The happiest place on earth

by liberal japonicus

A bit late, but folks here might have some comments and perhaps some insight into the push to make Disney pay.

https://www.bostonherald.com/2022/04/27/disney-in-the-dark-about-florida-move-to-dissolve-self-government/

A college friend of mine in Florida observed that Orange and Osceola counties went Democratic in the last election, so this plugs into it and he also feels that this was more a distraction from the work of gerrymandering to ensure an unbreakable lock on the state. Anyway, share your thoughts and observations.

Comments

[CharlesWT]

The law is likely unconstitutional on several fronts. But if it succeeds in dissolving the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the counties in which the district resides will have to pick up the tab for a billion dollars in bonds and about 158 million dollars a year in expenses.

[wj]

Might also sell the move as an attack on "woke elites." Considering that the GOP is against anything they can label as elite -- notwithstanding that most of the politicians trying to exploit the hatred of elites have, themselves, degrees from elite universities.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

Nothing matters. The vermin will do as they please.

Isn't that why we call them nihilists, a word they don't comprehend or wouldn't understand if called that while walking down the street. Let's stick to asshole, rat fucker, jagoff, murderer, shithead, motherfucker .. deal with them on their terms, the ones they relate to.

The rule of law is a dead fuck in America.

Act accordingly.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/opinions/gop-blueprint-to-steal-the-2024-election-luttig/

As the subhumans violate and cancel rights at the state and local levels, and steal elections which will incite and spark savagely violent civil war across America, Joe Biden needs to issue an executive order halting all Medicare and Social Security payments (however, continue to tax the insects; that will cause them to start killing which will then obviate a brutal response in America's self-defense) to registered republican filth in the vermin states. Halt all federal cost sharing with those rump territories. Close all military facilities and bases in those states. Confiscate and blow up any property in those states, including roads, bridges, highways that were constructed using my fucking tax dollars. Federal installations and employees who remain in the Putin states should be issued military grade armaments to protect themselves and their families from the murderers in the republican party, who will surely attack and harm them.

Arm teachers and staff in all public schools in every state so they can defend themselves against the certain armed murderous attacks that are coming from conservative movement provocateurs.

This movement will never stop until they are stopped dead.

The solution to cruel, malignant conservative movement nihilism is a savagely violent and cruel nihilistic response from decent citizens in pure self-defense of our country, our government, our decent neighbors, and the OTHER who are under fascist attack on all fronts in our perverted, crypto-Christian conservative excuse for a society.

As to Minnie and Mickey, can't Goofy at least be issued semi-automatic weapons and ammo to protect his buddies and himself against the subhuman republican vermin.

Disney should contract with the United Nations to bring in armed United Nations troops to patrol the perimeters of their amusement facilities in the Putin states.

Rename Disneyland in Orlando ... Mariupol Resorts.

Hire Anthony Fauci on peak visitor days to greet conservative bugs at the gate and spray them down with a solution of disinfectant, Covid-fighting (so they believe) urine from the facility latrines, and whatever that orange shit is trump bastes himself in.

Shunt all conservative and republican guests into the Tunnel of Landmines, with Hillary Clinton narrating the suspense on a tape loop.

Replace Tinkerbell with armed drones on the lookout for republican officialdumb.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/tucker-carlson-trump-vance-sexual-innuendo-1343899/

America is just basically a fart joke at this point.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Replace Tinkerbell with armed drones on the lookout for republican officialdumb.

Hummingbird-sized quadcopter drones with a C4 charge.

Tinkerbell is a fairy, so the MAGAts will be trying to kill her: she should stand her ground.

[Pollo de muerte]

Posted by: CharlesWT: The law is likely unconstitutional on several fronts.

I'm curious as to why you think the law is unconstitutional.

[CharlesWT]

There are at least two areas where the law could be ruled unconstitutional.

The law violates Disney's First Amendment rights. And violates the state's constitution in that Flordia made a legally binding guarantee to bondholders that it would never interfere with the district's ability to service the bonds it was authorized to issue.

[wj]

[It] violates the state's constitution in that Flordia made a legally binding guarantee

Who cares about contracts??? A contract is, at base, just a promise backed up by the law. It's not like DeSantis et al are bothering to take any actions, or even pretending to take them, to create the economic gains that they have repeatedly promised their voters. As for caring about the law, that's not even promised by them any more. If anything the reverse.

