Welcome to the Wonderful Woke World of Disney
Jon Reisman
My family lived in southern California in the last years of the Eisenhower administration. We lived in a ranch house with a lot of glass next to an orange grove. My parents took my sister and me to Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland. I remember riding a pony at Knott’s Berry Farm. My memories of Disneyland are less clear…crowds mostly, complicated by later Disney experiences with Sunday night family TV (Wonderful World of Disney), the 1964 New York World’s Fair (It’s a small world after all), movies (Mary Poppins) and general cultural hegemony. As a parent in the 90’s my boys watched The Lion King and Aladdin, and enjoyed an expensive sojourn to Disney World in Orlando. Disney now also includes Pixar (Toy Story, Cars), the Marvel and Star Wars franchises, ABC and ESPN.
In the late 60’s my father, a liberal Democrat, shared his dislike and discomfort with conservative Republican capitalist Walt Disney. I didn’t really understand at the time, but have come to share his dismay with prominent American companies who explicitly dis my values. Fifty years later, that is once conservative, now woke culture warrior Disney.
Last year Disney picked a fight with Florida governor Ron DeSantis over anti-grooming legislation prohibiting sex and gender indoctrination/education for 5-8 year olds. The woke LQBTQ+ mafia tried to kill the popular legislation by misleadingly labelling it the “Don’t say Gay” law. Disney brought a knife to a gun fight, and ended up losing their special local governance privileges granted when Disney World was built and their woke CEO in the bargain.
Apparently the experience was not sufficiently educational for Disney’s woke cultural warriors. They have doubled down with The Proud Family, streaming on Disney+. The Proud Family is a rebooted children’s animated series touting progressive indoctrination themes from critical race theory, Black Lives Matter and the aforementioned LQBTQ+mafia. It teaches kids to hate their country and judge people based on their skin color, gender and sexuality.
The Proud Family features story lines and songs proclaiming and condemning America’s systemic racism and white supremacy, whilst advocating for reparations, white guilt and Maoist Cultural Revolution reeducation sessions.
The Proud Family repeats the discredited “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” Black Lives Matter Ferguson Missouri lie in an effort to miseducate and permanently divide the country on racial lines. I guess I cannot really blame Disney. “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” paid huge dividends for current Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who rode the BLM riot train to a Democratic US Senate nomination and 3 terms as a State Senator before securing her current sinecure as Maine’s election and drivers license czarina, from whence she reliably opposes any effort to require voter ID (It’s racist!) and bolster election security. To my knowledge, Bellows has never apologized for promoting the Hands Up, Don’t Shoot progressive disinformation fabrication. I am sure she is a Disney+ subscriber.
Disney is hardly the only American corporation promoting wokism. The list includes Apple, Amazon, Meta (Facebook), Alphabet (Google), Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Chase, PayPal, Progressive Insurance, Proctor and Gamble, Pfizer (enjoy that devil worship at the Grammy’s?), Merck, Patagonia, the NBA, Nike, Starbucks, and many, many more. Our woke Boardrooms, corporations, Pentagon, media and classrooms should make the left very, very proud.
Jon Reisman is an economist and policy analyst who retired from the University of Maine at Machias after 38 years. He resides on Cathance Lake in Cooper, where he is a Selectman and a Statler and Waldorf intern. Mr. Reisman’s views are his own and he welcomes comments as letters to the editor here, or to him directly via email at [email protected].