The following article is an editorial opinion piece.
I have been reading commentary about what is going on with The Walt Disney Company, Bob Chapek, Susan Arnold, Bob Iger, the Disney Walkout group, executives, producers, studios, etc… and I’ll be honest, I feel like I’ve lost IQ points. So much of what is being said is all through rightwing or leftwing propaganda that I struggle at times to believe people can be so brainwashed. Of course, I’m talking about the huge mess that Disney is dealing with when it comes to their Reimagine Tomorrow program, their position on the Florida legislation, the responses from everyone who hears about it, etc. So I’m going to try my best to simplify everything and explain what’s really going on.
As a primer, the reason you should care anything about what I have to say is that 1) I said conservatives were scared at Disney and two days later they put out a statement saying so and 2) I put out an article claiming that Disney’s executive leadership is at odds with their Board over this movement and one night later there are videos leaking of said executive leaders confirming just that. I’ve been on this.
I do want to say that if you think that all of this hoopla is over a law in Florida that forbids saying the word “gay” or teaching about being “gay” in schools, you’re being misled. In fact, what is playing out is a much bigger issue. This is a company that filmed Mulan next to genocidal concentration camps, did not apologize for it, and then the CFO bragged that filming near a concentration camp and thanking the government that runs the concentration camp was generating box office buzz.
“I’m not a box-office prognosticator, but it [filming near a concentration camp and thanking the local government that runs it] has generated a lot of publicity.”
— Christine McCarthy, Disney CFO
Did you hear Pixar employees were going to walk out over that one? Did you hear that Reimagine Tomorrow diversity listening tours were about to start taking place? NO. You didn’t hear that because they didn’t care enough about walking in lockstep with a government committing genocide. The images and videos from inside that concentration camp would likely move most of us to tears. So spare me if you want me to think they’re really offended to the point of marching over being unable to teach sexual orientation to five year olds. It’s time to dismiss that lie.
To start, let’s look at exactly what the Florida law says. We’re posting the entire thing so you know we’re giving you the whole truth here. We’re also going to put the part about sexuality in bold:
(c)1. In accordance with the rights of parents enumerated
68 in ss. 1002.20 and 1014.04, adopt procedures for notifying a
69 student’s parent if there is a change in the student’s services
70 or monitoring related to the student’s mental, emotional, or
71 physical health or well-being and the school’s ability to
72 provide a safe and supportive learning environment for the
73 student. The procedures must reinforce the fundamental right of
74 parents to make decisions regarding the upbringing and control
75 of their children by requiring school district personnel to
encourage a student to discuss issues relating to his or her
77 well-being with his or her parent or to facilitate discussion of
78 the issue with the parent. The procedures may not prohibit
79 parents from accessing any of their student’s education and
80 health records created, maintained, or used by the school
81 district, as required by s. 1002.22(2).
82 2. A school district may not adopt procedures or student
83 support forms that prohibit school district personnel from
84 notifying a parent about his or her student’s mental, emotional,
85 or physical health or well-being, or a change in related
86 services or monitoring, or that encourage or have the effect of
87 encouraging a student to withhold from a parent such
88 information. School district personnel may not discourage or
89 prohibit parental notification of and involvement in critical
90 decisions affecting a student’s mental, emotional, or physical
91 health or well-being. This subparagraph does not prohibit a
92 school district from adopting procedures that permit school
93 personnel to withhold such information from a parent if a
94 reasonably prudent person would believe that disclosure would
95 result in abuse, abandonment, or neglect, as those terms are
96 defined in s. 39.01.
97 3. Classroom instruction by school personnel or third
98 parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur
99 in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age
100 appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in
accordance with state standards.
102 4. Student support services training developed or provided
103 by a school district to school district personnel must adhere to
104 student services guidelines, standards, and frameworks
105 established by the Department of Education.
106 5. At the beginning of the school year, each school
107 district shall notify parents of each healthcare service offered
108 at their student’s school and the option to withhold consent or
109 decline any specific service. Parental consent to a health care
110 service does not waive the parent’s right to access his or her
111 student’s educational or health records or to be notified about
112 a change in his or her student’s services or monitoring as
113 provided by this paragraph.
114 6. Before administering a student well-being questionnaire
115 or health screening form to a student in kindergarten through
116 grade 3, the school district must provide the questionnaire or
117 health screening form to the parent and obtain the permission of
118 the parent.
119 7. Each school district shall adopt procedures for a
120 parent to notify the principal, or his or her designee,
121 regarding concerns under this paragraph at his or her student’s
122 school and the process for resolving those concerns within 7
123 calendar days after notification by the parent.
124 a. At a minimum, the procedures must require that within
125 30 days after notification by the parent that the concern
remains unresolved, the school district must either resolve the
127 concern or provide a statement of the reasons for not resolving
128 the concern.