[CharlesWT]

The constitutional backing for the bond contracts.

"Both the U.S. and Florida constitutions place strict limitations on the government’s ability to impair its own contracts. Under the U.S. Constitution, a state can only impair an existing contract if the impairment is reasonable and necessary to serve an important government purpose. As early as 1866, the U.S. Supreme Court held that once a local government issues a bond based on an authorized taxing power, the state is contract-bound and cannot eliminate the taxing power supporting the bond. The Florida Constitution provides even greater protection from impairment of contracts."
The Contractual Impossibility of Unwinding Disney’s Reedy Creek

There's also a property rights issue.

"Property rights issues offer Disney another path to challenge this bill. One former Disney corporate employee described potentially repealing RCID as the biggest eminent domain taking in Florida’s history. This issue might “score points politically” for DeSantis, he added, but “legally he’ll get his ass kicked.” He also shared his shock that the state’s laissez-faire pro-business conservatives had taken such a sharp turn."
Conservative Media Cheering DeSantis Crackdown on Disney Are Ignoring What a Catastrophe It Would Be for Florida

[Pollo de muerte]

Posted by: CharlesWT: The law violates Disney's First Amendment rights.

I think there is a cognizable claim that the act of passing the law was retaliatory, but (a) the law itself does not implicate first amendment issues; and (b) proving that legislation is retaliatory is notoriously difficult. I'd love to be wrong about this, but I would not get my hopes up.

Posted by: CharlesWT: And violates the state's constitution in that Flordia made a legally binding guarantee to bondholders that it would never interfere with the district's ability to service the bonds it was authorized to issue.

I agree that Orange and Osceola counties are on the hook for Reedy Creek's bonds, but the recent law doesn't say otherwise. It's true that *DeSantis* is saying otherwise at rallies and in RWM, but the law doesn't.

[Pollo de muerte]

Posted by: CharlesWT: There's also a property rights issue.

I don't know any attorney that deals with these issues in Florida (that would include me), who thinks there is a takings issue. The original act deals with this. More importantly, Disney isn't suggesting this is taking. There's a big bond issue and a weak first amendment claim, but that's all anyone in the local legal community is talking about in terms of legal challenges to the recent act.

Other issues include hitting the limits on how much local governments can raise revenue to cover the bonds (there are at least two state constitutional caps that come into play) and whether Orange and Osceola counties can simply functionally recreate Reedy Creek on their own.

[wj]

The constitutional backing for the bond contracts.

Sure. But in addition to not caring about the law, they don't seem to care much about the Constitution either. Except (as with the law) as to weapon to use for other ends.

Whether the political hacks now on the Supreme Court will let them get away with that (more accurately, how broadly they will be allowed to get away with it) remains to be seen.

[nous]

I think there is a cognizable claim that the act of passing the law was retaliatory, but (a) the law itself does not implicate first amendment issues; and (b) proving that legislation is retaliatory is notoriously difficult. I'd love to be wrong about this, but I would not get my hopes up.

+1 to the difficulty of winning anything on the grounds of retaliation. Every other union grievance steward I've spoken to about the topic says the same. All the benefit of the doubt stacks up on the side of the ones doing the retaliating. Might as well start discussing settlements unless there is something else to be gained by pressing the matter because the retaliation thing will likely be a time sink for no gain.

[Hartmut]

A lot of cognitive dissonance for the hacks on courts. Are they more pro (big)-business or more pro RW authoritarianism?
Unless of course (as I have heard some speculate), Disney is bluffing and actually likes to shift the costs to the local governments but thinks* that
it can gain from pretending otherwise (why not get rid of the burden, play the martyr for free speech and extract a big compensation for 'losses' on top?)
In that case the courts could act fake-salomonic, declare the state action legal but order some compensation to be paid by the locals (preferably Dem leaning citizens). So big business makes a profit AND the culture warriors get a boost.

*as a corporate person and thus a sentient being unlike many natural persons

[Pollo de muerte]

@ Hartmut

Disney isn't saving very much with the RCID ... I've see estimates of $10 million per year. The driving issue was and is control. They had a bad experience developing Disneyland in Anaheim and didn't want to repeat it.

[wj]

Not sure how Disney will save. They may lose the direct infrastructure costs. But bet on them getting property taxes to make up for it.

