At least on this occasion, in the battle between fascism and freedoms, freedoms won because the consumer had the power to hit Disney hard by withholding their custom, and that is what they did.
We sometimes feel powerless. And sometimes we are. However, this series of events shows that small, individual actions can have significant consequences.
We have it from The Sage.
“Disney’s stars turned on Disney and made their feelings known publicly.
The media across the world were outraged by Disney’s actions.
So were all those who believe in freedom of speech.
And vitally, many of them cancelled their Disney subscriptions.”
That last part is almost certainly bollocks. For starters, this isn’t even a subscription show, and secondly, Disney+ is a really different bunch of people to Outraged New York Times types. It’s soccer moms in Ohio. People who might not be right-wing, but aren’t that left-wing.
The real fact is that late-night talk shows are marginal stuff nowadays. Partly because younger people are on Netflix/Amazon/YouTube, but also that people like Kimmel destroyed the audience. Made it about politics, which Johnny Carson never did. Gets great headlines in the NYT but viewers don’t like it. If you want to take a hit and keep the FCC happy, what bit of red meat do you throw to them?
And yes, the FCC are political. Run by government. It’s Donny’s bloke in charge. Much like one of the TV companies giving Hildog’s daughter a nice job to keep her from doing bad things to them in case she got to be President.
WB, “Disney’s stars turned on Disney and made their feelings known publicly”.
As they didn’t for Roseanne Barr or Gina Carano.
‘Cancel culture is wrong’, cry the left (unless it’s the left doing the cancelling).