Rockstar boycotters appeared at the 2009 Los Angeles Gay Pride Parade dressed in “V” masks

As if events* around the boycott against Rockstar Energy Drink weren’t surreal enough, a protest group’s appearance in the Los Angeles Gay Pride Parade yesterday took the oddness of the campaign up a notch.

Dressed in black and masked as “V,” the anarchist in the 2005 film, “V for Vendetta,” the protesters handed out stickers that bowdlerized Rockstar’s logo as “Hatestar.”

The boycott has been called because the CEO and founder of Rockstar is Russell Weiner, the son of radio hatemonger, Michael Savage. Weiner also shares his father’s extreme right-wing political views. And Savage’s wife, Janet Weiner, is the corporate secretary-treasurer for Rockstar — the same position she holds for Savage’s production company.

This follows weeks of simmering controversy that began in early May when the government of Great Britain banned Savage because of his record of “fomenting hatred.”

Later in May, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome, who is running for governor of California, returned a $25,000 donation from Russell Weiner because of Weiner’s political views.

Meanwhile, when the boycott against Rockstar appeared to gain momentum online, Rockstar hired the law firm of Robert Shapiro, a one-time member of O.J. Simpson’s Dream Team, to harass editors of online news sites that reported on the story. This strategy has backfired because reporting on the lawyers’ harassment has called more attention to the connection between Michael Savage and Rockstar, not less.

But the clincher has to be a statement from Michael Savage to the San Francisco Chronicle in which he said that the assertion that he was a founder of Rockstar was a “smear” against Rockstar. Self-loathing much?

So why were these protesters masked? Was it street theatre? Were they signaling that the boycott is part of a vendetta against professional homophobes like Savage, or making making a statement about anarchy against corporate totalitarianism? Or were they simply afraid of being sued by Robert Shapiro’s law firm?

* Updated: Edited for clarification.