During yet another segment encouraging everyone to "cancel" Disney over the company's opposition to Florida's 'Don't Say Gay" bill, host Rachel Campos-Duffy made this ridiculous assertion on this Sunday's Fox & Friends.
CAMPOS-DUFFY: Well, first of all, I believe the left very intentionally targeted Disney. Disney represents everything wholesome that we sort of nostalgically remember about, you know, being part of Disney, and going to Disney, watching these movies. I mean, Snow White actually has a scene, the old original, my favorite by the way Disney film of all, and Snow White is actually praying in that.
I don't think boycotts work because I've, you know, I've had Sean cancel and then un-cancel and cancel and un-cancel Netflix how many times? Right? I mean, this happens, and so I think the answer is what the Daily Wire is doing, which is they have this $100 million investment in children's entertainment. Maybe somebody will go, I'm going to build a new theme park.
I have no idea who on the "left" Campos-Duffy is talking about here, but as Media Matters reported this week, if there's anyone putting a target on Disney's back, it's Fox "news" who has been hammering the company non-stop all week.
The right-wing’s con culture comes for the Mouse
When Disney responded to internal dissent by publicly condemning Florida’s passage of its discriminatory Parental Rights in Education law, the company ran into a right-wing media buzzsaw following a familiar strategy.
[...]
All this week, right-wing media outlets have overwhelmingly focused on the company as they try to extract a price for its call for the repeal of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation. While conservatives dishonestly portray the law as enacting a narrow ban on teaching “sex-stuff” in kindergarten through third grade, its deliberately vague language could implicate a wide array of discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity across grades. Groups like the Trevor Project have criticized the bill for its potential to silence teachers and have a chilling effect on LGBTQ youth.
Fox mentioned “Disney” more than 350 times and in over 3 hours of coverage this week. Its commentators claimed the company is “grooming” and “sexualizing children” in order to push a “progressive LGBT agenda.” Neither the bigoted anti-LGBTQ animosity nor the strategy was particularly subtle:
Campos-Duffy also put in a plug for The Daily Wire and Ben Shapiro's so-called "alternative" to Disney, which sounds a whole lot like indoctrinating children to their right-wing ideology go me. Here's more on that project from the Media Matters article:
Second, while the critique of Disney has little to do with its content, the new alternative is explicitly right-wing. Boreing isn’t saying there’s something wrong with features like Encanto or Moana; he’s trying to harness resentment over the company’s public statements to garner an audience for his competing product. The Daily Wire’s programming for children, however, promises deliberate right-wing messages.
Conservatives frequently deploy this strategy of tearing down a nominally nonpartisan institution as excessively liberal while offering up an explicitly right-wing alternative.
Republican activists, politicians, and conservative media outlets spent decades telling conservatives that the mainstream press is liberal and deceitful, with a particular inflection point during the civil rights era, when journalists were condemned for producing critical reporting about segregation. GOP political operative Roger Ailes took advantage of the opportunity created by the ensuing conservative distrust of the mainstream press when he co-founded Fox News and explicitly branded it as a “balance” to other, presumably leftist, outlets.
More right-wing projection from Fox. Every time they accuse "the left" of doing something, you can rest assured it's actually something they're doing themselves.
