By Rich Lowry
Friday, April
22, 2022
Just like that, tyranny has descended
on Florida.
The state legislature, with the support of
Governor Ron DeSantis, voted to repeal the “special independent district”
enjoyed by Disney for half a century.
This is a sign, we are told, of the advent
of an American authoritarianism that brooks no dissent — Disney criticizes a
measure supported by the Florida GOP, the so-called Don’t Say Gay bill, and
immediately gets targeted.
There’s a reason this fight escalated to
this point, though. Disney was the aggressor in the battle over the education
bill, lied about it, and pledged to work to repeal it.
Even though the bill had nothing to do
with Disney whatsoever — nothing to do with its product, its business model, or
its employees. The company got pushed into its stance based on pressure from a
woke segment of its employees and from progressives on the outside.
Disney’s case against the bill relied on
the smear that the legislation somehow threatened gay or trans people. In fact,
the law merely seeks to exclude inappropriate material from being taught to
young children in the classroom — an objective that once would have been
considered utterly banal.
“Classroom instruction,” the law says, “by
school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may
not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age
appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with
state standards.”
Based on that, Disney went to the
mattresses. And it did so not to serve its shareholders, enhance its
profitability, protect its intellectual property, or align itself with its vast
and politically diverse customer base.
This was, shockingly, an iconic American
brand making itself into a free-floating weapon of woke cultural politics in
response to the social and political influence of a small number of vocal
progressives.
Like so many companies before, Disney
calculated the risk/reward of gratuitously taking up a left-wing political and
cultural fight and considered it all reward, no risk. The Florida legislature
decided to convince it that it was wrong.
Republicans have fantasized about exacting
revenge on woke corporations before, but to no effect. Disney’s problem is that
it had a glaring vulnerability in the form of an arrangement that can easily be
portrayed as a special favor.
The provisions allowing Disney to govern
itself in its special independent district are so extensive that one analyst refers
to the so-called Reedy Creek Improvement District as “the Vatican with mouse
ears.”
“Never before or since has such outlandish
dominion been given to a private corporation,” Florida writer Carl Hiaasen
notes in his book Team Rodent. “Disney owns its own utilities. It
administers its own planning and zoning. It composes its own building codes and
employs its own inspectors. It maintains its own fire department. It even has
the authority to levy taxes.”
For good measure, it can build its own
airport and nuclear-power plant.
Now, that’s all scheduled to go away in a
year’s time. Obviously, it is not a good practice for government to retaliate
against a business, even a business enjoying a special status.
This fight could have welcome effects,
though, if it convinces Disney that it made a mistake by allowing itself to get
bullied and cajoled into becoming a combatant in the culture war, or if it
convinces other corporations that there’s a potential price to be paid for
joining woke mobs.
Republicans don’t want corporations to
become tools in advancing their agenda; they just want them to
exit the culture wars and focus, once again, on their business, an outcome that
would lower the temperature in the country’s cultural fights at least a little.
Ideally, Disney and the Florida
legislature work out a renewal of the company’s special district before it is
set to expire, and the house of mouse — and other corporations seduced into
making themselves de facto left-wing pressure groups — resolves to stick to its
core competency and mission.
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