Plain English with Derek Thompson - What Is the “Don’t Say Gay” Law Really About? (Plus: The Big Disney vs. DeSantis Showdown in Florida.)

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

On Monday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation that prohibits much classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity. The law is called “Parental Rights in Education,�� but its critics—which include Democrats, Hollywood, and many outspoken employees of the Walt Disney Company—call it “Don’t Say Gay.” What does the law actually say? And how has it created a firestorm at Disney? In this episode, Derek talks to Dana Goldstein, a New York Times reporter, about the details of the law. Then he talks to Matt Belloni, a cofounder of Puck News and the host of the Ringer podcast ‘The Town,’ about what the debate within Disney says about the future of the culture war and corporations. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Dana Goldstein and Matt Belloni Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Benefer is back. Brad and Jen are friends again, and Paris Hilton is somehow still making headlines. 20 years later, we're living in the world that the 2000s tabloids created. On this series, I'm going to tell you the story of a decade of American life through the trash we love to consume. From Spotify and the Ringer podcast network, I'm Claire Malone, and this is just like us, the tabloids that changed America. Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Today's episode is about the fight over the parental rights in education bill in Florida, otherwise known as Don't Say Gay. On Monday, just this week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Don't Say Gay,

aka Parenthood and Education Bill, after weeks of ferocious debate. This is very likely the single most ferocious, famous, infamous, controversial, criticized, defended, misunderstood state law of the year. Its defenders say it's designed to stop Florida teachers from indoctrinating students into the cultural far left. It's critics say it's designed, in fact, to chill free speech in school and scare LGBT teachers and students into silence. This is a debate that has already transcended politics. It's not just Republicans versus Democrats, Fox News versus the White House, left versus right. It has entered the cultural bloodstream.

At the Oscars, hosts Amy Schumer, Regina Hall, and Wanda Sykes chanted gay, gay, gay in protest of this law. In the Walt Disney Company, the largest private sector employer in Florida, it's creating a disastrous crisis for CEO Bob Chepec. And for the country at large, it reflects the fact that America's culture war today is in large part a school war. How should we teach history and race and gender identity and sexual orientation in our schools? What are America's students allowed to hear in the classroom? This is for better and I think mostly for worse, the single most hotly debated topic in American culture today. And today's episode has two parts. In part one, we do a deep dive of the law.

Last week, just before the bill was signed, I spoke with Dana Goldstein, a reporter for the New York Times, who walked me through this legislation literally line by line to explain in crystal clear language what it says and what it means. Our second guest is Matt Bellany, co-founder of Puck News and the host of the great New Ringer podcast on Hollywood called The Town. And Matt talks to us about the ripple effects of this law on the Walt Disney Company and its embattled CEO, Bob JPEC. I'm Derek Thompson.

This is plain English. My first guest is New York Times reporter Dana Goldstein. Dana, welcome to the podcast. Hey, Derek. Thanks for having me. What I thought we might do is walk through this bill line by line. And that's not hard because the bill is pretty short. It's seven pages, 163 lines.

I'd like to go line by line through the most important parts of this bill and have you explain to me what this law literally says. So does that sound okay? Yeah, let's do it. All right. So I think we should start with the passage that earned the bill, the nickname, don't say gay. I am quoting now from this bill, quote, classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties

on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade three or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards. End quote, Dana, what does this mean and why does it make so many people so mad? Yeah.

So I think it's obviously open to interpretation, but the most obvious thing it means is that if a K through three teacher is doing a lesson, it should not touch on issues of sexual orientation or gender identity. And what would that mean in practice? A book where a character has two moms or that, you know, mentions a gay historical figure and the fact that that person was gay would not be the book that the teacher would, read aloud to the class. You know, I think that the second part of this, that in all grades, including grades above grade three, that you would have to make sure that such discussions would be, quote, developmentally appropriate, unquote, that is something that would be very debated. I mean, I think people disagree about what's appropriate for a 13-year-old, for a 16-year-old. And so that would be something that I think parents, teachers, students even are going to debate and the vagueness of that really raises questions about how this law would be interpreted.

