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Disney Reaps What It Sows
Four weeks ago ESPN personality Jemele Hill took on President Trump in a series of Tweets (condensed into a single quote here):
“Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists. The height of white privilege is being able to ignore his white supremacy, because it’s of no threat to you. Well, it’s a threat to me. Trump is the most ignorant, offensive president of my lifetime. His rise is a direct result of white supremacy. Period.”
The honchos at the network declined to discipline her, although they have a long history of suspending and publicly admonishing talent for “controversial” conservative opinions or generally criticizing the network for their liberal politics. Former World Series hero Curt Schilling was fired for his opinions on the North Carolina bathroom bill and it emerged that long-time SportsCenter anchor Linda Cohn was suspended for merely suggesting politics had a hand in the network’s falling subscriber rolls.
“That is definitely a percentage of it,” Cohn said on WABC’s Bernie and Sid, “I don’t know how big a percentage, but if anyone wants to ignore that fact, they’re blind.” Clay Travis of Outkick the Coverage reported that Cohn was told by ESPN president John Skipper to “stay home and think about” what she said.
Left: Bob Iger (Fortune) Right: John Skipper (Hollywood Reporter)
Bob Iger, the president of ESPN’s parent, The Walt Disney Company, defended the non-discipline of Hill. “I felt we needed to take into account what other people at ESPN were feeling at this time,” he told The New York Times, “and that resulted in not taking action.”
According to my sources inside the network, ESPN did consider suspending Hill but no one would take her shift on the 6ET SportsCenter, so that may account for the “others” line.
Iger is rumored to be interested in the 2020 Democratic nomination and also defended Jimmy Kimmel’s anti-GOP tirades, adding “But I think he should be careful.” And Disney has also declined to comment on whether or not they were party to any of the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment settlements when that company owned Miramax.
This weekend Hill was back on her Twitter account and evidently Iger and Skipper have had enough.
The seeds were sown last night as the Dallas Cowboys fell to the Green Bay Packers. With the NFL’s ratings falling and their brand taking a major hit with the anthem controversy, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones told reporters, “If there’s anything that is disrespectful to the flag, then we will not play, understand? We will not. If we are disrespecting the flag, then we will not play. Period… We’re going to respect the flag and I’m going to create the perception of it. And we have.”
Sunday on Twitter, Hill unloaded on Jones. “This play always work. Change happens when advertisers are impacted. If you feel strongly about JJ’s statement, boycott his advertisers.” She attached a partial list including AT&T, Bank of America, the Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Ford Motor Company, MillerCoors, and PepsiCo.
Funny thing about Cowboys advertisers, they’re also ESPN advertisers. They don’t take kindly to having the networks they spend millions of dollars on urging consumer boycotts of them. ESPN’s statement reads:
Jemele Hill has been suspended for two weeks for a second violation of our social media guidelines. She previously acknowledged letting her colleagues and company down with an impulsive tweet. In the aftermath, all employees were reminded of how individual tweets may reflect negatively on ESPN and that such actions would have consequences. Hence this decision.
There is no principle behind this. It is purely craven survival mode. But it’s exactly what ESPN deserves.
ESPN doesn’t just “cover” liberal activism, they promote and facilitate it. If you go to the network’s website you’ll find a section called “espnW.” It’s not just a section on women’s sports. It is a hotbed of liberal activism.
Every year ESPN hosts the espnW: Women + Sports Summit. In recapping this year’s event, Alyssa Roenigk writes:
For the past year, I’ve had the privilege of helping to run our Athlete Activism impact group: a diverse collection of passionate, involved women who are interested in having tough, uncomfortable, necessary conversations about the changing landscape of activism in this country. We discuss the fears that often paralyze female athletes who want to use their voices and brainstorm ways in which we can better support women in sports when they feel empowered to speak up.
During this year’s work session, the discussion continually circled back to the importance of education and youth athletes. Over and again, someone in the room charged us at espnW with finding ways to better educate young people not only on the changing dynamic of modern activism, but on why it is important to stand up for others and the long history of activism in sports that has brought us all to this moment in time.
Get them young, indoctrinate them, and turn them into fist-raising, anthem-kneeling radicals.
Disney is reaping what they have been actively sowing. And giving us all another reason to cut the cord.
Published in Culture
Hopefully ESPN will re-evaluate her value to the company, and her new position at ESPN will be something less… public.
Just imagine a white person at ESPN calling Obama a “Black Panther” and think about the outcome.
Along with the others you mentioned, ESPN also had zero problems dropping Hank Williams Jr. after he said Obama playing golf with Boehner was like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu. With the state of Politics in 2011 between the GOP and Democrats, it was an apt comparison, and since he didn’t specify who was who, I felt ESPN should have issued a public warning, but they canned him in less than a day, I believe.
ESPN is a Leftist powerhouse and now they are paying the price.
Reverend Al is on it! This could be fun.
Where does she think the money that pays for her salary is coming from? So many young people nowadays don’t even understand the basic money concepts. No wonder we have more and more Marxist idiots screaming for blood everyday.
She survived the layoffs, she shares John Skipper’s politics, she’s a black female and her first tweet carried no consequences. She probably felt 10-foot tall and bulletproof.
Maybe so, but all she had to do to see why this second tweet would be treated differently was read and comprehend her own tweet:
Yup, sure does.
There really is no reason not to encourage this little liberal spat for partisan gain. Maybe Jemele’s right; enquiring minds want to know if players who stand for a pay check are sellouts. It’s an interesting question which should be
exploitedexplored further on Twitter.Everyone is a sellout – a sellout for one’s paycheck. You wear the uniform, you hold the mic with the logo on it, you represent the man who signs your check. If players and TV “personalities” can not grasp that concept, they will hire someone who will.
