Howard Stern teased Kid Rock and Travis Tritt this past Monday during his SiriusXM radio show. Kid Rock and Tritt both joined people who were slamming the latest Bud Light advertising campaign because it features transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Both joined a growing boycott of the brand, with Rock creating stunt videos and Tritt making a big deal about having the beer removed from his tour rider. Stern was baffled by their outrage, especially since he thought they wouldn’t be able to take any criticism in return.
Stern wondered aloud why Kid Rock and Tritt had “lost their s- over this beer can thing” on Monday, adding: “I thought there must be a piece of this story that I’m missing and I don’t know why – I’m not bothered by gay people or transsexual people. They don’t impact my life. They don’t hurt my life. I love when people are in love. You wanna be a woman, be a woman, you wanna be a dude, be a dude… Long as you ain’t hurting anybody, I’m on your team.”
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Stern has never shied away from controversial discussions himself, and in previous decades he had a strong reputation for playing devil’s advocate or trying to rile up his listeners. This live-and-let-live mentality is relatively new for Stern, but he seems to be giving Mulvaney’s detractors the benefit of the doubt. He suggested that he’d like to have Kid Rock on the show to explain himself, but warned that he’d be pointing out the singer-songwriter’s hypocrisy in the process.
“He [Kid Rock] transitioned from some kid in Michigan to a rock superstar. And that was a good transition,” Stern reflected. “I’m really dumbfounded by why someone would care so much that they would blow up a can of Bud Light.” He recalled the early days of Kid Rock’s career, saying: “He would wear a feather boa – you know, when he first started out with maybe even a mink coat, you know what I mean? He was flamboyant in his own way.”
Similar accusations of hypocrisy were leveled at Tritt. The band Eve6 posted an old photo of Tritt on Twitter showing him in a sequined outfit which quickly went viral amid the Bud Light fiasco. So far, neither Kid Rock nor Tritt have publicly responded to these kinds of arguments.
Bud Light has advertised directly to the LGBTQ+ community for years without incurring this much backlash. As the dust is settling, many pundits are accusing figures like Kid Rock of trying to stir up controversy where there really isn’t any, believing that most Americans are tolerant of people in the LGBTQ+ communities and do not take beer commercials personally.
Sadly, that rhetoric may still have dire consequences. Over the last two years organizations like the Human Rights Campaign have found that violence against transgender people has increased in frequency in the U.S. One possible contributing factor is an increase in anti-trans rhetoric from public figures like Kid Rock. A report by Just Security offers some steps that individuals and communities can take to help curb this uptick in violence.
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