129 b. If a concern is not resolved by the school district, a
130 parent may:
131 (I) Request the Commissioner of Education to appoint a
132 special magistrate who is a member of The Florida Bar in good
133 standing and who has at least 5 years’ experience in
134 administrative law. The special magistrate shall determine facts
135 relating to the dispute over the school district procedure or
136 practice, consider information provided by the school district,
137 and render a recommended decision for resolution to the State
138 Board of Education within 30 days after receipt of the request
139 by the parent. The State Board of Education must approve or
140 reject the recommended decision at its next regularly scheduled
141 meeting that is more than 7 calendar days and no more than 30
142 days after the date the recommended decision is transmitted. The
143 costs of the special magistrate shall be borne by the school
144 district. The State Board of Education shall adopt rules,
145 including forms, necessary to implement this subparagraph.
146 (II) Bring an action against the school district to obtain
147 a declaratory judgment that the school district procedure or
148 practice violates this paragraph and seek injunctive relief. A
149 court may award damages and shall award reasonable attorney fees
150 and court costs to a parent who receives declaratory or
injunctive relief.
152 c. Each school district shall adopt policies to notify
153 parents of the procedures required under this subparagraph.
154 d. Nothing contained in this subparagraph shall be
155 construed to abridge or alter rights of action or remedies in
156 equity already existing under the common law or general law.
157 Section 2. By June 30, 2023, the Department of Education
158 shall review and update, as necessary, school counseling
159 frameworks and standards; educator practices and professional
160 conduct principles; and any other student services personnel
161 guidelines, standards, or frameworks in accordance with the
162 requirements of this act.
163 Section 3. This act shall take effect July 1, 2022.
Alright, so out of all that, there are four lines which have made everyone inside The Walt Disney Company seem to go insane. And I have heard from readers… I have responded to the emails… of very nice people who have been made so afraid of this legislation. So before I go any further, let me break these four lines down to the best of my ability and demystify the entire thing. I’m having to do this on an entertainment and theme park website because apparently that’s where we are as a country.
The law forbids classroom instruction about sexual orientation of any kind or gender identity of any kind in classes for kids who are mostly five to eight years old. In other words, you cannot instruct a child about heterosexuality or homosexuality. You cannot tell a child that being straight is right or that being gay is right. You can’t tell a child that families must have people of certain sexual orientations of any kind in order to be normal, strange, weird, accepted, or anything else. The entire topic is off limits for instruction. Do you know what isn’t off limits? Guidance counselors, psychologists, behavioral specialists, and all non-instructive dialogue isn’t forbidden anywhere in this bill from addressing the issue with a child. You know what is forbidden? Classroom instruction. And who can’t instruct children on sexual orientation or gender identity? Teachers and third parties doing classroom instruction. I actually read someone claiming that a “third party” could be a child who just wants to talk about the issue with another child. That is wrong. As in, that is factually untrue. And you would have to be so entrenched into dogmatic thinking before you could even come close to think the legislation says that. What is a third party? A third party is an entity separate from the school: so not a teacher, not a principal, not a custodian, not a student. It is referring to a contracted third part, volunteer, mentoring organization, etc.
In review, this bill that has made The Walt Disney Company go insane is simply forbidding classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity of any kind, at all, whatsoever, in either direction by a teacher or non-school entity.
Okay, now compare that to filming a movie in close proximity to a concentration camp where people are being mass executed, their dignity stripped away, their families annihilated, and thanking the government running the concentration camp. Which of those two is a worse thing? Once you figure that out, you have figured out that this whole issue has nothing at all to do with morality, ethics, or what is being claimed.
Now sure, there are true believers at Disney. We’ve seen that in the leaked Reimagine Tomorrow videos. When Latoya Raveneau says she has had a successful “gay agenda” at Disney, she means it. And those of you who are defending that crap need to stop it. Turn your brains back on. If Raveneau said she had a successful “polygamist agenda,” you’d be in up in arms at her use of propaganda in children’s programming. If she said she had a “Jehovah’s Witness agenda” that she had been implementing in children’s programming, you’d be furious. Keep the propaganda away from kids. We’re not talking about propaganda in favor of diversity of physical attributes being represented. We’re talking about propaganda in favor of displaying a very particular mode of being, ideology, world view, etc, being put into children’s programming at every possible point. It’s what she claims.
SCOOP: I've obtained video from inside Disney's all-hands meeting about the Florida parental rights bill, in which executive producer Latoya Raveneau says her team has implemented a "not-at-all-secret gay agenda" and is regularly "adding queerness" to children's programming. pic.twitter.com/eJnZMpKIXT
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 29, 2022
But once you realize that all of this is utterly hypocritical coming from a company that has been in bed with China and all that they condone, you then have to begin asking, “What is this really all about?”
