www.hollywoodreporter.com
Every company faces this every day. They all take positions on a large number of issues. Taking those positions may alienate people who oppose the position. Not supporting a position can also alienate people who support the issue. You can’t please everyone. Companies generally have a mission statement and with it a set of core values they supposedly live by which goes beyond just making a profit for shareholders. It’s mostly corporate mumbo jumbo talk and a bunch of buzz words but it still exists. Generally speaking the company should decide what issues to support or not support based on those values.
Expect Democrats to offer amendments regarding the board, likely removing the Governor as the appointee of the board. Those will lose by party line vote. But there could be adjustments that are agreeable. First committee stop is tomorrow at 2pm. Will be interesting to watch.Disney to Keep Perks Under Florida Bill Allowing Gov. Ron DeSantis to Assume Control of Special Tax District
The legislation gives DeSantis the power to appoint members to the district's governing body.
Corporations are people, my friend.
For now, I hope that changes in the future friend
It’s not exactly a new or recent concept.
And if you can’t do it (legally), you really shouldn’t. If Disney proves to be the wronged party, it won’t be DeSantis they sue. It will be the state of Florida who is complicit in all these actions.
So you also, obviously, are in favor of banning corporate donations to political campaigns???
Companies buy into to get access and favors . The Mouse is not the only player in this long running never ending game.
The state’s plan has just been released. The counties aren’t involved.
I don't think that's entirely accurate. Disney tried to do nothing, including avoiding the meaningless piece of paper. That caused a HUGE amount of outrage from a lot of cast members (many of whom are LGBTQ or know someone who is). As there were discussions of a walkout by the cast members, Chapek reversed his decision, and then took it well past denouncing the legislation to try to appease the cast members. This included eliminating contributions to all politicians in Florida. Without their money flowing into their election funds, the state legislature decided to attack and make an example out of Disney for all its "Wokeness" (I have thoughts on that word, but I'll leave that for another time). I'm pretty sure that's how we got here. Disney wasn't trying to make change, they were trying to stay out of it entirely, and got called out for it, and had then overplayed what they needed to do.
This was covered in an extensive story (“How Disney Lost Florida”) published in June 2022 by the Financial Times.
www.ft.com
My mistake, I forgot he came out at a meeting and said they were working behind the scenes instead and didn't want to say anything public, that came out after his letter to employees if I remember correctly. He did stop the political contributions in all of Florida which is when the legislature really came at Disney though (pretty sure that was correct. Desantis may have made a ton more with his war, but I'm not sure the other politicians would have).This was covered in an extensive story (“How Disney Lost Florida”) published in June 2022 by the Financial Times.
It’s behind a paywall, but here’s a link to it for reference:
How Disney lost Florida
The company’s botched response to the state’s controversial ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill enraged allies across the political spectrum
Some highlights from the Financial Times article:
- Early on, Disney had an opportunity to sign a letter protesting the Parental Rights in Education Act. Several companies such as Apple and Amazon had signed this letter.
- Now fired Disney head of corporate affairs Geoff Morrell advised Disney CEO Bob Chapek not to sign.
- Instead, Morrell recommended working through Disney's "formidable team of 38 lobbyists in Florida" to "soften" the bill.
- In the past, Disney had been used to getting its way with Florida legislators but this time they were "surprise[d] to see that Disney’s efforts to water down the bill were not working."
- Former CEO Bob Iger made matters worse by retweeting President Biden, who called the bill "hateful".
- As a result of Disney's lack of public action, the considerable goodwill Disney had with its LGBTQ+ employees was damaged.
- Chapek went on a “listening tour” to various company locations to try to repair that damage.
- DeSantis used Disney's belated public statements to attack the "woke" Disney. DeSantis said, Disney is “going to criticize the fact that we don’t want transgenderism in kindergarten and first grade classrooms . . . that’s the hill they’re going to die on?”
- The $100K Disney donated to DeSantis is chump-change compared to the $50M he has collected elsewhere. In other words, Disney has no bargaining leverage with DeSantis at the moment.
- "Chapek has been in course-correction mode ever since."
- Chapek fired Disney's head of tv Peter Rice to strengthen Chapek's position within Disney. (Rice is popular and was viewed as a possible replacement to Chapek.)
- The Board strengthened Chapek's position further by backing Chapek in this firing.
- GSU Professor Anthony Kreis, who specializes in civil rights and politics, is quoted as saying, “The issues around Disney are going to get litigated ad nauseam" during the campaign, ... "There’s no winning strategy here for them.”
- A former Disney executive is quoted as saying, “In a short period of time they managed to p*** off both the left and the right.”
Maybe that would be better, but the reality is businesses have been speaking up since this country started and they have the right to do so. Even if it is just through which politicians they choose to support, they are making a statement.
They are focused on running their business. You people act like Disney stopped making movies, paused Disney+, ESPN and ABC and closed their theme parks while they stopped to take make a political statement.
