It is a familiar pattern. Media outlets pick sides in a legal dispute and then distort the merits of the claims in favor of that party. In the fight between Disney and Florida, the media not only misrepresented a popular Florida parental rights bill (including falsely calling it the “Don’t Say Gay” law) but heralded Disney’s decision to enter the political fray to oppose the law. It then portrayed Disney’s legal moves to block state efforts to regain regulatory control over the company as brilliant and overwhelming. Some of us disagreed on all of those points, including the prospects of Disney’s ill-considered litigation strategy. Last week, that strategy collapsed with a settlement in which Disney decided to just “Let it go” and these same media outlets simply shrugged and moved on.
In a raw muscle play, Disney had its hand-picked board (the Reedy Creek Improvement District) effectively transfer authority to the company just before it was disbanded. Many in the media were thrilled by the move despite the unlikelihood of its being sustained legally.
As I wrote at the time, it would be ridiculous for a court to rule that a company could stop a state from removing special treatment for a corporation like Disney. Even as the company racked up losses in court, the media and legal experts heralded its brilliance and toughness.
In the meantime, as Disney itself admitted that it was losing money due to its political agenda, the media heaped praise on the corporation.
When it came to the lawsuits, the media portrayed the moves as brilliant and mocked Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., as outgunned as some of us struggled with how Disney could possibly prevail in the long term.
NBC News chief political analyst Chuck Todd insisted that Republicans had “better be careful going after Disney.” MSNBC host and former 2020 Biden campaign aide Symone Sanders-Townsend agreed and said “Oh, my money’s on the Disney lobbyists, honey. My money is on the Disney lobbyists.”
On a “Morning Joe,” co-host Joe Scarborough insisted “you can’t beat Disney.” MSNBC contributor Donny Deutsch agreed: DeSantis is “fighting a fight he can’t win, and this, to me, is a precursor of him on a bigger national stage. And he’s just stupid. It’s a stupid, stupid play.”
Vox wrote that “Disney is proving to be the foe that will not die.” Another Vox headline read “How Disney just beat Ron DeSantis.”
The problem is that Disney was never winning, but viewers were not told that. The company was gushing money while losing in court. In the end, the Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act continued to garner overwhelming support in the state. DeSantis wrestled control away from Disney’s handpicked board and now Disney has dropped its challenge after suffering a series of losses in court. The Florida changes will be enforced, the new board will continue to regulate Disney, and the transferred authority from Disney’s board is null and void. So what did Disney gain?
The response from the media? Crickets.
For Disney’s part, it spent millions of dollars, alienated millions of customers, and created precedent against itself. It literally achieved nothing material from its litigation against the state beyond driving up its own costs and reinforcing the regulatory authority against the company. It then walked away.
The order from the top was clear, if belated:
Let it go, let it goCan’t hold it back anymoreLet it go, let it goTurn away and slam the door
Because Disney, and the mass media, are owned by big global companies that are controlled by a handful of scoundrels via interlocking boards and monopolistic entities such as Vanguard, State st bank, and the infamous blackrock and Larry FInk
They are billionaires, presumptively enemies of the people, and after fair trials they will receive punishment for their crimes.
Unlikely I know, but one can hope.
Saloth Sar
Disney sux
Look at every one of their child stars, complete lunatics.
If one follows the stock market price of various corporations, then one could not have helped but notice that Disney’s market price was wallowing in the low $90 range for months following their corporate ‘attack’ on the parental rights bill in Florida. Disney dumped the CEO who was in charge when that attack took place, and brought back their former CEO who it was hoped could turn the company back to where it should have been. It took a while, but now the Disney market price has risen to $120, a better than 30% recovery.
The real measure of how deeply this once family-friendly company has been permanently injured won’t be known for a few years — will Disney ever again reach the $190 per share levels it was at when the company went ‘woke?’
Aye me buckos, thar’s the question what needs to be asked, and answered.
Go woke, go broke —
The executives and controlling manipulators of such companies like the infamous Larry Fink, have access to near unlimited sums of capital. They are in no danger of “Going broke.” they can afford to lose a lot more money and in fact they can run companies into the ground and there is little anyone can do, PRIVATELY, except for petty greenmail type lawsuits that wont matter.
What can be done, is PUBLICLY. GOVERNMENT can smash them with antitrust and it should.
And incarcerate these racketeers like Larry Fink yes I said he is a racketeer and criminal antitrust actions are the viable basis for racketeering charges against him. A daring DOJ would do it but instead we have a head of DOJ that might as well be a kept woman of these robber-baron style scoundrels.
Saloth Sar
In protest to Disney movies, I’m voting for Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson books in movie format. Amazon Prime bought the movie rights, but will they actually create a series faithful to the books, or will they check boxes? Will the movies ever actually be made? It’s been two years since the options were bought. A Mercy Thompson movie would be like the anti-Disney movie.