You know that, and I know that, but there are hard core SJW’s on Twitter who don’t know it or don’t care. They are our unwitting allies.
Not everyone earns a paycheck. This is another advantage of being on welfare: one need not “sell out” to “the man.”
What a quagmire for ESPN, for the advertisers, for the NFL.
Companies hitch their wagon to SJW causes without appreciating the risks. Buying indulgences seems like cheap insurance. But, unlike the medieval versions, the constantly shifting mores of progressivism can make them worthless in a moment.
Values that seemed timeless, true without question, become monstrous almost overnight. What was normal yesterday becomes unclean today. The issues seem to pop from nowhere then suddenly appear everywhere, with a uniformity of thought that amazes. Occasionally sharing he same phrases. An orchestrated mob.
Will this be the wake up call for companies to stop flirting with the left? Would it instead make sense to stand like a rock against the tides of political fashion.
JS,
Funny thing about making that big corporate money. Usually, there is a big corporation that is very concerned about its bottom line attached to your paycheck. Oh well.
Regards,
Jim
It’s just so hard to reconcile Disney today against Disney 55 years ago when they were so All-American. This colors my perceptions of all their other entertainment products. I don’t think they know any more what the good wholesome part of America wants anymore. But it’s for sure they know what the liberal parts of America want.
I am pretty happy though with all of the megabucks they’ve invested in bringing the best of Japanese animation to America. You would think they would be competing with themselves in doing this, but it has a quality all in a class of its own. I haven’t watched any Disney produced animation for years.
I think there is something schizophrenic about wanting to be in the spot light and ‘grabbing the big bucks’ in a high profile position while simultaneously dissing the business model behind you and the sports fans out there. It must be so hard to get to that position that you must really want to be there to make the sacrifices to get there. But then to turn around and create a negative impression of the company that got you there. How do you divorce yourself from the negavity you generate by acting in this way? It just boggles the mind. But I think a lot of it could come from being overly self-centered. There’s a lot of that going around these days.
The company struggled after Walt died. It was in paralysis with WWWD Disease. Some liberalization was inevitable. When Ron Miller (Walt’s son-in-law) scandalized with its Touchstone Division and incoming chairman Michael Eisner greenlighted pictures like Pretty Woman and Down and Out in Beverly Hills, both were still keen to keep the Disney name separated from the more mature content. The present leadership doesn’t seem to care.
Comedic gold.
I love it. I’ve been avoiding ESPN because I can’t stand their liberal politics constantly being injected into the sports. Lots on the Right feel the same way and ESPN’s numbers have been down. Now they have managed to step in it with the Left too. My Shadenfreude knows no bounds. Maybe, just maybe the message will get out there that, ” maybe we shouldn’t mix politics with our sports”……
ESPN: Creating victims, and losing viewers, one tweet at a time.
Espn is a hot mess. They don’t seem to know who and what they are. Since these protests began it’s been most of their coverage with commentary and hot takes from all their analysts and hosts. “Embrace Debate” is their motto. They chose to take on these social and political issues. They expect and desire their analysts to say controversial stuff. Now they suspend employees for essentially doing their job.
So true.
Many are wondering how Jamelle Hill could have been so foolish. “What did she think would happen?”
I disagree. She’s probably shocked. She probably thought this was her job. She could be forgiven for thinking that. She knows she’s not there for her knowledge of sports – she probably presumes that promoting the Democrat party was her job. She’s probably getting pissed off right about now.
Why does anyone care what this ignorant, little twit says? All of you being shocked and commenting is putting her in the spotlight. Being ignored is the worse thing that can happen to her, being irrelevant.
The Disney Company is desperately longing to push a lesbian princess on us. You know in your heart this is true.
I don’t know if Sun Tzu ever said this, but he should have:
The problem I have with the kneeling is not that (black) players are protesting racial relations in the US, they are not. They are kneeling to protest Trump, plain and simple. Before Trump made his comment only a couple players like Kapernick were protesting the anthem, it was only after Trump made his off the hand comment that players felt it was their duty to knee in protest.
Anyway ESPN and the NFL are learning that the other half of this country has had enough with being told that they are bigots and racists.
Oh, they already did, in Once Upon a Time (ABC, really, so perhaps that doesn’t count?)
This is so ridiculous. A sell out is someone who forgoes the risk of standing for their beliefs or convictions. There has been, at this point, no risk associated with kneeling for these players.
It is an awkward position, for sure, but here is where principle shines… is it worth the risk to you to continue kneeling? No one can force these guys to be sell outs. That is their choice.
Hilariously enough, any black player who had refused to kneel in the first place would have been an Uncle Tom.
Not a children’s show, so its still “ok”. I was surprised by that. She was clearly in love with the General in the movie.
Am I supposed to have heard of this guy? Yet further proof that success in sports “journalism” has little to do with intelligence. Hill’s totally uninformed original comment:
Zirin seems not have a clue that this alone warranted a suspension and that Hill’s (no doubt insincere) apology saved her from that. The lesson is quit while you’re ahead.
Actually, I thought, at the end of Mulan, that she definitely liked the General, but that she wasn’t firmly caught. And the OUAT writers had already firmly established that what we saw in the animated Disney movies was not necessarily what “actually” happened.
And, of course, we are forgetting how conveniently writers make their characters bisexual.
I don’t know, perhaps being somewhat attracted to both sexes really is common. How would I know what other people feel about that?