So it's important to say this law does not literally say don't say gay. What it does is potentially create the kind of legal atmosphere designed to discourage teachers from including gay characters or the issue of gay people in any classroom instruction. And it's important, I think, that the word instruction is not defined. Lots of these words aren't defined. Like, no matter where you come down on sexuality or gender identity, this is an unbelievably vague piece of language. Like, you might as well say, like, have a law that says sexual education must be good. Sexual education, classroom instruction on sex ed may not occur in a manner that is not good. Like, it is so absurdly vague that tipping my hat to my colleague Adam Serber here, I wonder, is the vagueness the point? The point

is the point of the vagueness to create such a large space for potential litigation that it makes teachers feel like they're in the danger zone, just walking up to the line of including gay people and their instruction? Yeah, some of the legal experts I spoke to certainly thought that the vague language was a very deliberate choice, and many people I spoke to about the bill used the term chilling effect that when you have such broad language, you create a very vague. especially maybe in a community that might be more conservative. You would create among educators, not just teachers, but also counselors being a really important group that are singled out by this bill.

You create a fear of sort of touching on these issues. And another thing I just wanted to mention is that there's a preamble to the bill and there's the text of the law itself. And lawyers mentioned to me that the preamble is often in place that they'll tell their clients to look at that language for the intent of the bill. And that's really important with this bill because the preamble has a different phrase, which is classroom discussion. Now, classroom discussion is potentially even broader than classroom instruction. Classroom instruction may be a lesson plan that a teacher draws up to say, read a certain book with her students. But classroom discussion could be much different. I mean, you could imagine a scenario where a teacher with young children is reading a book about families.

and a little girl raises her hand to say, well, in my family, there's two moms, or in my family, there's two dads. Now, if classroom discussion of sexual orientation is banned, how is the teacher supposed to respond by the letter of this law? Are they supposed to sort of ignore that or not react warmly and affirmatively to that child? That's something that a lot of people are wondering about. Right. And this is for people who might have text of the law. in front of them or want to look it up. These are lines 21 through 23, quote, prohibiting classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels or in a specified manner. And again, in certain grade levels, it's explicit about that. It says you can't even

touch this stuff between kindergarten and third grade. But it's again, in a specified manner, where the law is so broad that it might ban any discussion of gay, lesbian, trans, and sexuality in many grades after grade three. Dana, I wonder if you've talked to or read conservative legal scholars who say, this is not the intent of the bill, we're not trying to stigmatize and shame gay and transgender people under the guise of protecting children. What, to your mind, is either the most common conservative defense or the most reasonable legal conservative defense of the language of this bill? Yeah, so I spoke to Tiffany Justice.

She's an activist with Moms for Liberty, which is a Florida-based group that has been very active in supporting this law. And she said to me, you know, this really isn't about gayness. And she really emphasized that. She specifically said most parents have no problem with their children being gay. The world has really changed. Being gay or lesbian is so broadly accepted. but this is really meant to target gender identity and issues of transgenderism.

And she thought that the sort of broad intent was clear and that she thought it was sort of overheated or not accurate to be concerned more broadly here. But I will say that the language of the bill is much, much broader than LGBTQ issues or. gender identity issues and actually could constrain all sorts of mental and emotional health services. It's just very, very broad. So I think what inspired activists to write this bill and to push for this bill is one thing, but what it actually says is quite another. You've pointed out that the word gay does not appear in this bill. The word homosexual does not appear in this bill. Instead, it prohibits classroom instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity. But this makes me think, like, I have a sexual orientation and a gender identity. I am a man with a wife. Like, if I'm a

teacher of a first grade classroom in Orlando, and I'm doing a lesson for my first graders about sandwiches, and I began this instruction by saying, you know, what's your favorite kind of sandwich, Chloe, here. My wife made me this sandwich. It's a ham and cheese sandwich. So Noah, what's your favorite kind of sandwich, et cetera? Well, wait, in the middle of an instruction on sandwiches, I have introduced the fact that I'm straight and have a wife. I have introduced the issue of my sexual orientation. Could this bill really allow a parent to sue my school district for that disclosure? Yes. Yes. Strictly on the way it is written, yes. And this was mentioned to me by educators in Florida, who I interviewed, they said, look, it's not uncommon for teachers to put some photos up

