It wasn’t long ago that The Walt Disney Company’s standards for firing an actress seemed to be perfectly aimed for those who made controversial Holocaust statements. In the case of Gina Carano, she was canned quickly and with an unusual enthusiasm when she compared the “othering” of conservatives with the early shift in German opinion of Jews during the 1920s.
“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
There was a sustained effort to get rid of Gina Carano for months over things like her refusing to list her preferred pronouns in her Twitter bio (something that many Disney employees have never done). Yet it was the holocaust post that ultimately saw Carano lose her job playing Cara Dune in the Star Wars live action programs. Carano was soon hired by orthodox Jew, Ben Shapiro, to write, direct, and star in her own movie.
It’s hard to describe just how badly the firing of Gina Carano hurt The Walt Disney Company, Star Wars, and subscriptions for Disney+. Following the actions against the actress, subscriptions for Disney+ actually dropped in North America. Movements to boycott Disney+ and Disney’s Star Wars sprung up to national media attention. The following year, Disney was forced to admit that Disney+ was missing projections badly and most growth was occurring in India where their Hotstar service was bolstering the overall Disney+ picture (in India, Hoststar costs a small fraction of Disney+ subscription fees in North America).
But that was then, this is now. Bob Chapek is the CEO and in full control of the company, along with the Chairwoman of the Board, Susan Arnold. And now they have a worse situation with a different actress: Whoopie Goldberg.
On The View, a news-ish commentary show on Disney’s ABC Network, Goldberg proclaimed that the holocaust was not about race. That’s odd considering the government under Hitler thought Jews were a race and that they should be wiped off the face of the Earth. As a result, more than six million Jewish people were murdered in horrific ways, subjected to torture, faced terror for years, and even the Jewish people who survived were often traumatized for the rest of their lives.
Carano’s statement was intended to keep the world from returning to ideas that allowed the holocaust to occur. You can disagree with her comparison, but it seems to be a good faith argument for keeping the world at peace. Goldberg’s comment, instead, is a denial of the motivation behind a genocide that shook the entire world with how deeply evil and depraved the concentration camps had been behind Germany’s borders. What happened to Jewish people was pure evil. Goldberg’s comments diminish what happened and demonstrate tremendous ignorance or misguided understanding.
So how did Disney treat Goldberg?
Well, they put her on the Tonight Show to giver a chance at fixing it.
When Whoopie screwed that up by explaining she can’t see the difference between Jews and other white people, Disney was forced to try again… this time by having Whoopie Goldberg apologize again on The View.
Goldberg has not been fired, and it does not appear that the same people who claimed Gina Carano had insulted Jewish people are now calling for Goldberg to resign. There is no statement about Goldberg from The Walt Disney Company as there was with Gina Carano. The difference has not been lost on the public:
Roseanne Barr: Fired by ABC over a joke tweet
Gina Carano: Fired by Disney, who owns ABC over a Holocaust Instagram post
Whoopi Goldberg: Dismisses the Holocaust and says extremely racist/anti-Semitic statements on live tv at ABC — crickets
Hmmm This isn’t weird in the least
— The Dank Knight 🦇 (@capeandcowell) February 1, 2022
Disney cancelled Gina Carano over much less than this. Wanna bet Whoopi gets off Scott free?
— Steve (@rotlex) February 1, 2022
One big difference: Goldberg’s comments don’t run afoul of China’s government interests the way that Carano’s did. That’s another article for another day.
So what do you think is going on here? Let us know in the comments below why you think Disney is keeping Whoopie but was in a hurry to drop Gina Carano. And keep reading That Park Place for the entertainment news you might not find anywhere else.
