Tangle - The Bud Light-Dylan Mulvaney controversy.

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

Bud Light. Last week, one of America's most iconic beer brands became the center of a culture war controversy after it partnered with a transgender influencer named Dylan Mulvaney. Bud Light sent Mulvaney custom beer cans with an image of her on them, and she then posted a video of herself online celebrating March Madness and her "first year of womanhood."You can read today's podcast here, my Twitter exchange with Matt Walsh here, today’s “Under the Radar” story here, and today’s “Have a nice day” story here.Today’s clickables: Quick hits (1:44), Today’s story (3:34), Right’s take (6:08), Left’s take (9:40), Isaac’s take (13:21), Listener question (19:18), Under the Radar (21:04), Numbers (21:44), Have a nice day (22:38)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum. Some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we are going to be talking about the Bud Light-Dylan Mulvaney controversy. Obviously a pretty big culture war issue, so I hope everybody can come in with a bit of an open mind on this one. Not my favorite topic to cover, but I think it's

necessary given all the commentary that's out there. Before we jump in, a quick note. On Friday, we are going to be publishing a subscribers-only edition on how a bill becomes law. This edition, I hope, will go beyond just your typical civics 101 elements of legislation and get into some of the things we don't see, like the lobbying, the deal-cutting, the compromising, etc. I know some of our listeners actually work in Congress, so this is just a note that if that is you, if you are somebody who works on the Hill and you think you might be able to offer some insight into this story, please reach out. Write to me, I-S-A-A-C at readtangle.com. That's Isaac at readtangle.com. I'd love to chat with you and maybe get a few things on the record for the story we're working on.

All right, with that out of the way, we'll jump in today with our quick hits. First up, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said the Republican-controlled House will vote on legislation that would lift the debt limit for one year and introduce spending cuts as well as work requirements for people who are receiving federal benefits. Number two, Senators John Fetterman and Mitch McConnell are set to return to the Senate after weeks of absences. Number three, Russian opposition figure Vladimir Karamurzo was sentenced to 25 years in prison yesterday on treason charges. He was staunchly and outspokenly opposed to the war in Ukraine. Number four, Representative George Santos, the Republican from New York who faced intense scrutiny for fabricating parts of his resume during the 2022 House race, announced his plans to run for re-election.

Number five, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynn Tracy visited Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was detained by Russia on accusations of spying. Today, Bud Light facing some backlash over its partnership with a trans influencer. Take a look. There's a video posted by Kid Rock that has more than a million views, hundreds of comments praising him for shooting at cases of Bud Light. This morning, backlash brewing against Bud Light over its product placement deal with TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender actress. I got some Bud Lights for us. Her post on Instagram last week showing her surrounded by cans of beer connected her transgender status to what has historically been a male-dominated brand.

This month I celebrated my day 365 of womanhood and Bud Light sent me possibly the best gift ever, a can with my face on it. Last week, one of America's most iconic beer brands became the center of a culture war controversy after it partnered with a transgender influencer named Dylan Mulvaney. Bud Light sent Mulvaney custom beer cans with an image of her on them, and she then posted a video of herself online celebrating March Madness and her first year of womanhood. In a matter of days, Mulvaney's collaboration with Anheuser-Busch drew criticism from conservatives. Kid Rock, who has become an influential right-wing influencer, posted videos of himself shooting cans of Bud Light with a rifle. Country music singer Travis Tritt is banning

the beer from his tour. During a performance on Friday night, country singer Riley Green dumped the words Bud Light from his famous song I Wish Grandpas Never Died, substituting them with Coors Light instead. Criticism about the partnership drew so much attention that the CEO of Anheuser-Busch, Bud Light's parent company, responded to the backlash. Brandon Whitworth said in a press release that the company never intended to be a part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer. Even before the Bud Light sponsorship, Mulvaney was a controversial figure. She was addressed by The Daily Caller's Matt Walsh in a video earlier this year in which Walsh said, you are weird and artificial, you are manufactured and lifeless, you are unearthly and eerie. The comments drew criticism, even from Walsh's

staunchest allies on the right, and from one colleague who quit the Daily Caller over the video. A brief disclosure, I was actually part of that criticism. Walsh and I had an exchange on Twitter in which I criticized those remarks as cruel. There is a link to that Twitter exchange in today's episode description. Mulvaney, who identified as a man until 2020 and worked as an actor while performing in the musical The Book of Mormon, rose to stardom after detailing her transition on TikTok. While her videos have been hailed as inspirational by her supporters, critics say she has caricatured women in her videos and worry her popularity will promote gender dysphoria among her youngest fans. Not long after the Bud