in their classroom of their personal lives, their family. And if you are, you know, in a same-sex marriage, and you teach in grades K-3, this could conceivably be an issue the way this bill is written. It's really bizarre. Okay, let's move on to the second passage of interest. Lines 67 through 78, if you're following along at home. I'm going to read again from the bill literally because I think it's really important for people to hear the language, to literally hear what is in this legislation. Quote, in accordance with the rights of parents, the state will adopt procedures for notifying a student's parent if there is a change in the student services or monitoring related to the student's mental, emotional, or physical health, or well-being. End quote. And as a reading,

I'm sure that some people out there in Podland are thinking, oh my God, this is so incredibly boring. This is such vague legislator language. Again, I do think that the boringness and the vagueness is the point. What is this section saying in plain English? So in plain English, this section of the bill appears to require schools to notify parents any time a student seeks mental health services or physical health services for any reason whatsoever. There is no language in here saying that this notification requirement only applies to gender or sexuality issues. So for example, if a child goes to talk to a counselor about their parents' divorce, or maybe something much more serious, substance abuse issues in the peer group or bullying in school.

according to the language of this law, if that is not something the child has done before, if this is a new outreach from the child, the school would need to notify parents immediately. So I want to point to the first words of this quote, which might have struck a lot of people, is totally anodyne, in accordance with the rights of parents. the concept of parents' rights is very interesting and very much in the news. On the one hand, of course parents have rights. Of course parents should have rights when it comes to the way that their children are being educated. On the other hand, at this very moment, parents' rights has become a conservative cause, a conservative term.

Can you tell us a little bit about the parents' rights movement nationally, as we understand it and how that connects with this particular bill? Well, the parents' rights movement and this type of terminology has been prominent on the right for many decades. And it's used on a really broad range of issues, whether it's vouchers to get public money to send your child to private school or in the past. There was a lot of resistance to sex ed that would not be abstinence-based. So this language and this movement is is long, it's not new. I think right now there's a few things that have really come to the fore for the parents' rights movement, which is a conservative movement. And one is the one we're talking

about today, about LGBTQ issues and particularly wanting to protect their children from what they see as schools affirming children who are questioning their gender identity. They very much wrote this bill because they do not want schools affirming children who question their gender identity if that is something that the parent does not want to do. If a child born female goes to the school and says, I feel like a boy, and the parent's position is to discourage that they would like the school to follow the parents' decision. And that is not something that is necessarily explicitly mentioned in this law, but that is the overriding concern of these activists at the moment.

And the other thing that the parents' rights movement is very focused on right now, as we all have heard so much about, is the so-called critical race theory issue, which is, you know, a term that the right. right has sort of co-opted to refer to many different efforts to discuss racial inequality and address racial inequality in schools. You know, what's really interesting is that I know a lot of gay Republicans personally on Twitter who are more offended by this passage than by the passage that gave this law the name, don't say gay. And that's because while I think it's one thing to have a chilling effect, as you so well put it, on the way teachers teach.

It's another thing to have a chilling effect on students coming out to high school counselors. Like, the law seems to force lots of schools, which serve as the first line of therapy for many students, to have to out their students to the parents. Like, have you heard anything on your end about the degree to which some people might be more offended or even more frightened by the implications of this passage than by the first one? Yeah, I mean, the school counselors association in Florida, and the school counselors I spoke to are very, very concerned about this.

A big deal in their profession is wrestling with when you go to families to discuss what children have brought to you or teens have brought to you. They have a lot of professional standards that have been worked out over years and it's a constantly evolving debate about how you handle

children's desire for confidentiality when they approach an adult like a counselor at school. And also parents do have rights. They have rights with kids under 18. That's the status quo. So counselors are always wrestling with this. But here in this language of this bill,

it would really constrain their ability to make a professional judgment using their experience, their skills, the ethics of their profession. And if they followed the letter of this law strictly, they would need to go to the family with pretty much anything big that a student brings to them. and they are very worried that students then would not come to them. And they point out that the student counts the relationship for some students.

