quote:

Corporate Media Is Hiding The Real Reason Disney Canceled Its New Florida Investment

Disney scrapped its plan to build a new office complex in Florida that would have cost the company nearly $1 billion. While the move is likely part of an overall cost-cutting plan, the corporate media framed the story as a virtuous rebuke of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ policies.

In The New York Times’ coverage, reporter Brooks Barnes lamented the 2,000 jobs that the Lake Nona region of Florida was set to lose due to Disney’s decision. The project would have re-located mostly high-paid Disney employees from the current California office to a new campus 20 miles from Disney World.

However, Barnes spent the bulk of the article framing the move around Disney’s, as well as the Democrats’ preferred narrative. He blamed the move on DeSantis’ “scorched-earth attempt” to reign in Disney’s foray into left-wing gender politics. He discussed a memo, viewed by the Times, that blamed the “changing business conditions” in Florida for forcing Disney to reconsider further investment in the state. (RELATED: Disney’s Reputation Tanks After Polarizing Feud With DeSantis: POLL)

The memo did not mention DeSantis by name, but it didn’t have to. There was no need for Disney CEO (and prominent Biden supporter) Bob Iger to get his hands dirty and spark another public sparring match with DeSantis. Disney executives let the media do the dirty work for them. Two anonymous sources confirmed to the Times that Disney’s “battle with the governor and his allies in the Florida Legislature figured prominently into Disney’s decision to cancel the Lake Nona project.” That is all the corporate press needed to justify sparking the latest anti-DeSantis narrative.

The narrative is compellingly comprehensive – it hits DeSantis from both the right and left.

On the one hand, it provides another rung in the left-wing narrative that DeSantis is vehemently anti-gay. DeSantis’ “battle” with Disney is fostered purely out of hate for LGBTQ people, while one virtuous company had the will and the power to stand up for what’s right. (RELATED: Did Disney Just Troll The Royal Family?)

This pitch is laughably absurd to anyone not already steeped in the corporate media ecosystem, but it would be wrong to think it’s meant to change any minds. Rather, it serves to sow an intense hatred of DeSantis similar to how the left hates Trump. It will ensure that Democratic turnout is just as galvanized against DeSantis as it would be against Trump, if and when DeSantis faces off against Biden in a general election.

On the other hand, it hit DeSantis from the right by branding him “anti-business.” This conforms to the desired narrative of establishment Republicans who think that unfettered markets are the ultimate good of society. The government has no right to tell corporations what to do, even if those corporations are openly partisan and use their market power to enact policies that harm children. This is the conciliatory, business-friendly view that led to Republican defeats in 2008 and 2012, but again, it would be wrong to think the narrative is meant to scare off any in the conservative base.

Rather, it is meant to appeal to establishment party leaders and donors and persuade them not to back DeSantis. The Democrats hope to elevate Trump in the primaries through continued political prosecutions that elevate his support among Republicans, but will “exhaust” Independents so much that they will not vote for him in the general election. Successfully branding DeSantis as “anti-business” will likely cut into the financial and political support DeSantis needs to secure the GOP nomination. (RELATED: Disney Turned Down Meeting With Uyghur Genocide Victims To Talk China Ties, GOP Reps Claim)

Yet these narratives all fall apart when one realizes that Disney likely had a completely unrelated, practical reason for nixing the project. As Barnes buries in the 16th paragraph of his piece, Disney was already in “the midst of cutting $5.5 billion in costs as it seeks to improve profitability, pay down debt and restore its dividend.” Iger, who came out of retirement to rescue a faltering Disney struggling to recover from streaming losses and the toll Covid took on its parks and resorts, had already committed to reversing many of his predecessors initiatives.

Why would Disney re-locate staff from a perfectly fine California office (many of whom did not wish to go, according to the Times) to a new $1 billion campus if it needed to cut costs? The move is far more likely to be a prudent business decision than any principled political stance.

