Jason Isbell Shoots Back at Kid Rock’s Anti-Bud Stance With Bad News About Bob’s Favorite Beer
Written by djfrosty on April 5, 2023
Pretty soon, Kid Rock might be a devil without a case… of beer. After the conservative rapper-turned-country crooner posted a video earlier this week in which he blasted three cases of Bud Light using a semi-automatic AR-15-style rifle while intoning, “f– Bud Light and f–k Anheuser-Busch,” Jason Isbell had some bad news for the MAGA hat-wearing Bullgod.
“This is finally how we get him,” Isbell wrote. “Leave no bigoted beers to drink.” The comment came above a re-tweet of a post in which a user noted that Robert Ritchie’s beer of choice — Coors Light — is “guilty too!” The post featured an infographic noting that Coors “has had an anti-discrimination policy including sexual orientation since 1978, one of the first American corporations to do so.”
The image also said that the company “has financially supported its GLBT employees group since 1993,” while listing a number of LGBTQ-friendly bars where you can enjoy the brew that Rock promoted in a 2003 Super Bowl ad.
Rock’s rifle video came shortly after trans activist Dylan Mulvaney teamed up with Anheuser-Busch to promote the brand’s Easy Carry Contest, posting a video of herself talking about the campaign and even receiving “possibly the best gift ever” — a commemorative can of Bud Light with her face on it.
Mulvaney’s video immediately sparked outrage from right-wing commentators, who lambasted the brand for working with a transgender influencer. Anheuser-Busch responded to the backlash first in a statement to Fox News, which they reiterated to Billboard, saying the company works with “hundreds of influencers across our brands as one of many ways to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics and passion points,” and adding that Mulvaney’s commemorative can “was a gift to celebrate a personal milestone and is not for sale to the general public.”
The clip also came just weeks after a mass shooting at a private Nashville elementary school in which an assailant using a semi-automatic military-style rifle murdered three nine-year-old children and three adult staffers. Rock’s beer rant raised the ire of Fred Guttenberg, the father of a child who was killed during the Parkland shooting in Florida in 2018.
Guttenberg — who has turned into an outspoken gun control advocate in the wake of the massacre in which 14 teenagers and three staffers were killed — lambasted Rock for glorifying the kinds of war weapons often employed in mass shootings.
“Hey @kidrock, this dad is ‘feeling a little frisky today,” Guttenberg tweeted, mimicking Rock’s playful tone in a post that showed his late daughter trying to evade the murderous school shooter. “Let me be ‘as clear and concise’ as I can with you. This is my daughter Jaime (under the black oval) and these are the students running over her for safety to avoid getting shot by the AR 15 that killed her. F–K YOU!!!
Billboard has reached out to Kid Rock and Dylan Mulvaney for comment.
Rock’s video — which did not specifically mention Mulvaney or the LGBTQ-friendly Bud campaign — came amid amid a nationwide targeting of transgender people by conservative state legislatures around the U.S. Kentucky became the latest state to pass anti-trans legislation into law last week when lawmakers overrode Gov. Andy Beshear‘s veto of a bill banning gender-affirming care for anyone under the age of 18, while also compelling physicians to cease any ongoing gender-transition care for minors.
See Isbell and Guttenberg’s tweets below.