It could be the most accepting or warm adult in their life, and they're very concerned about that. I want to move to the final passage, the third passage we're going to discuss today. And this is, again, for those following at home, lines 129 through 151 of this bill. Quote, if a concern is not resolved by the school district, a parent may bring an action against the school district to obtain a declaratory judgment that the school district procedure or practice violates this paragraph and seek injunctive relief. Again, another boring sounding, but I think very important part of the bill.

Dana, what did you take from this passage? Yeah, so legal experts are saying that this enforcement mechanism, which essentially deputizes the public parents to hold schools accountable for this big written law is what makes this very chilling to how adults would talk about these issues and handle these issues in schools, because especially for schools that are underfunded, that don't feel that they can handle lawsuits that could be expensive from parents, they would want to follow the letter of this law very strictly to avoid lawsuits. and this is quite similar to other types of laws that we see the right pushing right now.

There are critical race theory laws that also deputize the public to hold schools accountable in this way. And we have seen what has happened when those have passed. Schools will preemptively cancel black history events. They will remove reading materials from shelves, you know, getting rid of books. So this is something that schools will do to avoid litigation. and this is also similar to the anti-abortion law in Texas, which similarly deputizes the public to tell on people who have accessed abortions, provided abortions,

assisted others in accessing abortion. This seems to be a new and growing strategy in the conservative movement. And that law for people who might say, oh, that sounds kind of familiar. Texas passed a law that essentially deputizes private citizens, allows private citizens to sue people who have had an abortion after six weeks, but also to bring lawsuits against anyone involved in that abortion after the six week period. So the doctor, of course, an Uber driver who might take you to the doctor's office, someone who gave financial support to have

that abortion. So it creates a web of liability around people seeking abortions after six weeks, but rather than the state enforcing the law, it is, as you said, private citizens who are enticed, invited to bring lawsuits against their fellow private citizens. Tell me, how can you imagine this might work in Florida? Parents would be empowered to do what exactly? With this law and the deputizing of parents, you can see the way it's written will really empower parents with the most conservative reading of the law. So let's say that you believe it is not developmentally appropriate for a 17-year-old high school senior to hear about same-sex marriage at school. You may believe that to be true.

That may be a minority opinion, but there's nothing in this law that would prevent you from engaging the school district in illegal morass. And while you might not win that lawsuit, just the fact that you would bring it and that could be costly to the district, not just in money, but in time, effort, stress, anxiety for everyone involved. And so that is the process that educators and legal experts are saying will cause the chilling effect.

Right. That makes sense to me because the law is obviously unbelievably and precise, but it just totally beggars belief that someone's going to bring a lawsuit against a teacher, against say a straight female teacher saying, my husband picked out my shoes today, right? No one's going to sue that teacher for making that comment. But if the comment is made by a gay teacher, the female teacher says,

my wife picked out my shoes today, it's more likely that someone is offended. It's more likely that someone is agitated. And this law, similar to the Texas law, gives them legal cover to come at the school district, and say something illegal happened in my students' classroom, and you have to either suspend the teacher, fire the teacher,

or otherwise rectify the situation, so that it never happens again. Right, and schools don't want to be hit by that, you know? And so I think that is why it would be a rational response to this law to simply avoid LGBTQ issues in the classroom. What's the next thing that we should watch for? Do you think it's a near certainty that Governor DeSantis signs this bill? And when he does, is there a next shoot-a-drop?