[Pollo de muerte]

I was not clear. Disney was saving approximately $10 million per year with the RCID as compared to the estimate of what they would pay Orange and Osceola counties. That money is a rounding error in the grand scheme of things.

The challenge for the counties is that there is a 10% cap on increasing taxable values each year, so we can't jack up the appraisals on Disney property to make this up. Also, there is a max millage rate in Florida, so we can't raise the rates enough to cover this (at least without refinancing which has its own costs and challenges).

The counties are really in a tough spot.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

The counties should just secede from Florida.

[Hartmut]

Admittedly, for liberals there is a lot of cognitive dissonance here too. Disney is not one of the 'good guys' either (far from it) and the deal the company got there long ago is highly questionable. Our problem here is less that such deals get questioned at last but that it has nothing to do with unfair preferred treatment for mega corporations (Disney being just one example of that) but that is done for even more questionable purposes, something the GOP itself calls 'gangster government' when they (usually falsely) claim that the Dems do it, i.e. punishing corporate persons for their 'free speech'.
deSantis is only the most blatant example but MacTurtle has threatened the same repeatedly, i.e. that the upcoming GOP majority Congress will remember which corporations spoke out against GOP policies or, worse, dared to withhold donations from GOP candidates for words or actions (like supporting Jan 6th.) and would retaliate. "Shut up and give us your money, or else! You may talk in favor of us though freely."

[wj]

The counties should just secede from Florida.

They'd get 2 senators** that way, too. Better and better.

** Probably safe blue seats, too. Thanks to DeSantis, even if they weren't before.

[Pollo de muerte]

Snarki, child of Loki: The counties should just secede from Florida.

If only we could. The I-4 corridor and south Florida would leave in a heartbeat. That’s probably true in any blue metro areas located in states that have been gerrymandered red. The sad thing is that after the people of Florida passed the anti-gerrymandering constitutional amendment for US House elections, the Republicans went wild gaming the statehouse. This is a purple state with Republican supermajorities in both chambers in Tallahassee.

The electorate in a state that overwhelmingly passed an amendment to stop federal election gerrymandering by referendum looks the other way when it’s done on the state level. Same thing with restoration of felon voting rights. The voters passed an amendment to require it and the Republicans squash it by requiring restitution. So as always, the public likes Dem policies, but the don’t punish Pubs for working against those policies. I can’t find anyone that isn’t a political hack who supports DeSantis on this Disney debacle, but he’ll be reelected anyway.

Tribalism trumps policy everytime.

[Pollo de muerte]

Posted by: Hartmut: Disney is not one of the 'good guys' either (far from it) …

Except for the mouse cultists (not an insignificant contingent), most central Floridians have a love-hate relationship with Disney. They are really rough on contractors and they fight like hell to avoid paying local taxes (even when it’s shown their low wage service workers use a disproportionate amount of local government resources). I’ve litigated against Disney and I’m not a fan of how they conduct business.

Having said that, Disney was the catalyst for this odd Venn diagram of a city that many of us call home. Small enough to be affordable and manageable, but with big city amenities (airports, restaurants, performing arts and shows). Southern enough that folks are friendly, but progressive and very diverse (highest concentration of LBGTQ households for any US city that isn’t on the Pacific coast … fourth overall). Disney should be given credit for being early to the gay rights movement by corporate standards (a low bar). It was way back in 1996 when religious conservatives instituted a boycott of Disney for extending health insurance to partners of homosexual employees. The mouse held its ground until the boycott was quietly ended in 2005. Religious conservatives have consistently claimed that Disney has a “gay agenda” in their animated films which Disney has acknowledged.

And to state the obvious, in a chicken/egg sense, Disney didn’t find a diverse southern city in the central Florida swamp, they created it. A huge percentage of Disney (and Universal) employees are gay.

Locally, folks were upset that Disney was slow to publicly push back on the Don’t Say Gay bill, but they still did more than other mega-corps (again, low bar). So while I’m no fan of Disney, I think you paint them with too broad of a brush.

Posted by: Hartmut: … the deal the company got there long ago is highly questionable.

I’m curious why you would say that.

[novakant]

Disney's historical conservatism and ongoing diehard capitalist practices are out of the question.

But as a dad, I cannot deny that films like "Moana", "Frozen", "Encanto" and "Turning Red" are carrying a strong, progressive message.

There's a certain incongruence, but it's hard to find a global player who doesn't exhibit this.