I’ll tell you exactly what it is:
When Bob Chapek was put in place as the CEO of Disney, and when Susan Arnold was made the Chairperson of the Board, the goal was to moderate the company and restore it to an apolitical, financials-first corporation. But not everybody likes that. In fact, a large number of creatives hate it. Major political organizations that want to use The Walt Disney Company for their gain also hate it. And all the people who were there under the last years of Bob Iger’s reign, when he was moving the company into the political sphere for his own goals, they’re furious with Chapek. They want to go back to being a societal-change organization. They want to be ideological. But they don’t care about China because they believe in much of what China believes in as well. Not necessarily the value systems, but the government-imposed authoritarianism, absolutely. And while they’re working on a mutiny to take down Bob Chapek, Bob Iger is only too happy to help out because after the great run Chapek had financially, Iger’s ego is a little bit damaged. That’s what all of this is about.
You want proof? Look at this article that came out just today from The Hollywood Reporter:
With Iger’s departure as executive chairman at the end of 2021, Chapek clearly felt that it was time to assert his control. The plan was for him to define the culture of the Chapek era at an April companywide meeting. The message, in part, would be that he would not involve Disney publicly in issues he considered irrelevant to the company and its businesses.
It’s right there in the text looking at you. Bob Chapek had planned to get Disney out of irrelevant politics in April. The bill in Florida is just the excuse his detractors needed to wage war against him before he could move the company in that direction. It’s not the catalyst, it’s the vehicle of choice. They had to find something after his financial success in the last quarter was so good.
Is all of that to say that I am a Bob Chapek apologist? No, not at all. There are things he has done very well and there are areas I find to be subpar. His cheaper viewpoint of the parks in terms of hiding show buildings is anathema to what I think the parks should be. He has not been aggressive enough in returning the company to hard-nosed success in terms of artistic execution. But I’m not going to pretend that everything he has done is rubbish either. His performance during the pandemic has been astounding.
That’s driving Bob Iger crazy though. That’s why he is again appearing on a news show to take shots at the current CEO. I’m set to debut in a conversation with the YouTube channel Valliant Renegade tomorrow over the Iger interview with John Stewart, but he’s already appearing now with Chris Wallace on CNN’s new streaming platform. Never mind that we probalby have more readers here than Wallace has viewers with this show. But Iger smells blood in the water. Take a look at this quote:
“We never really saw much evidence of that [backlash hurting financials], even though there were threats about boycotts on certain things. Again, when you are dealing with right and wrong, and when you are dealing with something that does have a profound impact on your business, I just think you have to do what is right and not worry about the potential backlash to it.”
So there’s Iger again positioning himself as the moral bastion that Chapek fails to achieve. You see, Iger only does the right thing. He doesn’t worry about the business side of things when it comes to moral decisions.
Well, except when it comes to burying stories about a certain billionaire with an island of illicit activity. Or when it comes to playing nice with genocidal regimes. Or when it comes to paying workers a livable wage. But other than those moral issues, right?
That’s why it’s funny to read Iger’s response to Chris Wallace when he asks about that wage issue:
“You were making that year 1,000 times what the average Disney employee was making,” Wallace said. “Do you have any misgivings about that?”
“I’ve never been defensive about what I made,” Iger said. “I was paid at a level that was commensurate with what most heads of large media companies were paid throughout my tenure and often less than, interestingly enough, and Disney was among the most complex and the largest and the most successful of them all.”
Oh, I see. Everyone else was doing it too. That’s a kindergarten-level excuse for paying people ten dollars an hour. I suppose it makes sense to use a kindergarten-level excuse in the context of a kindergarten law that is taking up all the air in entertainment news.
The bottom line is that Bob Chapek and the Board have a heck of a job in front of them. I frankly don’t see how they can succeed. The studios and the executive suite is filled with idealogues bent on achieving an objective at odds with financial success. Just as they hijacked Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, etc… now they want to hijack Disney in total. But unlike how Disney could keep filling the coffers of failing studios, they will fail if the entire company is ideologically captured. They’re almost there already. All that can save them now is the consumer-backlash, but that’s no given. It is actually within the confines of reality that The Walt Disney Company could begin to collapse as different groups pull it apart. It shouldn’t be a surprise given that so many inside the company actually hate Walt himself. A house divided cannot stand. It won’t be limited to the studios either. As Dustin on Twitter commented to WDWNT:
I had a coworker go to Disney in November, and he has gone many times before. He told me, “What Disney was before, a magical place, is gone. With things being upcharged and money is the main priority, it’s like Kennywood.” When Disney is being compared to Kennywood, it’s not good
— Dustin (@pitt_fan51) March 30, 2022
It seems now, the average consumer is just catching on. As someone mentioned to me while I was at Disney World, “the place feels like a cult.” It was one thing to train cast members to not point with one finger so as to be appropriate for all cultures. It’s another to have nut jobs training cast members to never use the words “boy” or “girl.” And when the cast can only refer to you as “friend,” it begins getting creepy. It’s like a Chic-fil-A drive-thru where instead of hearing “my pleasure” all the time, you just hear “friend” non-stop, and the drive-thru lasts days instead of five minutes. At the end you want to scream, “Just say sir or ma’am!”
How do you clean all that up? And what do you do when the avalanche has started?
That’s the war in Disney explained.
Let me know your thoughts below, and keep coming back to That Park Place for all the latest opinions and news on everything that should be fun!
