{"id":1453809,"date":"2022-04-26T08:16:01","date_gmt":"2022-04-26T12:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1453809"},"modified":"2022-04-26T08:16:05","modified_gmt":"2022-04-26T12:16:05","slug":"florida-must-hold-disney-accountable-because-nobody-else-can","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/florida-must-hold-disney-accountable-because-nobody-else-can\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Must Hold Disney Accountable Because Nobody Else Can"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fflorida-must-hold-disney-accountable-because-nobody-else-can%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1453809&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div class=\"row justify-content-center\">\n<div class=\"col-12\">\n<figure class=\"article-thumbnail mb-30 mb-sm-60\">\n<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Mickey needs new management. Disney stumbled into the debate about Florida\u2019s parental rights bill, and then kept yapping after losing that fight. Various Disney leaders were even caught on video <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/03\/30\/disney-executives-admit-of-course-were-grooming-your-children\/\">boasting<\/a> of \u201cadding queerness\u201d and \u201cqueer stories\u201d to as much Disney content as possible.<\/p>\n<p>Florida Republicans have responded by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/desantis-signs-bill-stripping-disney-self-governing-status\">passing<\/a> a bill that threatens to remove some of Disney\u2019s special privileges in the state. Although the bill leaves some time to negotiate before it takes effect, it is still a significant strike against Disney. This was, as John Daniel Davidson recently <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/04\/21\/gov-desantis-is-right-to-attack-disney-republicans-everywhere-should-follow-his-lead\/\">argued<\/a> in The Federalist, the right response: Republicans must push back against woke corporatism and capital.<\/p>\n<p>After all, targeting woke capital and corporations is not about punishing actual owners for using their property as they see fit. Rather, in almost every instance, woke corporations are run by managers who do not own more than a tiny fraction of the companies they direct. Yet they nonetheless view the property they have in trust as their own, to be used for their personal political and ideological goals.<\/p>\n<p>The left has learned that turning a corporation woke doesn\u2019t require buying it. All it takes is a few key executives, some vocal employees, and a bit of social media pressure. That has been enough to push company after company into BLM-supporting, pride-flag-waving, diversity-consultant hiring wokeness.<\/p>\n<h2>Shareholders Can\u2019t Hold Disney Accountable<\/h2>\n<p>Disney is an ideal example of this. Disney is controlled by business managers, acting on behalf of financial managers. Bob Iger, Disney\u2019s former chief executive officer and current executive chair and chair of the board of directors, is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.investopedia.com\/articles\/markets\/102715\/top-5-disney-shareholders.asp\">reportedly<\/a> the largest individual shareholder, with less than a tenth of 1 percent of the company\u2019s outstanding stock. The actual ownership of Disney is held by various investment groups, which are themselves acting as managers for the money they hold on behalf of millions of us.<\/p>\n<p>Disney is not run by its owners. It is run by managers. And they in turn are accountable to financial managers who are investing money that belongs to other people. <\/p>\n<p>Buying into, say, an index fund offered by Vanguard that includes Disney stock gets Vanguard a seat at the table, not the individual investor. This multilayered management scheme makes it all but impossible for the people whose money was used to buy shares in Disney to hold Disney\u2019s executives accountable.<\/p>\n<p>As this illustrates, for every woke activist billionaire there are many more woke activist managers, who only wield real power because of the property they hold in trust for other people. Thus, the activism of woke corporations and capital is an attempt to establish a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2021\/05\/75520\/\">managerial oligarchy<\/a>, in which the people entrusted with regular people\u2019s money use that as leverage to bully and rule regular people. To a great extent, woke capitalism consists of using our money to intimidate our representatives and impose economic sanctions on entire states, from Indiana to Georgia, over everything from election security to religious liberty.<\/p>\n<h2>Not an Attack on First Amendment<\/h2>\n<p>These uses of corporate economic power for unrelated ideological ends are abuses of the stewardship that corporate and financial managers are entrusted with. Unfortunately, the diffuse and fluctuating nature of our current system of investment capitalism and ownership makes it difficult, if not impossible, for shareholders to hold these managers accountable.