The Walt Disney Company has cut off its own ankles politically but now wants to try to stand on moral high ground. It’s not working as leadership gets nervous.
The following article deals with corporate political strategies in a broad manner. This article is not an endorsement or critique of either American political party or any ideology.
Talk about a bombshell coming out about The Walt Disney Company and CEO Bob Chapek. Brian Schwartz of CNBC has an explosive article out in the last twenty-four hours that details how Disney’s leadership is contacting Republican lawmakers before an anticipated Republican-takeover after the 2022 elections. The company is also allegedly hiring GOP lobbyists and preparing for a confrontation with the potentially conservative House and Senate. Now Schwartz is politically biased and it comes through in his writing, but the details that he is provided (if they are true) point towards a Disney Company in a heap of trouble. Let’s take a look at why.
NEW: @Disney has been preparing for a possible Republican House majority as the GOP rip the company as too “woke.”
CEO Bob Chapek has recently been speaking with House GOP leadership, including Steve Scalise.
They’ve added two new GOP lobbyists https://t.co/eO7MsUaDxI
— Brian Schwartz (@schwartzbWSJ) November 2, 2022
First, it seems that whatever they might attempt to say about the company being moderate, Disney continues to be a very partisan company through-and-through. There’s one way for that to happen: preferential hiring based on ideology. There’s no way to reach 87% Democrat-affiliation within a company unless you have a serious diversity problem. And that’s probably why Disney finds itself in such a problematic situation today — it has created a monolithic and hostile environment through preferred hiring of only one political type of employee. That’s how you get animated films that flop repeatedly and offend audiences. That’s how you have declining societal interest in Marvel and Star Wars. That’s how you get stagnant Disney+ subscription increases domestically.
Meanwhile, Disney’s company PAC and individual employees have combined to giveover $900,000 to federal candidates in the 2022 election cycle, according to data from the nonpartisan OpenSecrets. The data shows 87% of those donations went toward Democrats. Much of the campaign funding this cycle came from individual employees and not the company PAC.
The other problem with hiring in such a way that you have 87% association with one political affiliation over the other is that you eliminate your bargaining power with half the country’s politicians. That’s not conspiratorial or corrupt… it’s just a fact that you only have 13% of your employees who have sway with half the country and those employees probably feel like they’re in a bunker anyways. You’ve lost them and the politicians who espouse them. This would be stupid way to manage a company were it the other way. If you had 87% of your staff as Republicans, your company has set itself up for difficulties when conservatives aren’t in power. This all speaks to common sense and the understanding that if you don’t have a diversity of thought in your company, you don’t have diversity period. All this stuff about “inclusion” is just fluffy nonsense on top of a climate of hostility against half of society.
Many of the calls between Chapek and House Republican officials involve the Disney CEO being “direct” and defending the company’s opposition to Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, those familiar with the conversations have said. GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Florida bill, officially called Parental Rights in Education, into law in March.
The law forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools within the Sunshine State from kindergarten through third grade. After feeling pressure from employees, Chapek and Disney publicly opposed the bill, including after DeSantis signed it.
This is the other part of the story worth mentioning.
If your strategy for Florida politics wasn’t shared by any of your competitors and it resulted in you taking a massive hit, it probably wasn’t successful. It’s time to abandon ship. Universal Studios didn’t take a position on sexual orientation instruction in the curriculum of kindergarteners because they knew this was an absolute landmine issue. But after pressure, Chapek caved and seems to still be stuck defending Disney’s position to Republican lawmakers. The problem is that 1) you have zero leverage on this issue (conservatives are not going to budget at all) and 2) you’ve had the proverbial “doo doo” beaten out of you over this. You have no ground upon which to stand from strength. You have lost self-governance of Disney World, the governor you took on looks to win in a landslide, Lightyear and Strange World are two animated films that go into this territory and are likely to be two of the biggest flops of all time for Disney.
At some point, virtue signal and cut your losses. Don’t be so stupid as to assert yourself to politicians who represent the half of the country you no longer employee. And again, I’d be saying this if it were the other way around. Stripping yourself of diverse opinions in your workplace is a no-win strategy. Now we will watch it play out with a Disney that may be at the edge of serious struggles.
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