDENT:

Gaines also discussed self-avowed feminists like Megan Rapinoe, Sue Bird, and Billie Jean King who advocate for what is effectively a step in the contradictory direction of allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports.

Just hours after torching Rapinoe and Bird on Twitter, Gaines elaborated on how such “faux-feminists” are scared thanks to incidents like the one that happened to her at San Francisco State University.

“Well, to be totally frank, people are scared because look at what just happened to me for saying something as simple as men and women are different,” Gaines said. “That’s easy, right? That’s common sense, yet I was still ambushed. No one wants that to happen to them; no one wants to be labeled as transphobic.

Flashback to late 2018: Greatest Female Tennis Player in History Martina Navratilova Says That It’s Not Fair for Men to Compete Against Women; Trans Activists Attack Her Until She Deletes the Tweet and Apologizes.

GO WOKE…: Bud Light Goes Quiet, Hasn’t Posted on Social Media Since Making Dylan Mulvaney Its Spokestrans.

AS A WOMAN, I DO NOT THINK MEN MAKE THE BEST WOMEN:  Nike Women Picks Trans Activist Dylan Mulvaney to Model New Activewear.

WELL, THEY’RE RIGHT. MEN CONNECT WITH WOMEN BEST:   Bud Light: Dylan Mulvaney Authentically Connects With Women.

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Mollie Hemingway: Drew Barrymore Kneeling To Dylan Mulvaney, “A Dude In Ladyface,” Is Embarrassing As A Woman.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: Ridiculous Man-Child Dylan Mulvaney Is Biden’s New Voice of Women. “What do you call a crossdressing man-child like Dylan Mulvaney? If you’re the Left, he’s the voice of women, even to the alleged President of the United States.”

Plus:

• We all stand a ghost of a chance without you
• Dem pollster to Biden: Stop boasting about the sucky economy
• Soros DA does a Triple Lindy backflip on bail “reform”

So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

MEGAN FOX: Makeup Giant Ulta Goes Woke Highlighting ‘Trans Girl’ Dylan Mulvaney, Customer Base of Real Women Revolts. “The headline ‘Trans Girls Can Do It All!’ really irked many women who see grown men pretending to be “girls” as a weird sexual fetish that has nothing to do with being female and everything to do with men appropriating femaleness for their own titillation.”

MICK MULVANEY RESIGNS OVER CAPITOL RIOTS: “Former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, who was serving as special envoy to Northern Ireland, resigned from the post on Thursday a day after pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol building. ‘I can’t do it. I can’t stay,’ Mulvaney told CNBC, saying called Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Wednesday evening to inform him of his resignation.”

MULVANEY OUT: Trump Announces New White House Chief of Staff.

COME AND SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: SNL host John Mulvaney says senators should stab Trump just like they did Julius Caesar.

Flashback: From “Kill Bush” to #AssassinateTrump: The return of assassination fascination.

COME SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: SNL host John Mulvaney says senators should stab Trump just like they did Julius Caesar.

FASTER, PLEASE: Mulvaney told Trump officials their ‘highest priority’ will be deregulation.

WELL, GOOD: Trump consumer chief Mick Mulvaney ousts Obama-era advisory panel members.

Mark Hemingway tweets, “Now all he needs to do is tear the building down and salt the earth where it stood.”

WORST BUREAUCRAT EVER: Mick Mulvaney has asked for less power in his office at the CFPB. I say we give it to him.

HEH: Mick Mulvaney says it’s Elizabeth Warren’s own fault he doesn’t have to answer her questions.

“I encourage you to consider the possibility that the frustration you are experiencing now, and that which I had a few years back, are both inevitable consequences of the fact that the Dodd-Frank… Act insulates the Bureau from virtually any accountability to the American people through their elected representatives,” Mulvaney wrote.

Read the whole thing.

Related: Keith Ellison Thinks ‘Frosted’ Glass Is an Assault on Government Transparency — The Minnesota Representative took CFPB Director Mike Mulvaney to task for ‘frosted’ glass office.

YET MORE REASONS TO DOUBT LIZ WARREN’S INTEGRITY:  Mulvaney’s Letter to the Editor.

IRA STOLL: A Tale of Two Memos: Mulvaney, Nunes Missives Both Press Rule of Law. “In the end the Nunes Memo and the Mulvaney Memo both get at a similar theme — that government officials, whether FBI agents or consumer financial protection bureaucrats, need to follow the law, and that the law should be known in advance and applied impartially. More than 300 years after Locke’s Second Treatise, you’d think this would not be such an intensely controversial point. Perhaps Professor Epstein was right when he called it wishful thinking. Good for Mr. Mulvaney, though, for giving it a try.”

CHANGE: Mick Mulvaney, whose appointment to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau generated significant controversy last year, requests no new funding for the bureau, arguing money on hand is sufficient to cover the next quarter’s expenses.

GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: San Francisco Giving Homeless Vodka, Courtesy of Taxpayers.