[wj]

Posted by: Hartmut: … the deal the company got there long ago is highly questionable.

I’m curious why you would say that.

I can't speak for Hartmut. But a lot of us question the various deals that governments make to "attract" particular companies to their region or state. (Or country, for that matter.)

Providing infrastructure, or an educated/trained populace is one thing; that's reasonable. But special tax deals, or waiving zoning or environmental laws? Bad policy IMHO.

[Pollo de muerte]

wj-

I also question when local and state governments give huge tax credits to a business to attract them. Forcing the rest of the population to subsidize impact fees for a private business seems like bad public policy. That didn't happen here. Disney, though the RCID, paid for all of their infrastructure. Orange and Osceola counties didn't need to come out of pocket in a meaningful way to provide roads, sewer, fire, electricity, etc.

I also don't think that environmental laws were waived and for the most part, there are not many complaints against Disney on that issue. In fact, they do really well with renewable energy and water use/treatment.

It's true that Disney didn't need to worry about zoning, but at the time, Disney didn't have any neighbors so no one cared.

Leave it to ObWi to put me in the position of defending Disney.

[wj]

Glad to know that someone managed to attract a business without doing great violence to the people (and their finances) in the area.

[CharlesWT]

Unlike cities that take private property and taxpayers' money to build stadiums for billionaires and for millionaires to play in.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"Leave it to ObWi to put me in the position of defending Disney."

Yeah, that is one goofy position to be in.

Me, I think that Disney is mostly a mirror of society, with some delay as it takes a while for changes to sink in. Their primary customers are "parents of young kids", so while they try not to offend the olds (or anyone, really), sometimes choices are forced upon them.

[Michael Cain]

Providing infrastructure, or an educated/trained populace is one thing; that's reasonable. But special tax deals, or waiving zoning or environmental laws?

As I understand it, Disney got none of those. They simply got permission to form what was basically a municipality. They pay all the state and county taxes, and then tax themselves to pay for utility infrastructure, local roads, and various first responder services. The special district arrangement ensures that those extra taxes are used to benefit Disney, not the rest of the counties/state. Might as well complain that Miami's city taxes stay in Miami.

My suspicion is that the Florida courts will eventually hold that the state can't arbitrarily toss not just the bonds but all of the services provided by the district onto the counties. That, for example, the counties can't be in the electric utility business. Or the fire protection business for just a portion of their area. And that the state can't (potentially) reclassify a billion dollars of bonds from one tax category to another.

[wj]

Unlike cities that take private property and taxpayers' money to build stadiums for billionaires and for millionaires to play in.

Just one example, albeit one with even less job creation justification than most.

[Tony P.]

PDM: ... (b) proving that legislation is retaliatory is notoriously difficult.

"Proving" is obviously a term of art here. What's blatantly obvious to any normal person is evidently not obvious to the legal system.

Putin is a mass murder. He, Trump is a criminal. DeSantis is a wannabe-Trump. The sky is blue, it gets dark at night, and water runs downhill. It takes considerable intelligence and expensive education to "prove" these things in court, however.

--TP

[Pollo de muerte]

I constantly tell clients that there are two realities: What happened and what can proven in court. The amount overlap can be shocking small.

[wj]

The amount overlap can be shocking small.

Not least because there are frequently very bright and highly trained (not to mention higjly paid) lawyers working hard to keep the two separate.

Don't get me wrong. Lawyers serve a very useful function. But it seems to me that something similar to the fraud exception should prevent lawyers from arguing (or even just alleging) things that they know to be false.

[Hartmut]

What's blatantly obvious to any normal person is evidently not obvious to the legal system

As SCOTUS has proven time and time again (and certain lower courts even more so). (GOP) politicians can be as explict about it in audio recordings or in writing as possible, it either gets ignored or explictly excluded from evidence recognized by the courts.

---

I defer to pollo's local expertise. The impression I got was that Disney was allowed to become in essence a state-within-a-state and I personally find it highly questionable on principle to grant that to a private entity (independent of what I think of that entity personally).
I also heard that some* think that Disney actually got a bad deal then, i.e.that the Disney leadership to-day thinks that without it the company's profits would have been higher in the long run.

*not in Jabbabonk's sense of 'some say...' (= I totally made this up since I never heard anyone actually saying that). I think I read/heard it several times these last few days in opinion pieces but could not at the moment provide a direct link to any specific one. Iirc none of those claimed it to be an uncontrovertible fact but just their personal judgement based on what they knew or believed they knew.

