Hard rock heavyweight Kid Rock made an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program on Wednesday evening where he revealed that he was stepping back from his boycott of Bud Light following their partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney back in April, saying that he doesn’t want the GOP to become known as a party all about “cancel culture and boycotts.”
He has a point, but one has to wonder if there’s a financial angle in this for the popular, outspoken conservative musician. After all, it was his posts on social media that helped get the massive boycott started in the first place. After Mulvaney posted his video featuring his own image on a Bud Light can, Rock, whose real name is Bob Ritchie, posted a clip of his own on Instagram unloading a few rounds from a pistol into cases of the popular beer brand.
During the interview on Hannity’s show, Kid Rock said he is a big believer in forgiveness, saying the folks behind Bud Light “made a mistake.”
“I want the drivers back to work. I want the warehouse workers back to work, the guys loading the trucks back to work because they didn’t do this,” Hannity said to Rock.
Rock responded, “What nobody has talked about, you know people say, well, they can get other jobs. What about their livelihoods?”
Hannity then stated, “These are high-paying career jobs.”
“I know people that work there and it’s not so cool to be wearing around that blue shirt anymore, going places. This is why they have a problem right now, it’s like, I can let the thing go,” the rock star said.
He added, “As a conservative and importantly a patriot, I don’t want to be in the party of cancel cultures and boycotts that ultimately hurt woking class people, that have no dogs, especially in this fight. I didn’t have a dog in this fight.”
“As a God-fearing man, as a Christian, I have to believe in forgiveness. They made a mistake, all right. What do you want, hold their head under water and drown them and kill people’s jobs? I don’t want to do that. But I hope—at the same time, I don’t want to be their biggest cheerleader. I want them to show me something to get me back as a consumer, as a drinker,” Rock stated in conclusion.
I get where the two men are coming from, but again, I can’t help but feel like there is something else behind this sudden change of heart. Did Bud Light offer a big sponsorship to Kid Rock to get him to abandon his principled stance? Or did Rock never really, truly participate in a boycott in the first place? No way to really know at this point.
Regardless, the boycott did a significant amount of damage financially speaking to the company and did indeed lead to a change in the marketing department’s direction, which is a good thing. So, in that regard, the boycott was successful.
It’s true we as conservatives do need to be less of an “against” party and more of a “this is what we’re for” party. Let’s hope that’s the message we convey as another election season rapidly approaches.
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