Mark Zuckerberg surprisingly announced recently he's moving some positions from uber-left California to Texas. He also announced that Facebook/Meta was forced into censorship by the Biden administration and they were wrong to comply. He was no victim; Facebook was doing this before the election. How could Let's Go Brandon have forced the Hunter Biden laptop story suppression when he was only a candidate at the time? Zuckerberg was a willing and eager participant.
That doesn't make Mark Zuckerberg a hero. He's a coward. He went to Trump and was told something that he is now complying with. If Harris had won the election, there would be 0% chance you'd be hearing the same from Zuckerberg now. He's doing this because he has no choice. He's trying to stealthily mitigate what he sees as a bad situation (the Trump win). The same is true for Amazon. The same is true for Disney. And Joe Scarborough. The list of examples goes on. These people are not suddenly converted to the right. They are covering their asses from a conservative backlash and a Trump lawsuit after years of woke garbage they tried to shove down our throats. They just want to ride it out for four years and they expect another Trump term to be followed by a Democrat win, and they will go back to business as usual. All of them.
Most American people have come back to common sense, that does not include the woke, DEI, media elite crowd. As disgusting and horrible as the over-the-hill hens at The View are, at least they are consistent in their hatred. You can count on their far leftism. Anyone who falls for this Zuckerberg stuff is way too naive.
Recently Piers Morgan had YouTubers Nerdrotic and The Critical Drinker (a personal favorite) on his show to discuss Disney's recent parade of flop movies. It was a good discussion but my takeaway went in an entirely different direction, not involving Disney except peripherally . Firstly, here's their discussion before I pivot away. Notice there are two other guests to round out the panel debate but meh, who cares.
As I said, a good discussion, but not my point. My observation is that more and more we are seeing (no offense intended) second tier YouTubers show up on more mainstream outlets. Let me be clear, neither of those gentlemen are second tier in terms of content. I mean that they are not at the level of say a Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson in terms of viewership. Not yet at least.
Why are these people being elevated to mainstream status? Again, I am fans of both of these YouTubers, this is not meant as a slight at them. They are talented, educated, intelligent and well spoken. But why them, why not say Ben Affleck (whom I would be much less likely to watch on Piers Morgan's show)? I think I know the answer, or at least a few possible answers.
Firstly, I already answered it in part; who wants to watch Ben Affleck pontificate on anything? We have already seen him make a clown out of himself on Bill Maher's show. So there are ratings to consider. But then why not Ben Shapiro, who is clearly a top tier catch? Maybe it's because he is already a known commodity. Media is always looking for the next new thing, and when you have people like Nerdrotic and The Critical Drinker who can do just as good a job as guests, you are in the right (perceived) lane as mainstream media. Furthermore, you can't just keep doing the same thing and expect to maintain ratings. If that was the case, TV shows would all be reruns, music artists would only make one album, and Gone With The Wind and Wizard of Oz would be the only movies in theaters. New and different don't always work, but they do often enough to be absolutely 100% necessary.
Secondly, Nerdrotic and The Critical Drinker have become a bit more than just second tier. They have over a million and nearly two million subscribers respectively. These are not small players. The media in general is at a point where has to embrace these independent content producers because they are continually losing ground to the likes of YouTube. As the saying goes, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Unfortunately I think much of the mainstream media, and I'm not talking about Piers Morgan here, have not understood the main lesson here. The reason people are going to YouTubers, is the same reason they had started moving to Netflix; you are producing crap that people do not want to watch. The woke message hammering in movies and shows is not a winning formula. Ironically, this was the Piers Morgan Disney debate's topic in the above clip.
Disney is still not getting the message it seems.
As an aside, I've noticed this happening more on the right side of the political aisle than the left side. That could be an observational bias since I watch very little left leaning content, it's hard to stomach for long. But the idea that it's predominantly a right sided phenomenon does make sense. The right has far fewer celebrities and therefore needs more 'celebrities' than does the left. The right is more open to conversation from outside the echo chamber; we are not a lockstep thinking group. Therefore we need new perspectives, the left mostly does not.
If the left eventually comprehends all this, it will hopefully be too late to save their media hegemony.
"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
~Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals
Disney is being cancelled by the right, using a tactic similar to Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals rule about isolating a target. That's what happened to Bud Light. That's what happened to Target. Next in line, it appears is Disney, as they were one of many companies claiming they did not want to advertise on Twitter / X. Elon Musk told them where to go with their advertising boycott. But to be honest, the Disney debacle preceded the Twitter kerfuffle.
This is what happens when the mainstream of America, not the mainstream media, actually don't put up with woke extremism.
Disney is targeting people with woke corporatism and now they are suing Florida governor Ron DeSantis for targeting them and their special status. Boo hoo.
Disney has gone full woke. There's been a backlash among parents and they are potentially facing a decline in visitors to the theme parks. It's going to get worse for them financially as Florida governor Ron DeSantis is going after their special tax status in that state.