[CharlesWT]

Disney isn't unique in that there are 1,287 other independent special districts in Flordia. But it may be unique in its broad coverage of the things that characterize special districts.

[Pollo de muerte]

Here's a list of 1,847 special districts in Florida:

http://specialdistrictreports.floridajobs.org/webreports/websitelist.aspx

[CharlesWT]

But there are only 1,288 that are described as independent districts.

[Pollo de muerte]

I was just providing the list in case folks were curious how these districts are used.

[hairshirthedonist]

Leave it to ObWi to put me in the position of defending Disney.

That is what I hate most about this damned blog!

[liberal japonicus]

Disney has a historically interesting and fraught relation with labor.

https://collider.com/history-of-disney-strike-1941/

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/05/day-labor-history-may-29-1941

A lot of people felt that animation in general and Disney in particular was representative of Left/socialist utopian ideals, until money got involved and that went poof. I see a similar pattern with with LGBT issues and Disney, which is not to say that Disney are all raging homophobes, but to say that people (in this case LGBT employees of the mouse) project their values and are often shocked to find that they aren't there.

[CharlesWT]

Pollo de muerte, thanks for the list. I had looked but hadn't found one.

[Pollo de muerte]

@ LJ

Disney's labor practices are pretty bad. Many departments have a core of mouse fanatics that are thrilled to work there and Disney has no problem taking advantage. Non-fanatics (like my wife) put in about five years for experience/connections and move on.

What pattern are you seeing re: LGBT issues? It seems like the recent trend of inclusive animated movies has been pretty good.

[Michael Cain]

Disney learned the hard way in Anaheim and Orange County. The RCID is about 40 square miles out of 3,000 square miles for Orange and Osceola Counties. In exchange for letting Disney manage and fund their own critical infrastructure on 1% of the land, the counties -- and Florida -- got an enormous amount of investment, jobs, etc. Does anyone seriously think Universal Orlando, and the rest of the massive tourism industry there, comes in without Disney?

[liberal japonicus]

Pollo, I may be trying too hard with this observation, but in the 20's and 30's, many intellectuals felt that animation heralded some socialist ideas in that the work was communal and therefore evidence of the move to more socialist ideals. Thus, the labor issues that arose after Snow White, detailed in the two links and some other histories I've read, there was a great deal of surprise at Disney's intransigence at union organization. My feeling is that they (as many still do) confuse paternalism with shared views.

I don't know the current internal aspects, but I feel like there is a similar sense, in that so many of the people working for Disney were really taken aback by the initial weak response followed by the revelations of Disney donating to DeSantis, of Disney employees thinking that the company was more sympathetic to their point of view.

I'm zoom hosting at a conference this weekend, but will try and dig up some more references for the history if folks are interested on Sunday night.

[Pollo de muerte]

As a company, old Disney may have been more progressive on labor issues, but it was a horrible in terms of racism in its cartoons.

As I mentioned above, you are very much correct that locals were critical of Disney for the weak response to Don’t Say Gay. In hindsight, perhaps Disney had a reason for being tepid?

As for political donations to Republicans in general and DeSantis in particular, anyone in Florida who acts surprised at this is either clueless or disingenuous. Disney has always played both side of the fence. They have some autonomy within the RCID, but that does not insulate them for all activities everywhere in Florida. They have particular exposure for their significant cruise ship operations.

Having said that, there were credible allegations that Disney engaged in dirty pool regarding a local property appraiser election. Dirty to the point of being illegal. Any company that engages in this sort of stuff goes through intermediaries and Disney is no different. I assume the illegal part was the intermediary free lancing and Disney was unaware, but it was pretty bad (and stupid).

As a local, here's my quick ledger on Disney as a company:

Good: LGBT issues (both in their IP and employment practices), and land development (renewable energy, water use/treatment, protection of wildlife).

Bad: history of racism in their IP (though they should be given credit for acknowledging this), labor practices in general, paying fair share of local taxes, treatment of third-party contractors,

Indifferent: playing both sides of the political fence (every large business does it).

As a local, I'm only really impacted by their failure to pay their fair share of local taxes. Touristan (what we call the area 15 miles SW of downtown where SeaWorld, Universal and Disney are located) is a non-factor in my day-to-day life unless I need to drive through it on I-4 on my way to Tampa. You get accustomed to dodging minivans with out of state license tags or take toll roads to avoid the area altogether if Waze says so.

