Cockburn’s guide to the Bud Light boycott

One day, Cockburn is sitting on a stool in his favorite watering hole, knocking back effervescent, metal-flavored oat sodas from those iconic blue cans; the next, he’s swept along with rural beer distributors, Nick Adams and fellow “alpha males” in a “complete and total boycott of Anheuser-Busch to restore hot women and masculine horses to their rightful place on our domestic beer cans.”

Easy enough, Cockburn tells himself. He’ll pass on the Bud Light in favor of a — gasp! Turns out the tentacles of the AB Corporation are long and sticky. Long before Bud Light deemed Dylan Mulvaney, a trans woman, as representative of its consumers, the parent company was beating the diversity, equity and inclusion drum back in 2021. (And even further back in the past, their VP of marketing used to be fun!)

Cockburn is loath to give up any type of boozy beverage, but he feels it his duty to alert his readers that the following beer brands are AB-owned:

• Budweiser
• Bud Light
• Kona Brewing Co.
• Michelob Ultra
• Stella Artois
• Estrella Jalisco
• Busch Beer
• Natural Light
• Landshark Lager
• Presidente Beer
• Hoegaarden
• Shock Top
• 10 Barrel Brewing Co.
• Appalachian Mountain Brewery
• Blue Point Brewing Co.
• Breckenridge Brewery
• Cisco Brews
• Devils Backbone Brewing Company
• Elysian Brewing
• Four Peaks Brewing Co.
• Golden Road Brewing
• Goose Island Beer Co.
• Karback Brewing Company
• Omission balanced brewing
• Platform Beer Co.
• Red Hook
• Square Mile Cider Co.
• Veza Sur
• Virtue Cider
• Wicked Weed Brewing
• Widmer Brothers Brewing
• Wynwood Brewing
• Babe
• Cutwater Spirits
• hiball Energy
• Nutrl
• Ritas

So what’s a thirsty barfly to do when he craves a brewski? What are the “patriot-owned, non-woke beer companies” Mr. Adams speaks of? Pabst Blue Ribbon is a classic American beer, but Cockburn has been leery of the company’s suspect standing since 2018, when PBR launched a campaign celebrating how the values of the American dream are “very, very different” now days.

The Molson-Coors Company, despite having some Canadian connections, seems to be a safer bet for beer. Liberals have been boycotting the company forever for supporting conservative causes, though now and then Coors appears to have indulged the PC mob. This despite the fact that the original funder of the Heritage Foundation was Joseph Coors.

Cockburn has searched far and wide (on the internet) for half an hour at least. Finally, he found his answer to what sort of beer is untainted by radical liberalism at AR15.com — where else? Yuengling, from Pennsylvania and America’s oldest brewery, was deemed a winner among those contributing to the “Beer brands that support conservatives and aren’t woke?” forum. Some more Googling revealed to Cockburn one Dick Yuengling, who gave Eric Trump a tour of the Yuengling facility in 2016 and stood his GOP ground after his company was inundated with “vulgar” calls and emails.  

“I didn’t expect it would be such a big story,” Yuengling said. “The boy just wanted a tour, so I said sure. But then it got picked up by the media. They really eviscerated us in Philly.”

Cockburn has a good friend from Pennsylvania who tells him Yuengling beer pairs well with chicken wings. “Yuengs and wings” is a local cultural delight — and Cockburn thinks it has quite the ring to it.