Light video was posted, Mulvaney also shared a partnership with Nike. Today, we're going to wade into the culture war with a look at some arguments what the right is saying. Many on the right criticize Mulvaney for caricaturing women and criticize Bud Light for misreading its customers. Some say Bud Light's partnerships with Mulvaney is offensive to women. Others argue Mulvaney is suffering from a mental illness and needs to be addressed. In the New York Post, Carol Markowitz said women deserve more than being lampooned by Bud Light and Nike. Mulvaney hit prominence doing what appeared to be a sketch comedy but actually wasn't, a TikTok series called 365 Days of Girlhood, in which the biological man,

Dylan, transformed himself into a girl, Markowitz said. Mulvaney kicks off the first video series by saying, I've already cried three times. I wrote a scathing email that I didn't send. I ordered dresses online that I couldn't afford. And when someone asked me how I was, I said, I'm fine when I wasn't fine. The videos were like asking ChatGPT to write a script on womanhood. That is deeply offensive, but also unfunny, Markowitz said. For this caricature of womanhood, Mulvaney has been rewarded with endorsement deals from brand after brand. Kate Spade, Ulta Beauty, CeraVe, Instacart, and recently Nike and Bud Light. What's the big deal? Well, ignoring it is what the

large majority of the country were doing before women were recalibrated as, quote, birthing people, and suddenly no one could define woman at all. In Spectator, Teresa Moll said she feels sorry for Dylan Mulvaney. I can't imagine the suffering people who do not identify with the sex God gave them must experience, Moll said. Until recently, though, transgenderism was considered to be a mental illness, and though the American Psychiatric Association now diagnoses transgender people as having gender dysphoria, doing so does not eliminate the mental health afflictions such people continue to endure. It's pretty plain Mulvaney is a person in pain. Can you imagine how unhappy you must be to undergo surgery to change the shape of your face?

Mulvaney has admitted to his misery, lamenting, Will nobody kiss me? And admitting that I'm not enjoying my womanhood as much as I was, and my pain is very real. We should speak up about Bud Light's campaign, not just because it damages our Judeo-Christian values, but because Mulvaney and millions of others are victims of a godless, empty, loveless culture. In Fox News, Vivek Ramaswamy criticized Bud Light for caving to the gender insanity cult. For a drink that was once a blue-collar staple of

middle America, this isn't a winning sales strategy, Ramaswamy said. One of the goals of my candidacy for president of the United States is to close the gap between what people are willing to say behind closed doors versus what they say in public. In that spirit, here goes. Dylan Mulvaney might need mental health care, not endorsement deals. Ramaswami argued that most trans people are suffering from a mental illness, and he rejects the idea that it is humane to affirm their confusion. Meanwhile, the cult of gender ideology increasingly foists sexuality upon children with Drag Queen's Story Hour, makes a mockery of women can't answer what is a woman, and undermines female sports,

Leah Thomas and countless others, by creating a zero-sum game where men with mental health disorders dominate at the expense of women. The trans movement has successfully wrapped itself in a veneer of legitimacy by hitching itself to queer rights, shutting down rational debate or reasonable criticism. All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. Many on the left mock the right's outrage and criticize the response as transphobic. Some argue that Mulvaney is simply living her life like a normal person, and this enrages conservatives who want to control her. Others say Bud Light ultimately caved to the pressure and betrayed

Mulvaney. In MSNBC, Caitlin Burns, a trans reporter, said the outrage is backfiring. It was the latest outcry in a trend of conservatives getting upset at a company for going woke and then, confusingly, buying more products made by that company just to destroy them in a performative social media post, Burns said. Conservatives want a world in which trans people like Mulvaney are ashamed of being trans and driven into privacy and obscurity, not hawking cheap domestic beer and sports bras all over social media. But the truth is that trans people are normal people who have jobs and homes and drink beers. Some of us wear sports bras and some of us don't. Some of us drink whiskey and all of us deserve to live lives free of government or conservative control.

And that's a fact that conservatives simply can't abide, she said. It says something, however, that for all the conservative boycott threats and cancellation attempts against Mulvaney, none of these companies have backed off from their campaigns involving her or other LGBTQ ambassadors. Companies have made their calculation that Mulvaney can help increase their bottom lines, perceive wokeness or not. In USA Today, Rex Hupke wrote a sarcastic piece entitled, Why I Decided to Shoot All My Bud Light. The company I've long supported by getting day drunk on, Bud Light, recently caved to the absurd liberal notion that we should treat everyone with kindness and respect by partnering with Dylan Mulvaney, who I'm told by Google is a transgender social

media influencer, Hupke wrote. I learned about this through my primary news source, Kid Rock's Instagram page. I and my fellow truth-tellers took time away from our important crusade against the horrors of liberal cancel culture to encourage others to never, ever drink Bud Light again, horrors of liberal cancel culture to encourage others to never ever drink Bud Light again, he wrote. I dare any of you to name a more noble quest than protesting a company by purchasing and then destroying its products while drawing vast unpaid national attention to its brand. But despite the righteousness of shooting several dozen cans of beer as I had just paid for, all I hear from you neighbors are complaints. What harm am I causing, aside from one stray bullet lightly grazing Miss Henderson's labradoodle, he said cheekily. In Bloomberg, Ben Scott said Bud Light kicked a hornet's nest and then ran away. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book,

Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The reaction to this collaboration from some quarters was as predictable as a Trump tweet, Scott wrote, adding that this is less a story about trans rights and more about corporate bravery. Even Mulvaney's harshest critics must acknowledge that she is standing tall in a hurricane of hate, taking the invective with remarkable poise. In cowardly contrast, Anheuser-Busch instantly

retreated into the shadows. Ditching its regular schedule of promotion, Bud Light ceased posting to Instagram on March 30th and to Twitter on April 2nd. Anheuser-Busch was absent from Twitter and Instagram after April 1st. Then the CEO released a bizarrely convoluted and incongruously patriotic statement. It's hard to figure out what the company actually thinks about trans rights or Dylan Mulvaney, but it sure sounds like a complex issue being thrown under the bus. The action by the third most valuable beer brand in the world is worse than a gaffe. It's a portrayal by Bud Light, which sought to elevate and evolve its fratty image on the coattails of a trans influencer, but quit when the going got tough. All right, that is it for what the right and the left are saying, which brings us to my take.

I'm curious where I can press the eject button, honestly. I recently answered a reader question about which issues I like writing about the least, and I mentioned trans issues. Not because I'm scared of the topic, but because as this debate surely illustrates, so many people view it as a great battle of good versus evil and seem so totally incapable of approaching it with any kind of rationality or attempted empathy for the other. Too often, debates about trans issues play out like this one, not substantive disagreements about a policy or law or psychology or medical science, but almost entirely driven by emotional culture war posturing online. Let me start with the easy stuff.

Carol Markowitz, under what the right is saying, said, quote, trans people have always existed and everyone was fine with it. That's either wishful thinking or revisionist history, but it's definitely not realistic. The movement for more trans visibility would not have become a priority on the left if everyone had always been fine with trans people. Just a few years ago, gay Americans were still facing considerable backlash for gaining marriage equality and are still fighting for widespread acceptance. Whatever your feelings, the idea that everyone was or is fine with trans people is self-evidently untrue, which is why so many people believe normalizing folks like Mulvaney

is important. Melissa Burns, under what the left is saying, wrote that trans people just want lives free of government or conservative control, and that's a fact that conservatives simply can't abide. As one of the most visible trans pundits in America, Burns is well-positioned to articulate the desires of trans people here, but she's overplaying her hand describing the Bud Light boycott as an act of government or conservative control. Conflating a boycott with actual government overreach into the lives of trans people is a counterproductive way to have this argument, and it makes real threats to the rights of trans Americans less clear. As stupid as I think it is for Kid Rock to go buy a few cases of Bud Light only to shoot them up with an assault rifle in his backyard,

he isn't violating anyone's rights by doing so. Writing about trans rights is especially fraught because that expression itself is vague and very obviously means different things to different people. It should not be complicated to say that transgender Americans deserve the same protection and equality under the law as all Americans. I know and love trans people, friends, colleagues, members of my synagogue, adults and minors, even conservatives and liberals. Many of them have benefited from gender-affirming care, and all of them have benefited from a broader acceptance and attempts to better understand trans people. Believing that they all deserve dignity and freedom as I do, as every American should,

does not mean you have to think that gender-affirming care is always the right medical or psychological choice. It often isn't. It doesn't mean you have to believe that trans athletes should always be able to compete in divisions matching their gender identity. That isn't tenable. And it doesn't mean that disliking Dylan Mulvaney makes you a transphobe. It doesn't. Frankly, I don't like Mulvaney makes you a transphobe. It doesn't. Frankly, I don't like Mulvaney. Not because she's trans, but because her online personality, like most influencers, can be grating and annoying. The conservatives who wrote about Mulvaney, including Markowitz,

raised some good points, too. Her online personality is a caricature of a woman. There are parts of it that I, too, find offensive, and I understand why many women might find it offensive. Mulvaney seems to be reinforcing the stereotypes that crying several times a day and going on shopping sprees is what makes you a woman. We should all be offended by that. Consider this. Before writing this piece, I had two trans women who read Tangle write to me, unprompted, to criticize Mulvaney and express worries about the damage she is doing to trans women more generally, I can't emphasize enough how not simple so many of these issues are. There is also something deeply ironic and silly about this whole boycott. I mean,

