According to the Daily Mail website, Anheuser Busch has lost a mind-boggling $15.7 Billion in value since the advertising debacle that put Dylan Mulvaney’s likeness on its cans. Week after week it has been down 20% in sales comparing this year to last year data. This boycott has been the most successful punitive action taken by conservatives in memory. So far. And this should have been the easy one. Considering that men, mostly conservative, are the target demographic for this product, it was a staggering miscalculation which has wrought such commercial and staffing havoc within the company. Not only is this target audience exactly the wrong group of folks to push toward woke, Bud Light made a crucial miscalculation on how important their brand is. It was a very simple boycott. So many people have demonstrated just how easy it is to walk past one cooler case to the next. Busch’s nearest rivals have seen an uptake in value of $3.2 Billion. Coors the beneficiary of $2.2 Billion. People are not as loyal to this brand as Bud may have thought.
The next effort is going surprisingly well too. Mega-Retailer Target, a staple in the shopping habits of many households has seen a surprising 11% stock drop in the last month, including a $9 Billion loss in market value since calls to boycott Target began last week. As reported by the New York Post, in the week since premiering its LGBTQ “Pride” collection, including “tuck friendly” underwear and swimming suits for children, the store has been backpedaling. Last week these displays began popping up all over the country, meeting patrons immediately upon their entry into the store. Since then, some stores have begun relocating their pride merchandise to less prominent locations of the store. Target has also severed ties with one of its suppliers of the Pride collection who, according to the Post, is a UK-based brand whose designer has expressed satanist views. There are easily two reasons why this effort is, in some ways, more impressive than the Bud Light boycott. Firstly, this actually requires some inconvenience. While grabbing a Coors instead of a Bud involved very little inconvenience, Target is the go-to for many families. Skipping out on Target includes changes in purchasing habits, brand preference, proximity to home, and maybe even price differences. The second difference is that this effort crosses gender lines. This boycott is involving even those women who decide where to stock their homes. This is a major step as most women do not take that as lightly as their frat-boy sons or blue-collar husbands.
While the world waits to see if the Target boycott will have the legs of the Bud brouhaha, there is already another controversy waiting on-deck. Recently, the Los Angeles Dodgers invited, then disinvited and have now re-invited the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence”. This group, which originated in San Francisco, is to receive the “Community Hero” award in Dodger Stadium, June 16 as part of the Gay Pride Night game. It is not enough that the players will wear rainbow uniforms. It is not enough that the group dresses in drag and perform. No, the MLB team had to find and honor an anti-Christian group that mocks Catholics by dressing as queer nuns complete with habits and veils. The group routinely uses in sacrilegious manners the Rosary, Scapulars, and other Sacramentals that are held as sacred by Catholics. Why are the Dodgers doing this? Why on earth would this team, out of the blue, find the most outrageous group to honor, thereby effectively declaring war on the millions of Catholics who live in the City of Angels and who file into Chavez Ravine?
In an effort to make this infamous, the organization Catholic Vote has promised to spend a million dollars advertising the Dodgers plans and to purchase air time during broadcast of this game. Archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone released a statement boldly declaring that “We now know what gods the Dodger Administration worships”. This is as powerful an admonition as Bishops go in AD 2023. Strangely, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles barely released a milquetoast statement expressing its “disappointment and dismay”. It is the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and particularly its Shepherd, Archbishop Jose Gomez, former President of the Unites States Conference of Catholic Bishops, who should be leading this uproar. Not the lay men and women of a conservative political persuasion that are blasting LA on Twitter. One imagines that His Excellency Gomez’ reaction would be more potent if someone attempted to offer a Tradition Latin Mass on the infield of Dodger Stadium.
Tommy Lasorda used to have Mass offered in the Dodger clubhouse on Sundays. Dodger sportscaster Vin Scully, a Hall of Famer, lent his iconic voice to narrate the mysteries of the Holy Rosary on the website Formed.com. This move just makes no sense. The Dodgers need to see a drop in attendance. They need to see a half empty stadium nightly. The reaction needs to come in a full-throated rejection of the Dodgers by LA’s large Catholic community. It may not succeed. Catholics may not be successful at punishing the Dodgers, but this offense is so egregious that an effort must be made. It doesn’t take much effort to imagine a Muslim population defending Islam from some far lesser slight. Remember Salman Rushdie and Charlie Hebdo? No one expects or condones violence, but Catholics and Conservative Dodger Fans should make the Boys in Blue the next Bud Light.
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