As an economic engine, Disney is the largest employer, but many of those jobs are low paying. To be fair, much of the burden of supporting those low wage earners falls on Osceola County which has a more affordable cost of living compared to Orange County. UCF, the space coast and military contractors generate much better jobs for Orange County. Having said that, without Disney we wouldn’t have the second largest convention center in the nation (only behind Las Vegas) which is the most dynamic economic engine for the county (by far) and this small city would not have a world class airport. So give credit where credit is due.

[liberal japonicus]

Thanks, Pollo, interesting stuff. In regards to playing both sides of the political fence, should LGBT folks inside the company (vs. outside) have been surprised? And you mention that locals were critical, what sort of expectations should people have about how Disney behaves? Are businesses like Disney reaching a point where they have to take some action? Those are not necessarily directed at you, just questions I wonder about. It certainly seems like we are reaching a point where companies are going to have to fish or cut bait...

[wj]

Interesting stuff, Pollo. But I think that, in viewing Disney today, faulting them for the racism in their output pre-1950 is a bit much. It was a diffetent time, and shouldn't be judged the same way we would something from the last 30 years. Not that it was good, but not really a fault of the company today.

[CharlesWT]

Warner Brothers cartoons were a bit racist at the time too.

[CharlesWT]

"Long before Pepe Le Pew's appearance in Space Jam: A New Legacy was scrapped because of a furore over the animated French skunk's alleged contribution to "rape culture", 11 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons were pulled for being too offensive.

The cartoons, which were produced and released by Warner Bros, were withheld from syndication in the US in 1968 by United Artists, a US digital production company founded in 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D W Griffith as a way of allowing actors to control their own interests."
What is the Censored Eleven? The racist Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons banned since 1968: These 11 cartoons haven't been seen on TV in America for decades

[nous]

Interesting stuff, Pollo. But I think that, in viewing Disney today, faulting them for the racism in their output pre-1950 is a bit much. It was a diffetent time, and shouldn't be judged the same way we would something from the last 30 years. Not that it was good, but not really a fault of the company today.

Public discourse is not a very fine instrument for doing nuance most of the time.

Disney has been, on the whole, no more racist than the rest of US popular culture in whatever time on average. It's had its good and its bad moments on the side of representation and of labor practices.

It's also made a metric butt tonne of revenue out of many of those bad moments when those bad moments met with public approval, and that financial gain continues to feed its corporate power today.

I don't think it is unfair to look at that, and at the corporate profits, and argue that Disney should absolutely make an effort to acknowledge and amend its past actions that have harmed marginalized populations. Doing so would not mark it as a bad corporation, but rather as a corporation that is learning.

And at the very minimum, if some part of their IP legacy is deeply problematic by the current standards, then it should not be revived and celebrated in new IP unless that new IP is actively working to address and amend the past wrongs.

That doesn't seem like it should be a difficult position to take. It only becomes difficult when a portion of the population is actively trying to leverage their collective economic and political power in order to celebrate the original *because* it embraces that urge to repeat the original offense.

[Pollo de muerte]

I was not trying to damn Disney for the old racist cartoons. The intent was to show that it's always been a mixed bag with the mouse.

To be fair, they do a credible job of acknowledging their problematic IP and don’t try to whitewash it.

As for expectations, folks around here hold Disney to a higher standard when it comes to LGBT issues while also giving them a goodwill benefit of the doubt. At first, Disney’s silence on Don’t Say Gay was deafening and folks were upset. After the RCID dissolution, no one is faulting them anymore.

Big Business in America is in a strange place. For as long as I’ve been alive, we’ve had two corporatist political parties. Trumpist populism has no problem selectively turning on business interests. We saw that in the pandemic with DeSantis having prohibitions on cruise line vaccine mandates. The cruise lines found a way around it, but I can’t imagine Jeb Bush or even Rick Scott going against a major Florida industry that is politically active like DeSantis did.

If the trend continues, business interests may need to shift their allegiances to the Dems.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

They knew their audience.

Though much of the same audience took Foghorn Leghorn, Yosemite Sam, and Elmer Fudd's shotgun as compliments.

I would mention Pepe Le Pew, but the last time I did, there was a hilarious mock tongue-in-cheek misunderstanding.

