Disney Headlines for December 12th, 2023
In this week’s Disney Headlines, Disney and “Bob Eiger” enter the Twilight Zone…and not the fun one.
Questioning Reality
The other day, a litigious billionaire cited a satirical publication in deriding a misspelled CEO about the state of his company.
At that moment, I felt like Chidi from The Good Place having Jeremy Bearimy explained to me. Here’s the video if you don’t get the reference:
This latest Headline worked the same for me as the dot over the I did for Chidi. It broke me. I give up.
Here’s precisely what happened. Last week, as the social media website formerly known as Twitter entered freefall, its pilot did the unexpected.
Photo: The Hollywood Reporter
Rather than trying to save the plane from crashing, this particular individual aimed for the nearest CEO he despised.
In this case, the billionaire owner was Elon Musk, and the CEO was Disney’s Bob Iger, or as Musk called him, “Bob Eiger.”
Disney/Twitter
Recently, Musk’s Twitter purchase, which had already cost him tens of billions, took on water when IBM announced an advertising pause on the service.
This happened after a publication, Media Matters, discovered that Twitter, currently known as X, posted ads alongside hate speech.
Twitter/X Logos
As you might imagine, advertisers disliked that behavior and stopped their ad spending on Twitter, which has wrecked the company’s already perilous finances.
Musk sued Media Matters for pointing out what was happening. This lawsuit has led to, let’s say, cynical evaluations of Musk’s chances of winning.
Oddly enough, Musk’s lawsuit shares a similarity to the one that Ron DeSantis and the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District have filed against Disney.
Should either suit succeed, everything we thought we knew about the law is apparently inaccurate.
That’s not me saying that. Instead, a federal prosecutor describes the whole thing as “a PR stunt masquerading as a lawsuit.” So, yeah. Here we are.
Why Is “Bob Eiger” Involved?
Quite possibly the pinnacle of standup comedy is a routine by Larry Miller entitled The Five Stages of Drinking.
One of the punchlines in that story is that someone gets so drunk that they slug the person at the end of the bar just because they don’t like his face.
Photo: Disney CEO Bob Iger (Getty Images)
In this scenario, Musk is the drunk, and Bob Iger is the person sitting at the end of the bar.
No, Musk wasn’t drunk – as far as I know – but this whole scenario is about as ridiculous.
Photo by Britta Pedersen-Pool/Getty Images
Again, IBM was the company that started the advertising pause on X/Twitter, although many media companies like Disney quickly followed.
Apparently, Musk doesn’t have it in for IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, though.
Photo: Disney
Instead, Musk quite randomly started assailing Iger, a frequent target of the right-wing outrage machine.
I would imagine that was an out-of-body moment for Iger, who had recently expressed his respect for Musk as a businessperson.
Image: Disney
Musk must not have heard the kind words, as he took their relationship in a vastly different direction.
In fact, Musk posted a link to the satirical website, the Sacramento Bee.
Photo: The Hollywood Reporter
The Headline from that site was, “Disney Awarded Defense Contract After Producing More Bombs Than Lockheed Martin.”
That’s objectively hysterical in the wake of Disney’s frustrating 2023 box office campaign.
Photo: Getty Images
Musk somehow didn’t realize it was a joke and congratulated Iger, whose name he didn’t try to spell that time, for a “well-deserved” but totally fictional award.
When Disney’s Board of Directors offered Iger his old job, do you think he would have said yes if he’d known the type of madness that awaited him?
Speaking of Madness…
Photo:impulsecreative.com
MickeyBlog’s Justin Hermes and I probably won’t remember 2023 fondly, as we’ve spent a depressing amount of it chronicling the Reedy Creek story.
I’ll spare you the recap, as you know the deal by now. However, the latest events somehow surpass the previous events as the most ridiculous ones yet.
Central Florida Tourism Oversight District
After the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District (CFTOD) tried to entice people to narc on Disney, they learned a hard truth.
The company had governed the Reedy Creek land better than any local government I could name.
Photo: Google earth
Seriously, based on what we’ve learned of Reedy Creek’s management, Disney should be put in charge of the entire American government.