Patricia Briggs’ series, regularly has just a bit of Native American mythology woven throughout, mainly through Old Man Coyote, as well as Fae mythology. How absolutely charming would it be to create movies faithful to this series of books? Since the main character, Mercy Thompson, is half Native, and half white, she doesn’t know her roots, so the books have an authentic reason to explore Native heritage, a trickle here, and a trickle there. The character Mercy broke cliched gender roles at a time when the message was, women can be dolled up and pretty, or work in traditionally male jobs, and both are perfectly acceptable. Mercy’s character rather accidentally became a VW mechanic, after her degree in history didn’t exactly launch a profitable career. She didn’t pick up a wrench and magically become proficient. She badly needed work, was taken pity on by the son of the owner of a shop, and began helping out under the tutelage of a very old German fae. She earned mechanical proficiency, and had trouble making ends meet like any business owner. She took karate for years, yet gets injured all the time in the series. If this series was written by AI today, Mercy would be trans, would easily be throwing men twice her size through doors, and would be preternaturally expert at automobiles repair the first time she entered a garage, assembling a Batmobile from a bucket of spare parts.
When I was in my teens and twenties, feminism to me meant if a woman could do a job, she should be allowed to do that job. It wasn’t about lowering standards to achieve a desired number of women. Women could wear pink and lots of makeup, or they could run triathlons, pump iron, or get dirty. It was perfectly valid for women to be feminine, or tomboys. Affirmative Action gained steam, and the bars were lowered, demeaning the achievements of women, because it was assumed it was just given to them.
Today, if women are not feminine, they are told they’re really men, and if they get an elective mastectomy and hysterectomy, they’ll be authentic.
I would dearly love to see an authentic version of the Mercy Thompson books in film, because Mercy’s character embodies the feminism of my teenage years. She’s a mechanic, and a tomboy, but she bakes brownies, and has a fierce protective, even mothering instinct. She knows karate, and can handle herself, but she still gets hurt. Will the movie be able to accurately portray the Walking Stick as a character rather than an inanimate object, with the subtlety of the books? I want, but likewise dread, what films will be produced with today’s rampant wokeism. Will Mercy’s character be one I recognize, or will she be a trans superhero who loathes the male characters, who are all idiots?
Be forewarned. If the movies do get made, the rendition of fae will be faithful to the original fairytales. It’s won’t be Elrond and Legolas. It will be the fae you’d better fear.
@Karen
Brava, Karen. 👏🏼👏🏼
Thanks, James.
Today’s movies to me are rarely worth the price of a movie ticket. The degree of wokeness and/or over-the-top ridiculousness…they should instead pay the audience to
watchsuffer this. I heard there was a new Godzilla movie out, so I watched the trailer, Godzilla x Kong. It was “over-the-top” to the highest degree possible. (an example being some monster putting a chain arouund the top few floors of a skyscraper, pulling it from the building and swinging it around like a Ball and Chain flail.) Totally stupid.I would much rather watch a true Godzilla movie such as those filmed in Japan during the 60’s and 70’s. Sure it was unreal in the scope of a monster such as this thrashing a city while fighting off military forces. But it was not the assinine ridiculousness of today’s version. One had to almost admire the detail that some of the set creators in Japan made the minature cities, only to be torn apart by a man in a Godzilla suit. They worked long hours to make handmade special effects, not CGI fakery where you can wipe out 10…100…1,000,000,000,000 people and it is all the same with computer effects, just add a few more digits to the interface to place more GCI generated “humans” on the scene.
Let’s do a quick exercise, a five second film where a monster finds a group of people and kills them off. Here it is by the year
1955: “Blob monster terrorizes town kills three people at once by enveloping them.”
2010: “Blob monster fires death ray and kills twenty people at once”
2020: “Blob monster 500 feet tall, is insulted that someone did not use its pronouns so it levels an entire city with a death ray, vaporizing 100K people”
2040″ “AI created film shows entire population of the earth walking toward Trinity Test site, 1,024 Megaton Nuke wipes them all out. The End”
Darren, a movie that often pops into my head was the pod people. I don’t remember the name, but it reminds me of the leftist movement of today.
S. Meyer, Pod people? You might be referring to “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. IMO both the 50s and 70s versions are worthwhile.
My favorite sexist line of all time: “A dame with a rod is like a guy with a knitting needle.” From the 1947 movie titled Out of the Past, starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer.
I did not make that line up. Honest.🤣
guy (caught knitting a sweater): “It’s not a knitting needle. It’s a textile fabricating hand tool.”
Good one, Darren.😆
Thank you Serendipity, you are probably correct. It was a black and white film. All I can remember is a lot of people with TDS trying to take over humanity.
Darren, we havent gone to the movie cinema in years. Violence, sexual themes, vulgarity, filthy language, low IQ themes, and as you mentioned, leftist woke crap are grounds for being rebuffed.