Yeah, he has said that he wants to sign it. So that is what we are expecting. I think the blowback from Disney and some of the other corporate blowback has been stronger than anticipated. So that is a bit of an X-factor here. But I do expect that he will sign it. And we haven't heard anything different from that from our sources. in Florida, I think, you know, obviously I do expect that some rights groups will challenge this

bill and it could lead to further wending through the courts and see what happens with this. But it's part of this broader movement to constrain what's going on in schools right now. Many of the same issues that we saw in the Supreme Court hearings this week and Washington with Katanji Jackson, so this is not going away. And that's Dana Goldstein of the New York Times. Now here to talk about the ripple effects of this bill on Florida's most important company, Disney,

and the implications for the future of companies in an unfolding culture war. My next guest is Matt Bellany. Matt Bellany, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. Appreciate this extended ringerverse cross-examination. episode. Yeah, me too. It's wonderful to have you. I'd love you to start by giving me a short, snappy summary of how Disney has handled the Don't Say Gay Bill, because this has bloomed

from something that looked like a very small detail to a huge national story. So take us through the timeline. What was Disney CEO Bob Chepex's initial response to this bill and what happened from there? So the short answer is they've handled this horribly. And people who watch Disney's closely as I do and people in the entertainment community kind of can't believe that they stepped in it like this. What happened at the outset was Bob Chappek when he came in, he hired a chief communications officer who had come from BP and was involved in conservative politics before. He has a chief of staff that is very close to him. I'm Arthur Bachner, who is a former Republican party operative. And we don't know Chaepex personal politics, but it's pretty clear he is more

conservative than the previous CEO, Bob Iger, and they said at the outset that we are going to take a more neutral stance on political issues. We don't see the role of Disney to be a, you know, political role, and we want to be everything to everyone, you know, a version of the old Michael Jordan line, Republicans buy sneakers too. So that was their strategy. And the first test of this strategy was this, don't say gay bill. And Disney initially said, you know, we're just not going to take a position. That win. over like a, you know, to borrow another cartoon that is not Disney, it was like the old Wiley Coyote where literally it was a box of TNT that just dropped on his head because the employees

just revolted. This was, you know, the creative community feels very strongly about this issue. And they see don't say gay, not as a political issue, but as a human rights and equality issue. So to them, it wasn't Disney not taking a position in politics. It was them failing to back their own employees on an issue of human rights, which was a very big deal to many, many groups at the company. They started putting out statements. The Pixar employees issued a letter that not only condemned his lack of action, but claimed that Disney had decided to censor same-sex emotional content in their movies in the past.

And we learned later that it was a same-sex kiss in the upcoming Toy Story prequel called Lightyear, which has since been reinstated. but Chepeg just was getting it from all sides. Then they had a shareholder meeting, and the shareholders started bringing up. Now, if you've ever been to a Disney shareholder meeting, you know that people often ask strange questions like, why is Space Mountain always broken down, and how can I get my daughter into the, you know, the frozen princess camp that I want to get her into, things like that. But this was serious.

People were saying, why are you not backing your own employees on an important human rights issue? So Chepeg then did a flip-flop and then said he was going to oppose this bill. They then issued a statement. He fell on the sword a couple days later and apologized to employees saying, I let you down. You wanted me to have your back. I'm paraphrasing. And I didn't. He then got into a fight with Florida Governor Ronda Santis over the issue.

It allowed Santos to go on Fox News and to put out statements calling Disney a woke corporation. The actual result of all of this is that the, exact opposite thing happened that Chepec wanted, which was to stay out of politics, he ended up being the center of politics. And it's not over. They had walkouts this week at Disney over this issue. And Chepeg had to get on a town hall and again apologize and again say that he's working on their behalf. And he really, I think, got a lesson in how to handle these issues at a media company in 2022. I want to talk a little bit about what you think Disney's reaction here says about Disney. Like, this is a company, and you alluded to this, with a long that I would say complicated

relationship with the gay community. It has a ton of gay fans. It is also, however, an exporter of what I think you can safely call fairly traditional family values entertainment. It doesn't historically have a lot of gay characters. As you said, there was even controversy about having a gay kiss in the upcoming Toy Story prequel. It famously doesn't have a lot of out-execatives, directors, or showrunners over the course of its multi-decade history. So how does Disney, which wants its movies and its shows to kind of like float effervescently above like the hellscape of politics, how is it historically thought about being seen as political in a debate like this? Disney has a very complicated relationship with the LGBTQ community, going all the way back to the 80s when, you know, same-sex dancing was not allowed at the parks. and they had a very kind of Midwestern family values type image.

