This week Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is set to officially announce his bid for the presidency. This comes amidst a growing conflict with one of the Sunshine State’s most prominent businesses – the Walt Disney Company. The left claims DeSantis has picked a fight with the influential and iconic American entertainment entity. However, just as a brawl on the playground needs a teacher who insists on finding out how it started, it seems some clarity is in order.
DeSantis is in the difficult position of being pro-business but anti-woke Disney, so when it was revealed this week that the corporation would scrap plans for a new $1 billion campus in Lake Nona, FL, the left turned up the heat on the governor. This move would halt the creation of an estimated 2,000 jobs, and it is the second punch that CEO Bob Iger has thrown at DeSantis. The first is a "free speech" lawsuit against the Florida governor, claiming that the appointment of the new oversight board is nothing more than a heavy-handed political ploy by an ambitious politician.
Without a beat, the leftist press burst into a litany of accusations against the governor: "Floridians are the losers here. We've lost jobs and investment, and we could lose even more, all because DeSantis picked a petty fight with Disney," the Miami Herald's editorial board opined. But is this merely a petty fight? And, more importantly, who started it?
Disney Toying with Woke and Broke
Stepping back for a moment, it's evident Disney is trying to climb out of serious financial issues of its own making. Certainly, Ron DeSantis wasn't the genesis of Disney's money problems. They were in such a tight spot the corporation canned its CEO and brought back Iger, who had retired in 2020. According to Brooke Barnes of The New York Times, Disney is beginning to crawl out from under its financial mess: "Disney said on Wednesday [May 10] that losses in its streaming business for the most recent quarter totaled $659 million, an improvement from a year earlier (and a vast improvement from the October-to-December period, when losses totaled $1.1 billion)."
This is akin to saying, "Hooray, I lost 20 pounds," without mentioning that you still have 80 more to lose. As Disney embraced the cultural revolution, its finances began to spiral out of control, revealing heavy losses.
The House of Mouse needs to take responsibility for creating its own financial mess, and if the folks in charge of the company look carefully, they might see their wokeness can – at least in part – be blamed for it. Even leftist publications saw this train coming down the tracks in 2022.
(Photo by Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
In Newsweek, Julie Burchill wrote, "… we see a company as long-beloved as Disney now abandoning its core family audience and instead catering to every whim demanded by the woke mob, a move both ineffective and, as we are seeing, unprofitable." Then she stuck the landing with this final blow: "Clearly, they [woke entertainment entities] are starting to conclude that if the corporation wants to cater to the most outspoken and yet most censorious elements of society, they can do it on someone else's buck."
It doesn't take an economic genius to realize that when a company irritates its customers, they go elsewhere. Can someone please say Bud Light?
Even if all of Snow White's dwarfs line up in a row and point the finger at Gov. DeSantis, it won't help this massive entertainment corporation dig itself out of the hole. They are rolling the dice and playing a high-stakes game by charging up the hill against the Florida governor and the unwoke.
In business, just as in battle, every charge is not rewarded with a San Juan Hill victory. When Stonewall Jackson led the Confederates into Chancellorsville, VA, his men trampled the Union Army, but as day turned to night, General Jackson was seriously wounded and perished only a week later from his injuries. And, in a bizarre twist, friendly fire turned out to be what killed the renowned Confederate general. The house built by and for Mickey Mouse might do well to look inward before blaming Mr. DeSantis for its troubles. For Disney – just as for Jackson – winning the battle but losing the war is little more than a pyrrhic victory.