That was until last Holy Saturday when we watched and gladly paid to see Cabrini the movie. Worth every penny. I knew little about the Italian immigration of 1890-1910, when over 3 million Italians arrived in NYC. I knew less about how they lived upon arrival, and about the orphans. It may no longer be showing in your area, but if it is, even from an historical perspective, do watch it. The acting is superb as well. My only complaint: it was thin on Catholicism.
Local show times provided here:
https://www.angel.com/movies/cabrini
Estovir,
I’ll check into it. If it’s not here I’ll just wait until it is rentable and see it then.
That’s so true. It appears to me like script writers are essentially using a Mad Libs template, simply inserting the “correct” number of identity groups, grievances, and political talking points. It’s more of a lecture than entertainment.
They have tried to ruin a fine book for a few movies, Dune, to the point where even a highly skilled director like Denis Villeneuve is mouthing woke platitudes. And yet that movie succeeded in spite of the woke tropes such as the misplayed Chani.
“Beyond fear, destiny awaits.”
Saloth Sar
The media long ago stopped reporting on the news. It seeks to shape the news, and more importantly, elections.
It was never designed to withstand scrutiny, for the Left to support a major corporation to be free of state regulation and taxation, and to simply oversee itself. Obviously, this makes no sense to the generally anticapitalist Left. Voters, however, have become trained to accept double standards, and apply selective amnesia, to the point that cognitive dissonance comes naturally.
Likewise, it makes no sense to claim that the Jan 6 protest against election interference, that turned into a riot, was an attempt to overthrow the entire country. It makes no sense that the nationwide riots, arson, and the anarchist CHOP/CHAZ, should be ignored, while all Republicans should be called “insurrectionists” because of Jan 6. It is absurd that Democrats deny every election they lost, but Republicans are “election deniers” and a “threat to democracy” if they claim election interference.
None of this is meant to make sense. It’s just a prompt for Democrats to repeat talking points, and angrily rebuff critics who ask them to make it makes sense.
Karen S said: “The media long ago stopped reporting on the news. It seeks to shape the news, and more importantly, elections.”
I think that it is important to remember that this kind of behavior on the part of media, while it may be nearing a recent peak, and may be more coordinated amongst media outlets than in the past, is nothing new. In 1898, Joseph Pulitzer and WIlliam Randolph Hearst successfully instigated the Spanish American War by means of inflammatory headlines (“Remember the Maine”) mischaracterizing the sinking of the US battleship Maine in Havana harbor from what is now firmly believed to be an accidental shipboard explosion, as a deliberate attack and act of war by Spain.
Yes, absolutely, propaganda has always been utilized. I would say perhaps with the internet, the scope and pervasiveness of propaganda has exponentially increased, and false message can proliferate with lightening rapidity.
I believe it was Winston Churchill who said, “The truth can get halfway around the world before the truth has the chance to get its pants on.” That’s never been more true that today.
In the past, some media outlets made great effort to give impartial news reports. Nothing but the news. Certainly, there were people seeking to put their thumb on the scale, which is exactly what straight news would have reported.
There is little straight news today.
Speaking of Don’t Say Gay – apparently President Biden did not know that he declared Sunday Tranny Worship Day, or whatever!
Point in case, when asked about proclaiming Easter Sunday “trans day of visibility,” Biden flat out denied it.
“I didn’t do that,” Biden reportedly said when asked about the proclamation, RealClear Politics’ Philip Wegmann reports.
When asked about Speaker Johnson’s claim that he had, Biden replied, “he’s thoroughly uninformed.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/i-didnt-do-biden-reportedly-has-no-idea-he-issued-trans-day-visibility-proclamation
Silly political bickering. Joetard declared March 31 Trans whatever Day, and this year Easter happened to fall on March 31. This is a silly argument. Techinically, with separateion of church and state, a president shouldn’t pay attention to whatever day Easter falls on.
What DOES matter is that Joetard is a liar, a fraud, a criminal, and senile to the bone.
Being, or PRETENDING to be, piously religious — or biting at the BAIT dangled in front of them — will NOT help republicans, and especially not Trump (whom I support) in the November election. This is a DUMB diversion from raging inflation, an open border, and endless wars — issues that democrats don’t want to address.
He may have meant that he did not decide to have it coincide with Easter. It’s been March 31 since first declared in 2010, and Biden didn’t do that. The proclamation just recognised an already scheduled day. I don’t know if there is a proclamation every year, but if there is, then Biden’s response was a fair one.
“. . . a proclamation every year . . .”
The *first* such presidential proclamation was in 2021, by Biden. For some reason, his administration felt a need to reissue that proclamation every year since then.
“The standard definition of Easter is that it’s the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox. If the full moon falls on a Sunday, then Easter is the next Sunday.”
Royal Observatory
Greenwich, U.K.
Gotta love our pagan roots.