Florida Legislators Considering Repealing Special Law That Gives Disney Effective Self-Government On the Lands It Owns

Via Dave Reaboi, who wrote: "It moved."

Hitting Disney where it hurts: Florida GOP threatens to strip Walt Disney World of its right to build anything it wants inside its theme park as feud over 'Don't Say Gay' bill escalates

Florida House lawmakers have met twice to discuss repealing 1967 Reedy Creek Improvement Act, which allows Walt Disney World to govern itself

Threat to Disney's special status in Florida comes after the company vocally opposed just-signed Parental Rights in Education bill and vowed to help undo it

Law signed by Gov Ron DeSantis on Monday forbids classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade

Disney faced backlash for initially failing to oppose the so-called 'Don't Say Gay' bill after donating money to all of its sponsors

Facing protests and worker walkouts, CEO Bob Chapek changed his stances and condemned the law, sparking outrage from DeSantis and other conservatives

Cue the fake libertarians and "conservatarians" who have steadfastly refused to condemn the White House and Democrat Congress for constantly issuing censorship demands to the social media monopolies that pay them off, or to the social media monopolies for executing the government's censorship demands, to cry that this counter-pressure against a corporation is out-of-bounds.

Oh, here they are already:

Citizens on the right deserve to be cancelled -- and these people always support their cancellation, especially when they're being cancelled by the leftwing-dominated corporations that donate to their propaganda mills.

But if you push back against one of their corporate donors -- finally, you've found a species of "Cancel Culture" that they deem beyond the pale.

Some Republican legislators in Florida are considering punishing Walt Disney World for taking a public stand against the so-called 'Don't Say Gay' bill by repealing a 55-year law that allows the company to govern itself.

Florida House Rep. Spencer Roach tweeted on Wednesday that lawmakers held two meetings this week to discuss revoking the 1967 Reedy Creek Improvement Act, which he said 'allows Disney to act as its own government.'

Spencer, a Republican, added: 'If Disney wants to embrace woke ideology, it seems fitting that they should be regulated by Orange County.'

Reminder that Disney only selectively engages with politics:

After DeSantis signed the bill into law, Disney released a statement, saying: 'our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts.'

DeSantis responded to Disney's new stance on the law by accusing the company of being dishonest and hypocritical.

'You've got to wonder why is the hill to die on to have transgenderism injected into kindergarten classrooms, or woke gender ideology injected into second grade classrooms. Why is that the hill to die on?' he asked in a Tuesday night interview with Fox News' Tucker Carlson.

'Meanwhile, if we've done a bill that prohibited talking about the abuse of Uyghurs in China, Disney would've supported that legislation. They won't say a word about that,' the Republican governor continued.

DeSantis pointed out that Disney Cruises sail to the Dominican Republic, which has laws that ban gay marriage and legalize discrimination against gay people.

'So they're fine doing that and lining their pockets, they're fine lining their pockets from the CCP, and all the atrocities going on there,' he continued, referring to the Chinese Communist Party, which the company thanked in the credits of its live-action Mulan reboot.

'But it's those kindergarteners in Florida that they really want to have transgenderism as part of their core curriculum in school.'

DeSantis is also supportive of the effort to strip Disney's special self-governing authority away from it. Video below.

At Quillette, a Disney "imagineer" -- one of the technically-adept guys who designs the rides and illusions and physical space at Disney parks -- writes about Disney's "institutional capture" by the far left and the Sexual Left.

He writes under a pseudonym, of courae.

Disney's Institutional Capture Ethan L. Clay [pseudonym]

...

The sexual revolution, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcom X, the Cold War, stagflation, the Stonewall Riots, Watergate, Roe v Wade, the space race, the Los Angeles riots, September 11th, Hurricane Katrina--every major event that took place in American society since Disneyland first opened its gates in 1955 rolled by and the Four Keys remained unaltered. And yet, in 2021, as the nation reopened from lockdowns in fits and starts, the Fifth Key of Inclusion was added. Why now? Why at all?

The short answer is institutional capture, a term that once belonged to economic theory as regulatory capture. In economics, this is a form of corruption that occurs when a political entity, policymaker, or regulator is co-opted to serve a particular constituency and its interests. In business institutions, the process is much the same, only the goal is not to change a regulatory policy, but to turn the business itself into a mouthpiece for an ideology. Disney has been rotting from the inside for quite some time, but the speed with which its public transformation took place is truly breathtaking. Florida was the final straw.

...

In less than two weeks' time, the company had moved from principled neutrality to open advocacy. This new messaging, intended to mollify the company's internal critics, accelerated Disney's meltdown instead. "Brave Space Conversations" are now held at regular intervals--an absurd euphemism for struggle sessions designed to allow activists to vent their frustrations while drowning out dissenting voices. All regularly scheduled company meetings are cancelled to make room for these meetings, and park leadership opens the floor to hours-long performative recitations of grievances by hand-picked cast members. They conclude with grandiose statements about inclusion and fairness and understanding pain and listening, but not a single nonconforming viewpoint is heard, either from those who support the bill or those who think Disney has no business getting involved in this dispute in the first place.

"At Disney," the company's website promises, "inclusion is for everyone. We reimagine tomorrow as our way of amplifying underrepresented voices and untold stories as well as championing the importance of accurate representation in media and entertainment." But, as usual, "inclusion" only protects those who think like DEI activists. "Fairness" only applies to historically oppressed people groups. The only pain worth understanding is that felt by the subsection of LGBT cast members who believe that sex education ought to begin in kindergarten. Listening and seeing is restricted to the approved narratives, and even excludes those LGBT cast members who support the Florida legislation. I know many of them personally, and nearly without exception, they are all parents.

It's incredible that a company--particularly a company whose brand is family-friendly content--would oppose the perfectly reasonable view that sexual topics are not appropriate for six-year-olds in a public school setting. The bill puts the onus back on parents, rather than public schools, to decide how and if these conversations happen. That perspective can be debated, but it is not wrong a priori, and a very large number of Florida voters agree with it. But Disney isn't interested in allowing a genuine debate or conversation to occur, it simply wants to satisfy the DEI activists so they stop making trouble and bad headlines for the company. The result is that they parrot the party line, offer craven apologies, and ignore and silence opposition.

Below, scenes from the Cultural Revolution -- and counter-revolution.

This is a great point by Rufo:

Christopher F. Rufo @realchrisrufo It's amazing that Disney executives were falsely accusing Ron DeSantis of "Don't Say Gay" while they were requiring theme park employees to eliminate the words "ladies," "gentlemen," "boys," and "girls."

Disney is all in favor of saying "gay" to children, but not saying "boys" and "girls" to children. That is language that introduces dangerous concepts -- that there are real sexes and differences between the sexes -- that Disney will not permit.

Meanwhile, Ben Shapiro says he's going to spend millions to develop non-groomer children's entertainment.

This is what they want:

posted by Ace at 05:07 PM

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