The Times’ coverage here shows the extraordinary coordination required between corporations, media executives, and Democratic party officials to make implausible narratives stick. While representatives of each faction don’t likely discuss their plans in a smoke-filled room, all of the incentive structures push them naturally together. They are all on the same team because they want the same thing — not only four more years under Biden, but the power, status, and wealth they can accrue under the status quo.

https://dailycaller.com/2023/05/23/corporate-media-hiding-real-reason-disney-canceled-new-florida-investment-desantis/

quote:

ORIGINAL: JVoV

Disney has thus far been malevolent about it all.

quote:

ORIGINAL: JVoV

So Meatball Ron has officially announced his campaign. I think Trump is the lesser of those two evils, but the country is screwed if either of them win the White House.

The federal lawsuit is on hold now, as DeSatan is judge shopping, which Disney argues sets a dangerous precedent. Yeah, the federal judge assigned to hear the case was appointed by Obama. Meatball apparently thinks that somehow means something. Nah. Judges appointed by Democrats typically just go with what the law says, since that's their job. Unless the law defies the Constitution in some way, of course.

quote:

ORIGINAL: JVoV

violations of the Constitution

quote:


The latest book ban hoax

Following Amanda Gorman's reading of her poem at President Joe Biden's inauguration, administrators at a school in Florida decided the poem would make valuable middle school-level reading. So, they switched the shelf it was on in a K-8 school library — and sparked an international outrage incident.

"I am gutted," Gorman wrote in a successful press release. " Book bans aren’t new, but they have been on the rise." ABC ran a story with the headline, "Amanda Gorman Poem for Biden Inauguration Banned in South Florida School." PBS went with "Amanda Gorman Inaugural Poem Banned from Florida School." Variety noted that "Amanda Gorman Book Sales Skyrocket in Sales Despite Florida Book Ban."

Try to square these headlines with the undisputed facts of the case.

As some, but not all, of the articles relate, the Miami-Dade school district stated that "no literature (book or poem) has been banned or removed. It was determined that 'The Hill We Climb' is better suited for middle school students and, it was shelved in the middle school section of the media center." According to the school, "it remains accessible to all students." According to the Washington Post, students must demonstrate that they are effective readers at the poem's grade level to check it out.

If the book remains in the school library, then you might conclude that it has not been banned. But here’s the interesting thing: According to the now long-standing definition of "banned" used by left-leaning media outlets, it actually has been.

Gorman’s press release called on readers to donate to PEN America, which has written seminal and widely covered reports on the rise of "book banning" in America. According to PEN America, if a book has been temporarily removed for review and then returned to school library shelves, then it has been banned. If a book is no longer available in a middle school library but is available in a high school library, then, according to PEN America, it has been banned. If a book is taken off an assigned class reading list but continues to be in a school library, then, according to PEN America, it has been banned. If a book is removed from a library but is assigned in class, then, according to PEN America, it has been banned.

In raising the national alarm over book banning, PEN America has invoked the specter of fascism, noting that "book bans have an ignominious history — they have been the tools of heinous regimes from Nazi Germany to apartheid South Africa." A historically astute reader might be able to discern a difference here: When the Nazi Party pulled the works of Thomas Mann off of shelves, they did not briefly review and then reshelve them. They burned them.

As the Heritage Foundation’s Jay Greene has found, the vast majority (74%) of books that PEN America lists as banned actually remain available in school libraries. The ones that stay off tend to be pornographic. In fact, as the Washington Post reports, the vast majority of book challenges were based on objections to sexually explicit material. As one Mom for Liberty told the Post, referencing the most-banned Gender Queer, "If that book was made without the strap-on dildo [picture], that book wouldn’t be challenged."

Gorman’s poem was not sexually inappropriate. And the parental objection to it was meritless and inane. But the school review committee concluded that, due to the vocabulary level, it would be better placed in the middle school section of the library — where, to repeat, students of any grade are perfectly free to take it off the shelf and students who can read at its grade level can check it out.

quote:

ORIGINAL: JVoV

human rights

quote:

ORIGINAL: JVoV

A federal judge said

quote:

ORIGINAL: JVoV

Yup, same law.