And speaking of skunk rape culture, this grotesque excuse for a skunk is stinking up the joint:

https://news.yahoo.com/pregnancy-rape-opportunity-women-says-185005884.html

Christian Oklahoman step daddies and uncles, and male cousins are looking forward to rape and incest itself being made acceptable behavior once again, if not legal to boot. I notice the jackass didn't promise, as the Governor of Texas lied through his crippled soul, to eliminate rape altogether in Oklahoma, except among lonely male conservatives stuck out on the prairie on the ranch or the oil drilling platforms, where no native American squaws are there for the taking.

"It was a different time, and shouldn't be judged the same way we would something from the last 30 years."

Hmmm. The butts of the racist, anti-Semitic jokes and generalizations were perfectly aware of the intentional insults and judged them contemporaneously and accurately as racist, anti-Semitic bullshit and transmitting prejudice and hate about themselves and their children to society at large, who were redlined, denied employment and education, and excluded from the bounty of American citizenship.

Evil hath no time stamp, as I think Mussolini's attorneys said with straight faces, but if they'd been gay faces, Mussolini wouldn't have hired them.

They'd (now back to American blacks) a made their judgments vocal at the time, but we .. our forbears ... would have butchered all of them and their children for the impertinence .. not that many of our ancestors didn't have a pretty good go at that violence anyway.

I guess slaves before the Civil War and all those caught up in Jim Crow America for decades afterward just shrugged and muttered "Well, that's just how those folk do. They just don't know no better, despite Jesus and them fancy words in the Constitution. I guess that's happens when them special ones live at the apex of the Dumb Bell Curve.

True, a few white Americans at the time inquired what year it was and calculated how many years this reprehensible shit had been tolerated and left un-judged, but shrugged and concluded that well, alright, we can keep this crap up for another few decades before someone, probably a Commie Liberal, forces change down our throats, and then we'll claim well, we know it was wrong all the time so no reason to go overboard and hold us responsible.

Generations of back American innocent offspring, who were not responsible for the hate and exclusion directed their way, paid the price in ruined, unfulfilled lives.

Why shouldn't me and mine as well?

Their herculean forbearance is the only reason all of our unjudged forbears were not cut to pieces with machetes in their beds, and then where would WE be?

"It was a different time, and shouldn't be judged the same way we would something from the last 30 years."

Judging from the past five years particularly and counting, I'd say we are once again backsliding on the judgements.

But being American means never having to say you're sorry.

The statute of limitations is roughly five minutes for whatever shit we don't want to take responsibility for.

In a related note, and because I mentioned her book "The Color Purple" a few weeks back, it turns out that Alice Walker is a rabid anti-Semite:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/alice-walker-anti-semitism-new-yorker-essay/629711/

The New Yorker should say so, and Walker and her buddy, the aptly named anti-Semite, David Icke, should apologize, renounce their despicably hateful and utterly wrong opinions, and if not, pay reparations to Jews, or reptiles, if they remain confused about which is which.

If I'm not mistaken, reptiles have no particular prejudicial views regarding their human victims. We all taste the same to them, which is as it should be in a world where the words "All Men Are Created Equal" are taken seriously.

Turns out that don't mean only landed wealthy white men can be eaten by reptiles. The Founders got that all backwards.

I spose we could say Walker and Icke too should not be judged by today's standards, seeing as how they came upon their views some time ago and in Walker's case, while under her own duress, which is to say, she ought to know better as a black woman.

I don't want to burn or ban Walker's books, as some cracker republican party Confederate PTA members might like too for other reasons.

But fuck all of em.

[liberal japonicus]

As for expectations, folks around here hold Disney to a higher standard when it comes to LGBT issues while also giving them a goodwill benefit of the doubt. At first, Disney’s silence on Don’t Say Gay was deafening and folks were upset. After the RCID dissolution, no one is faulting them anymore.

That is a really interesting point that I hadn't really taken in. In this day and age, you can expect _every_ possible viewpoint to be held and I've not heard _anyone_ (as you point out) faulting Disney now in this, which is an interesting lacuna. If they do fault Disney, it's for wading into the cultural content pool and they are getting their just desserts, which puts them with DeSantis. No one thinks they could have, with a more robust response, stopped anything.

I suppose that there is a bit of schadenfreude ('why do you make me defend Disney?') but nothing like 'well, they are getting what they deserve'. It's curious.