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2022-04-23 Home Front: Politix
Disney totally earned its slapdown from Florida lawmakers
[NYPOST] Just like that, tyranny has descended on Florida.

The state legislature, with the support of Gov. Ron DeSantis
...Republican governor of Florida, stone in the shoe of the Dems and their ilk, maybe one-day president...
, voted to repeal the "special independent district" enjoyed by Disney for half-a-century.

This is a sign, we are told, of the advent of an American authoritarianism that brooks no dissent — Disney criticizes a measure supported by the Florida GOP, the so-called "Don’t Say Gay" bill, and immediately gets targeted.

There’s a reason this fight escalated to this point, though. Disney was the aggressor in the battle over the education bill, lied about it and pledged to work to repeal it.

Even though the bill had nothing to do with Disney whatsoever — nothing to do with its product, its business model or its employees. The company got pushed into its stance based on pressure from a woke segment of its employees and from progressives on the outside.

Disney’s case against the bill relied on the smear that the legislation somehow threatened gay or trans people. In fact, the law merely seeks to exclude inappropriate material from being taught to young children in the classroom — an objective that once would have been considered utterly banal.


"Classroom instruction," the law says, "by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards."

Based on that, Disney went to the mattresses. And it did so, not to serve its shareholders, enhance its profitability, protect its intellectual property or align itself with its vast and politically diverse customer base.

This was, shockingly, an iconic American brand making itself into a free-floating weapon of woke cultural politics in response to the social and political influence of a small number of vocal progressives.

Like so many companies before, Disney calculated the risk/reward of gratuitously taking up a left-wing political and cultural fight and considered it all reward, no risk. The Florida legislature decided to convince it that it was wrong.

Republicans have fantasized about exacting Dire Revenge on woke corporations before, but to no effect. Disney’s problem is that it had a glaring vulnerability in the form of an arrangement that can easily be portrayed as a special favor.

The provisions allowing Disney to govern itself in its special independent district are so extensive that one analyst refers to the so-called Reedy Creek Improvement District as "the Vatican with mouse ears."

"Never before or since has such outlandish dominion been given to a private corporation," the Florida writer Carl Hiaasen notes in his book "Team Rodent." "Disney owns its own utilities. It administers its own planning and zoning. It composes its own building codes and employs its own inspectors. It maintains its own fire department. It even has the authority to levy taxes."

For good measure, it can build its own airport and nuclear power plant.

Now, that’s all scheduled to go away in a year’s time. Obviously, it is not a good practice for government to retaliate against a business, even a business enjoying a special status.

This fight could have welcome effects, though, if it convinces Disney it made a mistake by allowing itself to get bullied and cajoled into becoming a combatant in the culture war, and convinces other corporations that there’s a potential price to be paid for joining woke mobs.

Republicans don’t want corporations to become tools in advancing their agenda; they just want them to exit the culture wars and focus, once again, on their business, an outcome that would lower the temperature in the country’s cultural fights at least a little.

Ideally, Disney and the Florida legislature work out a renewal of the company’s special district before it is set to expire, and that the house of mouse — and other corporations seduced into making themselves de facto left-wing pressure groups — resolves to stick to its core competency and mission.
Posted by Fred 2022-04-23 00:00|| || Front Page|| [14 views ]  Top

#1 I was done with these Mouse people long ago.
Posted by Besoeker 2022-04-23 02:42||   2022-04-23 02:42|| Front Page Top

#2 Huge impact. Disney employs about 0.35 % of the Florida population and their gross revenue here is equal to about 0.35% of the state's GDP.

Waiting now for uber-leftie Carl Hiassen, who wrote an entire book about how awful the Reedy Creek arrangement was, to come out and tell us how it's a sacred thing now.
Posted by M. Murcek 2022-04-23 06:38||   2022-04-23 06:38|| Front Page Top

#3 
It WAS a Family Theme Park that became an Adult Political Alternative Sex agenda spewing Special Interest Group.

Fla. GOV. Should also slap a NC-17 rating on it.
Posted by NN2N1 2022-04-23 09:15||   2022-04-23 09:15|| Front Page Top

#4 Did you know: Other parks in Florida, Universal World Studios, LegoLand, Marineworld, don't have a similar carve out sweetheart deal?
Posted by M. Murcek 2022-04-23 09:18||   2022-04-23 09:18|| Front Page Top

#5 The prices Disney charges for everything inside the park should be criminal.
Posted by Deacon Blues 2022-04-23 09:58||   2022-04-23 09:58|| Front Page Top

#6 Disney has been in bed with the Chinese Communist Party for the past few decades. Now that's perverted. Yes, Fester, they are free to leave and I hope they do. I hope they take George Stephenopolous when they go because he's a lying dirt bag. Maybe they can take their billions and billions to Peking and stop grooming American kids.
Posted by San Fran Nan with a turban 2022-04-23 10:01||   2022-04-23 10:01|| Front Page Top

#7 Leftists: "Company Towns are BAD, unless they are OUR company towns!"
Posted by magpie 2022-04-23 10:18||   2022-04-23 10:18|| Front Page Top

#8 Should the CEO ever go to prison, inmates are known to not be very kind to child molesters.
Posted by Clusosh Floluter6074 2022-04-23 10:42||   2022-04-23 10:42|| Front Page Top

#9 Disney saw how far they could push.
The answer is, not that far.
I'm waiting for the Biden DOJ to get involved. You gotta know they will.
Posted by ed in texas 2022-04-23 12:24||   2022-04-23 12:24|| Front Page Top

#10 Have the Purple People Bleaters started the howls for Groomer+ to leave Florida?
Posted by swksvolFF 2022-04-23 14:06||   2022-04-23 14:06|| Front Page Top

#11 Colorado is trying to lure them. No innuendo intended...
Posted by M. Murcek 2022-04-23 14:17||   2022-04-23 14:17|| Front Page Top

#12 Wait till the green haired cock having princess visits Beijing Disney. Could be a rude awakening on tolerances.
Posted by Slappy 2022-04-23 14:23||   2022-04-23 14:23|| Front Page Top

#13 @#1 - Me, too...ages ago. In fact, if ever. I'm a Warner Bros. guy anyway.
Posted by DooDahMan 2022-04-23 15:59||   2022-04-23 15:59|| Front Page Top

00:01 Skidmark









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