23 Mar 2021 Buy Disney Stock and Make Them Pay

Scott Shepard

“If you’re reading this, Disney probably hates you and wishes you either silenced or destroyed.”

That’s how Free Enterprise Project (FEP) Deputy Director Scott Shepard kicks off his Townhall commentary.

He notes that this is “not hyperbole;” in fact, it’s the “only coherent way to interpret” what Disney CEO Bob Chapek said in response to an FEP question that was posed to him at his company’s 2021 shareholder meeting.

When FEP asked about Disney’s blacklisting of conservative actress Gina Carano, Chapek stammered that Disney is not political, but simply “standing for values… that are universal.” In his opinion, Disney is “reflective of the rich diversity of the world.”

Scott isn’t fooled. “Disney has imagineered its way from being the land where dreams are made into the fallow fields of dystopian nightmare,” he counters.

Carano was fired for making a political analogy on social media with a reference to Nazi Germany. Scott writes:

The universal values Chapek refers to cannot be forbidding people to bring Nazis into American political debate for the sake of decorum or sensitivity, since [Carano’s “Mandalorian” costar Pedro] Pascal retains his job. (Consider also that leaders of the NAACP have been comparing Republicans to Nazis for decades, but Disney responded to the protests – and riots – of 2020 by giving the NAACP $2 million. So Nazi comparisons themselves don’t bother Disney.)

Rather, the distinction between Pascal’s postings and Carano’s – other than the additional thoughtfulness of Carano’s – is that Carano criticized the left, while Pascal criticized the right. So, by fairly elementary process of elimination, Chapek’s idea of “universal values” has to be that conservatives must remain silent and must not criticize the left, and if they dare to, they must have their careers destroyed to create “a world that we [can] all live in in harmony and peace.”

I defy you to make any other interpretation of his statement.

And, as far as human rights are concerned, Disney filmed its “Mulan” movie in the same area of China where the Chinese Communist Party maintains concentration camps to imprison and enslave members of its Uyghur Muslim minority. “Instead of protesting, or relocating,” Scott points out, “the filmmakers simply thanked the provincial government for the privilege.”

What to do?

While Scott suggests he will not be spending his personal consumer dollars on Disney, he still advises buying stock in the company to become an influencer in the future.

“[B]uy Disney stock,” he recommends. “And then join [FEP] in putting as much pressure as possible on Disney to mend its ways. We need to save the House of Mouse from the dark army of occupation that has taken over its C-suite.”

With this investment comes responsibility. While the COVID pandemic has led most companies to hold meetings virtually in 2020 and 2021, the time may come to participate in person:

Once the world opens up again – very soon, please! – attending a shareholder meeting should once again involve travel, but for a plane ticket or some gas and a night in a hotel you can go to the meeting and make a CEO of a company that actively discriminates against those of us on the right explain themselves.

“We could very much use some allies,” Scott writes, “in bringing these moral monsters to account.”

To read all of Scott’s commentary – “Upset About Disney Cancel Culture? Buy Disney Stock!” – click here to go to the Townhall website.