Stephen Colbert Proposes Penis-Shaped Shaft Beer for Bud Light Boycotters
Some men need things spelled out for them in the simplest terms possible, as to avoid confusion at all costs. It’s why body wash brands like Raw Sugar and Dove have men-specific lines. The products don’t clean their bodies any better than if the word “men” wasn’t printed on the packaging, but maybe the idea of smelling like tires and testosterone makes them feel at ease. Similarly, to make it easy on everyone boycotting Bud Light over their collaboration with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, Stephen Colbert has recommended a fool-proof replacement with Shaft Beer.
A Late Show with Stephen Colbert faux news broadcast recounted the conservative response to the collaboration, which culminated in Kid Rock shooting cans of beer he already purchased with a gun and exaggerated assumptions from Bud Light boycotters that the brand would completely tank without their support. The Shaft Beer commercial that followed suggested all bothered parties make the switch to the craft beer sold in a penis-shaped can.
“Are you tired of woke beer that blurs gender lines? Want to drink the beer that you were assigned at birth?” a narrator asks in the clip. “Pop one open and put it in your mouth. Shaft harkens back to a golden time when men knew how to do man stuff, like grab-assing in the shower.” The faux brand even has accessible options, like Shaft Light: “It’s the same beer, but in a can the size of Kid Rock’s penis.”
John Rich, a country music artist, also announced plans to boycott Bud Light by removing it from the bar he owns in Nashville. “In the past several days you’re hard-pressed to find anyone ordering one,” he recently told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. “So as the business owner, I go, ‘Hey if you aren’t ordering it, we got to put something else in here.’ At the end of the day, that’s capitalism. That’s how it works.”
That a collaboration with a beer company — one that Bud Light clarified was only commemorative and wouldn’t be sold to the public, anyway — could spiral into, well, all of this, is indicative of the nonsensical logic at the root of these one-sided, transphobic right-wing battles.
“Kid Rock had to take an assault weapon and shoot the boxes of beer, proving what?” Rosie O’Donnell asked at the start of her latest podcast episode, which features Mulvaney. The interview was filmed prior to the controversy, but the host shared her thoughts in the introduction. “Beer companies have been supportive of the LGBTQIA community for decades. This is not the first time. Who do you think sponsors pride? Gay people, trans people, we drink beer too, man. Put down your gun, Kid Rock, it’s in bad taste. Especially after what happened at the school in Nashville.”
During their conversation, Mulvaney told O’Donnell: “I have tried to be the most uncontroversial person this past year and somehow it has made me controversial still. I think it comes back to the fact that these people, they don’t understand me and anything that I do or say then somehow gets taken out of context and is used against me. It’s so sad because everything I try to put out is positive, it’s trying to connect with others that maybe don’t understand me, it’s to make people laugh or make a kid feel seen.”
Historically, sense and understanding has not been at the root of how conservatives have approached transgender rights or other topics of discussion related to LGBTQ+ people. Their current “Get Woke, Go Broke” slogan conveniently ignores data-supported evidence that brands have actually earned more profits following increases in inclusivity, proving their boycotts to be largely ineffective.