Cheerleading the Pride Month Backlash
By Kevin Howley, June 19, 2023
For months now, conservative culture warriors have been sharpening their knives ahead of this year’s Pride Month celebrations. Back in April, when calls to boycott Bud Light for the brand’s “transgression” of partnering with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney reached fever pitch, The Federalist laid down this marker for the GOP establishment: “Republicans Making Excuses for Bud Light Snatch Defeat From the Jaws of a Culture War Victory.”
With less than two weeks left in this year’s Pride Month, right wing media have already begun taking victory laps for putting “ultra-woke” corporations, politicians, and LGBTQ+ activists on the defensive. It remains to be seen if all the sound and fury will have a lasting impact on corporate America’s conditional commitment to DEI in both the workplace and the marketplace.
In the meantime, a sampling from recent headlines offers a glimpse into the mindset of right wing extremists and their enablers in the conservative outrage machine, as Pride Month heads into the homestretch.
‘They’re Scared to Death’
The Free Beacon crowed, “Bud Light Is No Longer the Top-Selling US Beer.” The story notes declining sales of Bud Light in the wake of the boycott as well as parent company Anheuser-Busch’s attempts at damage control. “Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch brands have since run several ads attempting to win back their conservative base, and the company pledged to spend more money on marketing this summer.” Advertising beer in the summer? Now that’s a promise you can take to the bank.
Meanwhile, the shopaholics at American Thinker may not have the receipts, but they’ve got photographs that seem to suggest Target’s Pride Month merch isn’t moving. Columnist and former Target employee Monica Showalter concludes her visual essay of Pride Month merchandise sitting on store shelves with this cautionary note: “This is obviously going to lead to losses for the company not even included in the earlier rumblings of a boycott. It’s just colossal stupidity. Over at corporate, heads should roll.”
This triumphant headline, courtesy of The Blaze, relishes the corporate cowardice at Anheuser-Busch and Target: “LGBTQ Activists Complain Companies are Caving to the Backlash Against Pride Month: They’re Scared to Death.” Likewise, Breitbart cheers when a certain craven coffee chain shows its true colors, “Starbucks Pulls Back From Trans, Diversity Advocacy.”
‘USA Are My Pronouns’
In related news, right wing media were all over a story out of Burlington, Massachusetts, describing a middle school uprising over Pride Month festivities. Headlined “Middle Schoolers’ USA Rebellion at Pride Event Causes Libs to Melt Down,” Townhall cheered when “Marshall Simonds Middle School … saw an LGBT event wrecked by a pronoun rebellion. Pride flags were destroyed, and chants of ‘USA’ rang throughout the school.” Breitbart followed suit with a story headlined “‘USA Are My Pronouns:’ Middle Schoolers Rebel Against Pride Month Indoctrination.”
Groomers beware! We will meet your diversity and inclusion initiatives with our most cherished American values: intolerance, intimidation and violence.
Episodes like this underscore the volatility of our present moment. Harkening back to right wing extremists’ efforts to pin the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot on Antifa and the “radical left,” right wing media propagate unsubstantiated stories like this one from The Federalist. In a two-for-one hit job, reports about “Pride activists” using bomb threats against Target call out mainstream media for their complicity in legitimizing “a narrative about LGBT victimhood.”
Enough is Enough
That’s the considered opinion of podcast provocateur Joe Rogan, whose anti-LGBT screed was music to the ears of the god-fearing folks at WND. Headlined “Joe Rogan is Right: America Has Had Enough of ‘Pride’,” columnist Michael Brown clutches his Bible while echoing and amplifying Rogan’s vitriol. “When I go to Target I don’t want to see like [expletive] tuck pants, like they’re designed to help you tuck your [expletive]. Hey, that’s not normal, I don’t want that right in front of everybody. It’s weird.”
What’s really weird is how surprised some people seem to be at the backlash. The awful truth is that corporate America rarely lives up to its inflated sense of do-goodery. Case in point: The Daily Signal offered this bit of red meat to readers: “In this Year of Consumer Backlash, it may go down as one of the biggest coups of 2023. While Americans bring the country’s mightiest brands to their knees, Major League Baseball has decided to dodge the flak, quietly ordering teams to ditch their Pride uniforms entirely.”
Writing for the LA Progressive, Sonali Kolhatkar put it best when she noted that like the pushback against MLB’s Pride Nights, “the Target brouhaha is a testament to the dangers of relying on corporations to uphold social justice.”
Enough said.
Kevin Howley is a writer and educator whose work has appeared in “Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism,” “Social Movement Studies,” and “Interactions: Studies in Communication and Culture.” He is the author and editor of several books including “Media Interventions” and “Drones: Media Discourse and the Public Imagination.”
Interested in more news about right-wing media curated especially for mainstream audiences? Subscribe to our free daily newsletter.
With less than two weeks left in this year’s Pride Month, right wing media are claiming victory for putting “ultra-woke” corporations, politicians, and activists on the defensive. It remains to be seen if it will have a lasting impact on corporate America’s conditional commitment to DEI. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