aside from the obvious, they sent Mulvaney a few beers, relax, Bud Light has been woke for a long time, if we're going to use those terms. For literally decades, Bud Light was the quote-unquote queer beer alternative to Coors, which had been accused of discriminatory hiring practices in the 1950s. Fast forward to today, and many conservatives publicly dumped Bud Light for partnering with Mulvaney, declaring their loyalty to Coors. I guess they were unaware that Coris has partnered with Caitlyn Jenner, a conservative activist and trans athlete. Is Coris okay because Jenner is conservative, or because she is more acceptable as a trans person, or because they simply didn't know? As I've said in the past, the U.S. is one of the most pluralistic societies in the world,

perhaps in human history. That is what we all sign up for by living here. There is an inherent tension in that. If you are someone who views trans people as evil or sick or unnatural, my best advice is to try and actually meet a trans person and get to know them. Exposure is the best antidote to fear and to hate. Similarly, if you think anyone who can't wrap their head around the idea of transitioning genders or preferred pronouns is evil and transphobic, I suggest trying to have a conversation with them. You might find, as I have, that their fears and concerns are usually not rooted in hate or malice, but in ignorance for which knowledge has always been the cure. My biggest takeaway from this episode is just how much more of that kind of dialogue we need. Every day, I hope for a world with less tweeting,

fewer TikTok influencers, and zero influential people whose first impulse is to shoot up a case of beer with a gun when they're mad. In that world, we might actually go seek out the people we don't understand or like. We could learn a bit more about each other in the real world, in real terms, with real dialogue. For now, I'll keep hoping. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one's from an anonymous reader in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They said, I love reading Tangle and I've shared it with many. You said you don't support electing judges, which I understand, but what do

you think would be the best way to appoint them? How would appointments not also be politically biased and motivated, different means but the same ends, as we've seen so clearly in the recent battles over U.S. Supreme Court appointees? Okay, so first, I just want to say I actually reject the premise of the question. I don't think judicial appointments and judicial elections have the same ends. When judges are appointed, they're typically being appointed by an executive, like a governor elected in a general election, or voted on by a legislative body, like a senate, which requires some level of consensus. Judicial elections regularly turn into what is effectively a primary, where the most active and partisan voters participate while a majority of the voting population doesn't. By their very nature, judicial elections will turn

up more partisan justices than appointments. Believe it or not, I actually think the system we have in the Senate is the best possible one. Nominations by the executive and confirmations by a legislative body. The only big downside to this is you may get nothing but moderate, ideologically homogeneous judges. But that is only true if the legislative body itself remains moderate, which it won't if the voting population tilts heavily one way or the other. To me, this system is the best way to tap judges. Have the leader of a state or country nominate a judge, then allow a legislative body to vote on that judge and do it with something like what the Senate used to have, a vote threshold like 60% that engenders some modicum of consensus. All right, that is it for your questions answered, which brings us to our under the radar story.

Yesterday, federal officials arrested two New York residents they allege were conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government. The defendants are accused of setting up and operating an illegal Chinese police station in the middle of New York that was being used to intimidate political dissidents. The Justice Department says the two men, American citizens who allegedly set up the outpost, deleted their communications with China's Ministry of Public Security once they learned of the FBI investigation. CBS News has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The percentage of Americans who now identify as politically independent is 49%. That's the most ever recorded. The percentage

of Americans who said they would strongly favor or favor laws and policies that protect transgender people from discrimination in jobs, housing, and public spaces was 64%. The percentage who said they would oppose or strongly oppose such laws was 10%. The percentage of Americans who believe a person's gender is determined by sex assigned at birth is 60%. The percentage of Americans who believe a person's gender can be different from sex assigned at birth is 38%. The percentage of Americans who say society has gone too far in accepting people who are trans is 38%. The percentage of Americans who say society hasn't gone far enough in accepting people who are trans is 36%. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day section. Australian

scientists say they have successfully used a backyard mold to break down one of the world's most difficult to recycle plastics. Researchers at the University of Sydney found that two types of fungi could be harnessed to attack polypropylene, one of the most common plastics used in everything from takeout containers to machinery. It took 90 days for the fungi to degrade 27% of the plastic tested and about 140 days for it to completely break down. The researchers hope this discovery could lead to new recycling methods that are more effective at reducing plastic pollution. Australian Broadcasting Corporation has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast.

As always, if you have feedback about our work, you can always reach me, Isaac, I-S-A-A-C, at readtangle.com. And if you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com and become a member. We'll be right back here, please go to and become a member. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by John Long. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady.

The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bukova, who's also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more on Tangle, please go to retangle.com and check out our website. We'll see you next time. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.