According to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times, the internal affairs investigators within the Chicago Police Department are investigating the department’s Twitter account for liking a post by country music star Travis Tritt about boycotting Bud Light.
In the post, Tritt said that he would be boycotting Anheuser-Busch products because of Bud Light’s partnership with trans social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney. “I will be deleting all Anheuser-Busch products from my tour hospitality rider. I know many other artists who are doing the same,” Tritt posted after the Bud Light-Dylan Mulvaney partnership was announced.
He followed that up with a post saying, “Other artists who are deleting Anheuser-Busch products from their hospitality rider might not say so in public for fear of being ridiculed and cancelled. I have no such fear.”
He later said, “In full disclosure, I was on a tour sponsored by Budweiser in the 90’s. That was when Anheuser-Busch was American owned. A great American company that later sold out to the Europeans and became unrecognizable to the American consumer. Such a shame.”
Well, someone on Twitter noticed that the Chicago Police Department’s official Twitter account had liked Tritt’s tweet and posted about it. That person was probably Jeff Wittekiend, who shared a picture of it on his Twitter account. Speaking to the Chicago Daily-Sun, he said:
“It’s not surprising that there are folks associated with the Chicago Police Department public relations team who would agree with these anti-trans ideas. It would have been surprising if it would have been intentionally liked on the official Twitter page.”
That then led to a freakout within the department over “bigotry,” with Interim Superintendent Eric Carter announcing an internal investigation into the tweet Friday afternoon, saying:
“The Chicago Police Department does not tolerate bigotry. This week, there was an unauthorized ‘like’ of a tweet that does not represent the values of our Department. We take this matter seriously and have launched an internal investigation into the matter.”
Continuing, Carter said, “CPD is made up of a diverse group of Chicagoans who are committed to serving our city. We will continue working to support and advocate for every community, including our LGBTQ+ community, so that everyone feels safe and welcome.”
So the Chicago PD is really taking on the important issue, an accidental Twitter like, as crime swamps the city.
Further, the Daily Mail noted that Anheuser-Busch’s decision made no business sense, saying:
PR experts previously told DailyMail.com that the decision to change their marketing so drastically was like ‘setting their loyal fanbase on fire’.
Gareth Boyd, Marketing & PR Director at Forte Analytica, says that while he can understand where the decision came from it is ‘not the right way to go about it.’
Speaking to DailyMail.com he said: ‘I really cannot understand their approach for this because their core audience just cannot relate.
‘Cutting your core audience in the hope you can draw a completely new audience in, who haven’t been exposed before, doesn’t make sense.’
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