Of course, when you’re in a legal and political fight with the opposition, you cannot concede their core competence.
Photo: Fox News
Instead, you search for wrongdoings. If you can’t find those, you gin up any attack you can muster, whether it’s based in reality or not.
Before the most recent CFTOD meeting, the board members REALLY needed a distraction.
@HazenWESH on Twitter
They’d paid a publicity firm to find an angle of attack that would allow them to play offense rather than defense against Disney.
Thus, the CFTOD went to the Internal Revenue Service and took the unusual step of reporting all its employees for tax evasion. No, really.
Photo: Moneycrashers.com
According to the CFTOD, the benefits that Disney provided Reedy Creek employees were worth $2 million.
The current CFTOD claim is that Disney didn’t tell its workers to pay taxes on that.
Central Florida Tourism Oversight District
Given the way previous CFTOD claims have gone, we’ll probably find out something much different later, but let’s ignore that for now.
The CFTOD, whose incompetence during its early days has led to Reedy Creek turnover of more than ten percent of staff, won’t win friends with this tactic.
Why Did They Do It?
This move mirrors the one that Musk just did with Iger.
Nobody at the CFTOD cares about worker satisfaction right now. If they did, they’d stop everything and pay attention to those nightmarish exit surveys.
Photo: Scott Gustin on Twitter
Instead, the CFTOD wants to make Disney look like the villain in the media when reality has shown the complete opposite.
As recently as February of this year, worker satisfaction was high, and Disney governed the Reedy Creek land thoughtfully.
The new leadership…isn’t quite as competent yet. So, they’re making a big deal of unpaid tax incentives, which isn’t just ridiculous. It’s hypocritical.
The CFTOD will pay more money in legal fees this year trying to justify its existence legally than the amount of money we’re discussing.
Photo: The Business Journal
As a reminder, those perks went to hard-working employees as a kind gesture from Disney rewarding the people for their efforts.
Do you know who else gets perks like that? Government officials.
Photo: Washington Post
In fact, Disney donated $100,000 to a campaign fund and “awarded $6,809 worth of Disney food and beverage” to a certain politician in 2019.
His name is Ron DeSantis.
Nobody involved with the CFTOD had any problem accepting gifts from Disney right up until they picked a fight with Mickey Mouse and got slugged.
Photo: The Business Journal
Now, they’re trying to pretend like Disney has done something dirty here, which it didn’t in the least.
But, even if Disney HAD done something inappropriate, the Florida politicians who dissolved Reedy Creek would have been the beneficiaries.
Central Florida Tourism Oversight District
And here’s the scariest thing I can say here. I’ve tried exceptionally hard to provide the NEUTRAL evaluation of what is happening.
A dedicated muckraker could make the CFTOD sound so much worse.
Quick Facts about Disney Donations
Photo: Pexel.com
How ridiculous is this latest attempt? Here are a few quick facts:
“The Republican Party of Florida also reported approximately $850,000 worth of in-kind Disney donations since 2014, including hotel rooms, park tickets, food, beverages, event space and other items listed as “entertainment,” according to campaign finance disclosures.
Photo: skillastics.com
Former Gov. Rick Scott, now Florida’s junior senator, also reported a $252,503 in-kind PAC contribution from Disney in 2015, which campaign filings indicated was donated for travel, food and beverages.”
Overall, Disney “has donated more than $43 million worth of cash and in-kind considerations to state-level politicians and political committees — plus millions more spent on lobbying.”
Photo:visitorlando.com
Disney’s not the only theme park doing this, either. Records show that Universal Studios “provided $1.8 million worth of in-kind donations to political parties and candidates since 2014, via donated lodging, tickets, food/beverage, and other entertainment, the records show.”
Photo: Disney
So, that’s where we’re at with this whole thing. The beneficiaries of Disney’s generosity are now describing it as corporate cronyism and reporting their own workers to the IRS.
I’m starting to miss the simpler times when the most controversial Disney story was the kidnapping of Buzzy.
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Feature Photo: Disney