<\/p>\n<p>This structural failure is why conservatives (as distinct from to libertarian ideologues) recognize a need for government in restraining these would-be managerial oligarchs. This understanding is not, as some on the right have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/farewell-to-free-speech-say-florida-republicans\/\">claimed<\/a>, an <a href=\"https:\/\/newsletters.theatlantic.com\/the-third-rail\/6261f9a29881d90020642c9d\/florida-ron-de-santis-disney-status\/\">attack<\/a> on First Amendment rights or property rights. Conservatives know that respecting these rights does not require pretending that publicly traded multinational corporations are the same as privately owned businesses.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, it is an established legal principle that private companies are entitled to more deference in making First Amendment claims than public corporations are. For example, Hobby Lobby was able to make a successful religious freedom claim because it is a closely owned corporation \u2014 basically, a really successful family business.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast, Disney is a publicly traded corporation that is mostly owned by investment firms using money they manage on behalf of a multitude of faceless investors. Such a company is not perpetually entitled to special privileges from the state, especially if its managers are abusing their power to undermine a state\u2019s representative government.<\/p>\n<h2>Disney Picked This Fight<\/h2>\n<p>Disney\u2019s leaders picked a fight with a popular and competent Republican governor who had enormous leverage over them, at a time when Republican voters were clamoring for someone to stand up to woke corporations. And Disney did so on an issue where the public, even Democrats, was with DeSantis and against Disney. Florida\u2019s Parental Rights in Education law is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/floridas-much-smeared-parental-rights-bill-is-popular-even-among-democrats\/\">popular<\/a>; teaching small children about sexual orientation and gender identity is not.<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, the bill was necessary. Although teaching preschoolers about sex and gender identity is generally frowned upon, it is popular with many educators. Just look at Evanston, Ill., an upscale suburban Chicago school district that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.city-journal.org\/radical-gender-lessons-for-young-children?wallit_nosession=1\">has<\/a> \u201cadopted a radical gender curriculum\u201d that \u201cbegins in pre-kindergarten, with a series of lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity.\u201d By third grade, students are<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>told that white European \u2018colonizers\u201d imposed their \u2018Western and Christian ideological framework\u2019 on racial minorities and \u2018forced two-spirit people to conform to the gender binary.\u2019 The teacher tells students that \u2018many people feel like they aren\u2019t really a boy or a girl\u2019 and that they should \u2018call people by the gender they have in their heart.\u2019 Students are encouraged to \u2018break the binary,\u2019 reject the system of \u2018whiteness,\u2019 and study photographs of black men in dresses and a man wearing lipstick and long earrings.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This sort of indoctrination is what Florida has prohibited. That Disney was fighting for this, and that it has promised to \u201cqueer\u201d its programming with similar themes, shows the depravity of its leadership. <\/p>\n<p>Something is very wrong in Mickey\u2019s house. Unfortunately, our business and financial sectors have developed in ways that make it effectively impossible for those whose money is actually invested in Disney to hold the company\u2019s leadership accountable.<\/p>\n<h2>Duty to Protect Kids<\/h2>\n<p>Nonetheless, conservatives have a duty to preserve children\u2019s innocence and to protect them from the confusion of gender ideology \u2014 confusion that too often ends in chemical and surgical mutilation. Fulfilling this obligation now requires conservatives to distinguish between genuine rights of property and conscience and those falsely claimed by the managerial oligarchy.<\/p>\n<p>It is right and just for conservative officials to revoke special privileges held by companies whose managers attempt to use economic coercion to overrule our representative government. The threat of losing money and influence might bring the would-be oligarchs to heel. After all, we know that Disney executives bow and scrape to China\u2019s communist dictatorship out of greed and fear.<\/p>\n<p>The people running Disney have turned against the ordinary families whose support built the company \u2014 and whose investments and retirement accounts provide the money for the financial firms that hold the big stakes in Disney. If Disney\u2019s leaders no longer love regular people, then it is time to make them fear us.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mickey needs new management. Disney stumbled into the debate about Florida\u2019s parental rights bill, and then kept yapping after losing that fight. Various Disney<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":538,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1453809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/538"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1453809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1453809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1453809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1453809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}