Opinion
In a key scene of Citizen Kane, Kane’s erstwhile guardian, banker Thatcher, warns the young man newly come into his inheritance, that his pet folly, the ailing New York Inquirer, is fast losing money. Kane agrees that it loses a million dollars a year: at the rate of a million a year – we’ll have to close this place in sixty years. More than eighty years later, another generation of arrogant youngsters with inherited fortunes are just as determined as Kane to change the world, no matter the cost.
If you’ve ever been perplexed at the willingness of so many corporations to get woke, go broke, wonder no more. These are people who inherited the empires built by the hard-nosed work of better men and women. So, they’re blithely determined to blow as many billions as they have at their disposal to try and remake the world in their “progressive” image.
If a new poll is anything to go by, the public may have more basic common sense than these woke idiots have other peoples’ money.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 71% of American Adults agree with the statement, “Disney should return to wholesome programming and allow parents to decide when their children are taught about sexuality,” including 53% who Strongly Agree. Twenty-two percent (22%) disagree, including 10% who Strongly Disagree.
Two years ago, Karey Burke, president of Disney’s General Entertainment Content, said Disney has “many, many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories.”
Rasmussen Reports
And that, most Americans agree, is the problem.
Unca Walt didn’t build up an entertainment behemoth by regaling kiddies with tales of two dads, teenage rugmunchers, or hairy-chested fairy princesses with dongs bulging in their tights. If anything, classic Disney was sometimes criticised for making its stories too safe for child minds. But it was a formula that worked: Disney went from a hardscrabble operation in a rented studio in Missouri, to a global empire.
People took their kids to Disney movies because they knew they were guaranteed something safe and wholesome.
They certainly weren’t — and aren’t — wanting them to be subjected to a non-stop barrage of woke propaganda.
The result found that “71% of American Adults agreed” that Disney should return to “wholesome programming” and give the power back to parents to decide when their “children are taught about sexuality.” That number included 53% who “strongly agreed” with that statement. Twenty-two percent disagreed with this sentiment and that also included 10% who “strongly disagreed.”
So, Americans are more than five times more likely to strongly object to the company’s current direction than favour it.
It’s also a significant shift, in just two years. However, it must be pointed out that the similar Rasmussen survey in 2022 asked a notably different question.
In 2022, Rasmussen Reports asked 1,000 American Adults, via telephone and online, if the “emphasis on ‘inclusion’ and ‘diversity’ by companies like Disney” was making children’s entertainment better or worse?
Note the semantic difference, there? In 2022, the emphasis was on “inclusion” and “diversity”. Well-meaning Americans mostly thought that all sounded nice.
Now, they’ve had two years to come to grips with what “diversity and inclusion” really means.
Disney has faced backlash at the box office following its push of LGBTQ representation.
Disney Pixar studio’s, “Elemental,” included a “non-binary” character and the movie had one of the worst openings in the studio’s history, earning just $29.5 million at the domestic box office. “Strange World” involved a same-sex teen romance and was also a box office flop for the company.
The Daily Wire
So, the question is: just how much more money are companies like Disney really prepared to blow, just to pander to a tiny minority of creepy groomer activists?