Disney can't exactly pull up stakes and move the Disney World parks to a liberal state. The cost would be enormous but beyond that, there aren't many year-round warm climate states in the leftist-liberal column. California? Already has a Disney Park. Nevada? Trending right but it also has Las Vegas already and is not as child friendly a state (even though that apparently doesn't matter much to Disney anymore). Colorado is too cold, Virginia is a semi-swing state and also too far north. That leaves 3 possible states as far as I can tell; Hawaii (way too far west, and way too expensive a destination by comparison), Georgia (still very much conservative despite the 2020 election cycle) and New Mexico, which has an infrastructure problem (airports, roads, population are all difficult by comparison).
Now that's not to say the move would be impossible to any of those options, just difficult, costly and time consuming. Of course Disney could opt for another conservative state instead in the hopes that the target state would just be glad for the smaller incremental tax revenue, the tourists and the potential for economic and population growth. That would preclude a state like Texas that could stand on principle and offer the same deal Florid is considering adapting for Disney. Still, any 'smaller' conservative state would still present the same problems as New Mexico, plus potentially be another Florida down the road by removing the special tax status of the theme parks. In fact, they'd be better to accept it for a 3 or 5 year window and then switch it back to standard taxation. Disney would have to move again, or suck up the tax hit.
The point is, Disney's get woke changes won't make them go broke, but they will come to recognize that they are not impact-free when it comes to their poor decision-making.
Kudos to Daily Wire for hiring talented people who are putting personal ethics and beliefs ahead of dictatorial vaccination mandates. Kudos to Allison Williams for sticking to her guns. ESPN and Disney are either caving to government mandates or are explicitly complicit in the mandate agenda. Whichever the case is, we know that individual liberty must trump political agenda.
While my Rules for Patriots does not explicitly call for keeping an eye out for fellow defenders of liberty (Patriots), it's a logic extension of Rule #3 (Don't Do It Alone). Beyond that it's just a good moral position to take.
Let me point something out for you Disney, if you feel that strongly about it, just cancel them. After all, you own the rights to the Muppets now. Oh but you are not going to do that are you? Too lucrative. So just mouth what you think SJWs need to hear and move on. Phony, phony, phony.
I ventured this morning into a web journey spurred by ESPN's inane logic that broadcaster Robert Lee, an Asian, should not broadcast the University of Virginia football game (clearly as a result of the recent violence in Charlottesville though they claim otherwise). The political correctness was galling and offensive. Imagine the reaction broadcaster Robert Lee must be having to his switch to another game, simply because his name resembles that of a historical figure from 150 years ago who is currently not in vogue on the unhinged left.
For those of you who missed it:
But that was merely the start of my web journey. I wanted to know why ESPN has become so political in recent years. ESPN is, as is ABC, owned by the Walt Disney Company. That's a $40 billion conglomerate. ABC has clearly not been overly friendly to the president. But neither has Disney, for a number of reasons.
That got me thinking. With Fox seemingly slipping slightly leftward, what's a conservative going to have to do for news and media in the future? The problem I spoke about back in 2008 is the old saw about the media being the message. Conservatives have precious little influence on the media narrative, and what the right does control is often establishment Republican types at the helm.
So what to do? There are options. We could continue complaining about the media but where has that gotten us so far? A more robust course would be to start seeing journalism, government, teaching and entertainment as viable career options as conservatives and slowly infiltrate the offending institutions the way the liberals have already so effectively done. That's good, except that the hubris we are seeing today is the culmination of decades of tireless socialist drive toward that end that includes the inculcation of the wealthy and establishment Republicans into their cadre of villainous traitors to America. It's not clear America has the time left any more to wait out that solution.
Other options? Conservatives could co-opt the typical solution employed by the Left - protests, marches and boycotts. The problem with that is, as a conservative when you look at an ANTIFA march, what are you thinking to yourself? "Idiots". "Snowflakes". "Zombies". What do you suppose the Left thinks when there's a Tea Party march? "Rubes". "Uneducated hicks". "Racists". "Idiots". Protests make great television maybe but not convincing arguments.
All of which brings me to my suggestion. What is it that conservatism regards as the best economic system in the world? Capitalism. And what does capitalism espouse? Private ownership. What does every major media player have? SHAREHOLDERS. If you own the company, you can dictate the direction it goes. Ownership takes the medium and therefore owns the message. Jeff Bezos had an agenda so he bought the Washington Post, and changed it.
Now someone sitting in Iowa or West Virginia can't buy out all the shares of the Walt Disney Company. But millions of conservative voters can, and should consider a coordinated effort to do just that. Well not exactly that. Instead of Disney, the target should be Comcast. It's the largest media conglomerate in the world. It owns everything needed - major mainstream media (NBC, Telemundo, CNBC, A&E etc.) cable subscribers, digital cable subscribers, internet and even phone customers. It's also consistently ranked as the worst company in the country. It's a starkly obvious opportunity - a left-leaning megalith that people who use, don't even like. Get rid of the progressive liberals and repair the company's image in one fell swoop. Plus, you get to make dividends in the process.
Of course, besides the money, there's another hiccup. Comcast is publicly traded but is still a family-owned business. The Roberts family owns one third of voting shares. That's a hurdle but it's not a problem that cannot be solved. I say it's worth the shot despite the fact that the how to do it part requires a lot more discussion and organization.
