Thomas Jefferson once said he’d rather have newspapers without government than vice versa, and Ben Franklin once opined that beer is proof God loves us. So naturally, the woke fanatics are out to control both – and a whole lot more.

Just as a network of far-left lunatics implemented phony scoring systems to punish news outlets that don’t toe the globalist line, a similar structure has been put in place to pressure all sorts of publicly traded companies to adopt their radical agenda. It’s the Left’s sophisticated – and effective – new version of the secondary boycott. And it’s why Bud Light chose Dylan Mulvaney, a comically effete female impersonator, to sell its bland brand of blue-collar beer.

The scam works the same in both cases: If news outlets play ball, they get a good “score” reported to their potential advertisers. If they stray from the approved messaging by offering a different perspective or merely asking the wrong questions, they get a black mark and ad revenue dries up. Similarly, if companies that make beer, cars, soap, diapers, or doorknobs don’t have health care plans that pay for sex changes, or marketing budgets devoted to woke messaging instead of promoting their own products, word goes out to BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, and a host of other huge money managers whose investment decisions move markets. Their stock price can be crushed overnight.

Bud Light’s parent company responded to criticism over the Mulvaney deal by bragging about its longstanding partnership with LGBTQ organization GLAAD and its “perfect 100% score from the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index for LGBTQ Equality.” Bud Light drinkers responded by recoiling in horror and switching brands. Kid Rock spoke for all of them when he shot up several cases in a video now seen over 1o million times.

The best most companies can do is to try to have it both ways, appease the corrupt system while alienating its customer base a little at a time. That’s a losing proposition for the news business, whose relationship with readers is built on trust. Other companies can try it and hope people don’t notice. Of course, they can never articulate such a strategy, not when their middle-management ranks are infested with strident snowflakes who care more about “stakeholders” than shareholders — much less end users. And when those intolerant halfwits get elevated to decision-making roles, as was the case with Bud Light’s marketing vice president, Alissa Heinerscheid, shareholders get the shaft and customers get disgusted.

Bud Light’s marketing Vice President Alissa Heinerscheid slanders her customer base as “fratty and out of touch” as she defends the decision to hire a tranny to promote their products.

Who the hell hires these people? 😂pic.twitter.com/Lv3LW4OKs4

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 10, 2023

The woke investment crowd doesn’t get all the blame. Anheuser-Busch and its owner, Belgium-based AB InBev, didn’t have to employ an army of hectoring Karens who would take a glass of Cabernet over a can of beer ten times out of ten. They could have made sure there was a grownup in the room when a progressive in a propeller beanie floated Dylan Mulvaney as the new pitchman for a beverage that pairs best with football, ax-throwing, and Buffalo wings. They could have kept their contempt for their own customers bottled up and on ice.

Conservatives aren’t quick to boycott. They believe that by giving their money to whoever makes the best product at the best value, they are doing their part to ensure that the market works. But when companies spend their advertising budgets insulting them and their families, they know it’s time to stop funding them. The good news is that with Bud Light, which The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh charitably described as tasting like “malaria and rust,” it won’t be hard to find a better alternative.