Homeless alcoholics in San Francisco are getting vodka, wine, and beer at the expense of taxpayers, thanks to a crazy program that claims to provide health benefits and save lives. At this point, the reality of life under Democrat rule is far loonier than any satire or slapstick comedy.

The zany program in Democrat-run San Francisco allegedly aims to “curb excessive drinking” among the excessively large homeless population of the city, The UK Daily Mail reported on May 10. The unhoused (to use a silly leftist phrase) can booze it up to the tune of $5 million a year on the taxpayer dime, as vodka shots, wine glasses, and beer bottles are distributed by the City of San Francisco. Instead of aiming to sober up the homeless, the government there is allegedly only trying to provide small and short-term health benefits.

Nurses from the woke city’s “managed alcohol program” administer alcohol to the homeless addicts, the Daily Mail explained, allegedly helping curb the extreme addiction by controlling how much booze the individuals consume. The city claims success from the program, but we know that assurances on expensive and moronic government programs from Democrats are far more worthless than a can of Mulvaney-endorsed Bud Light. Does the program really keep homeless people out of jail or hospital? Who knows for sure? And, of course, it is responsible taxpayers who have to foot the bill.

In December of 2009, SF Weekly had this classic Fox Butterfield-esque line: “Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, [San Francisco’s] homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s.”

I HAD BEEN ASSURED THAT MOUTH-BREATHING RED-STATERS DIDN’T HAVE THE ATTENTION SPAN TO MAINTAIN A BOYCOTT: On National Beer Day 2024, the US is drinking more Modelo than Bud Light as NA brews rise. “Modelo Especial overtook Bud Light in May 2023 amidst a backlash from conservative consumers after the Bud Light brand’s collaboration with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote a contest for March Madness. This year, Bud Light sales are down 28% from a year ago.”

I HAD BEEN ASSURED BY ALL THE SMARTEST PEOPLE THAT MAGA ATTENTION SPANS WERE TOO SHORT TO MAKE A BOYCOTT STICK: Bud Light boycott likely cost Anheuser-Busch InBev over $1 billion in lost sales.

The world’s largest brewer may have lost as much as $1.4 billion in sales because of the backlash to its brief partnership with a transgender influencer to promote Bud Light beer.

Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) reported record revenues for 2023 Thursday but said its “full growth potential was constrained” by its US business, where sales were hurt by a boycott of Bud Light over a sponsored Instagram post with Dylan Mulvaney.

One more time: the boycott wasn’t about Mulvaney nearly as much as it was about Bud Light’s sneering marketing exec who put the promotion together and was caught on tape sneering at Bud Light drinkers.

HOWIE CARR: ‘This is Your FBI,’ thanks to DEI.

Here in Boston, we know just how corrupt the FBI can be.

For instance, framing innocent men for murders they did not commit, or providing explosives for gangsters to use to kill reporters.

Or taking payoffs to set up informants to be rubbed out by serial-killing cocaine dealers, and then after committing such crimes being promoted to director of the FBI training academy in Quantico, Virginia….

I could go on and on about the Boston FBI office. But you get the picture.

Still, as bad and as overrated as the G-men have always been, they’re worse now.

And the feds’ latest descent into abject incompetence and corruption can be summed up in three letters — DEI. . . .

“The FBI,” the Judiciary committee reports, “has lost its way in a toxic culture of dysfunction unable to find the courage to remedy recruitment and selection processes that have become self-destructive.”

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Claudine Gay could not be reached for comment.

“The FBI does not appear to be getting experienced, ‘mature’ candidates, such as the former cop, former military person, the professional career person, the lawyer, accountant or engineer.”

Sound familiar? The U.S. Army has the same problem. The brass can’t seem to recruit anybody who can do a push-up. Who in their right mind wants to risk their life by joining an organization run by entitled, shiftless incompetents who despise them?

“The FBI is now a joke among other law enforcement agencies because of its apparent investigative failures, political targeting of certain individuals/groups, and woke adoption… The FBI is considering hiring candidates not accepted by other law enforcement agencies.”

The G-men have Diversity Recruitment Events — “straight white males may not attend.”

In other words, there’s no room for a modern-day Inspector Lew Erskine. But Dylan Mulvaney or Jussie Smollett — come on down!

The FBI denies that they’re having problems recruiting qualified people. But then, the G-men lie about almost everything, as you may have noticed. It’s part of their “sources and methods.”

Here’s a story about the collapse of physical-fitness standards, from an FBI informant identified as SIERRA 72.

Read the whole thing.

Plus: “Failure to adhere to financial responsibilities is no longer a disqualifier. A candidate who was arrested and fought with police officers was not disqualified. People with a documented mental illness are not necessarily disqualified. Lack of candor is no longer a disqualifier.”

KURT SCHLICHTER: Yeah, No – We’re Not Ready to Forgive Bud Light.

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.

An apology will never happen — like almost every major corporation, Anheuser-Busch is too terrified of ginning up the rainbow-alphabet outrage mob on social media to actually publicly back down from the Mulvaney debacle.