I follow current events pretty closely but I was surprised to see that there’s a huge controversy over Bud Light beer and I had no idea what it was about. The right wingers are all up in arms and boycotting the beer and naturally, it turns out, it’s because of … hate. Philip Bump explains: The marketing plan was obviously courting controversy from the outset. Bud Light, the most popular beer in the country, was going to put together a campaign centered on a group that makes up less than 9 percent of the population of the United States? The beer brand planned ads targeting this small subgroup, despite the political overtones of doing so — despite the risk of associating the brand so closely with a lifestyle that was foreign to most Americans. But Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s vice president of marketing, celebrated the move in a statement. The beer brand had “deepened our commitment to the state of Texas with our ‘Brewed in Texas’ campaign,” she said in 2022, pointing to ads featuring a bull rider and a star player on Mexico’s national soccer team. This play for a specific niche wasn’t going to compel any white-collar metropolitanites to grab a bottle of the beer, but maybe it would get more Hispanic Texans to do so — enough to potentially make the push worthwhile. After all, Bud Light’s position in the market had been sliding for years. It remains the best-selling beer in the United States, but its market share has slipped downward over…