And that goes back to Walt Disney himself, who espoused a lot. Now, Disney has always had a lot of LGBTQ employees. And I think you're seeing those employees voice their power right now with, you know, with the statements that are being put out with the walkouts. In recent years, there have been big efforts like Pride Days at Disneyland. And there are a number of employee groups at Disney that are specific for, for LGBTQ people. So they've had a much better relationship with that community lately.

But it's a fascinating thing because Disney is this umbrella brand and people have an emotional connection to it. Comcast has just as many, not as many, but has a ton of employees in Florida. They operate theme parks at Universal just like Disney does. They're not being called out. You're not seeing Brian Roberts picketed or told to issue a statement on this. it's just kind of there. Warner Brothers is not being asked to do this.

Other media companies are not. Disney is unique. It has always been unique. They take advantage of that uniqueness. It's the only brand, really, that matters in entertainment and movies. When you go to see a movie, you don't say,

let's go see a Warner Brothers movie this weekend. But you see that brand, you see the Disney brand, you say, okay, this means something. It means I can probably take my kid, or it's going to have a certain level of quality that I know is going to be something that my family will be interested in.

That creates all kinds of benefits and all kinds of problems. So, Chepec's contract is up for renewal next February. That is in 10 months. The stock is down 30% in the last year. He's facing small but public walkouts over his position on this bill. He's taking it from all sides on earnings calls from his own employees, from his own corporate leaders. I mean, how bad a look is this for Chepec in terms of his... potential to remain CEO of this company?

I think it's bad, but I don't think it's fatal right now. People say, oh, he's going to be replaced before his contract is up. I don't think that's the case. I think the board is going to give him a chance. In the history of corporate America, it's extremely difficult to follow an iconic CEO. And Bob Eiger was that CEO. In 15 years at Disney, he engineered the purchase of Marvel, the purchase of Pixar, the purchase of Lucasfilm, the purchase of Fox, all of the.

these transformational deals that have really positioned Disney to be a player with the tech companies in this battle for supremacy in digital media. Chepec was a 30-year corporate cog, for lack of a better word, that, you know, spent a lot of time in parks and resorts, spent some time in, you know, home video. He was not this guy who was out front. And I think the board is going to give him a little bit of leeway to learn the ropes. Now, I don't think they're going to give him leeway beyond. his contract. If things are not going well towards the end of this year, I think you will see

them search for someone new. But the way things work with the CEOs is you've got to start renegotiating that contract pretty early. I wouldn't be surprised if this summer they started to have conversations about what a renewal would look like. And if there are more controversies, if Chepex steps in it again, I think perhaps then we start talking about a change at Disney. I'm interested in what you see as the ongoing relationship between Bob Chappek and Bob Iger. Because on the one hand, as you alluded to, like, Cheapek coming into the role after what might be the most successful tenure for an entertainment CEO in like the last 50 years, it's a really, really hard position to fill. It's like playing quarterback for the New England Patriots after Tom Brady leaves. Like if you're mediocre, it's a disaster.

If you're bad, it's an absolute calamity. So, like, what do we know right now about the relationship between Chepec and Iger at this point of the crisis? Well, we know that it's not great. We know that CNBC reported that there was an explicit rift between them over Iger's decision at the onset of the pandemic to essentially come back and take on a leadership role during the crisis because he said, you know, I ran the company for 15 years. I'm going to be the guy to come in and help this guy get through this crisis. Chepeg did not feel, according to this reporting, that he needed any help. And, you know, it's like when the guy won't, when the star won't leave stage left, and it leaves the other, you know, the understudy sitting there in the shadows still.

Chepec felt that he was ready to take on this role by himself. And having Eiger there made it a little bit more difficult. And you didn't see Chepeg do this kind of political statement on the neutrality. until Iger left. Iger officially left at the end of 2021. And that's when all this started. So I think that the relationship there is not good. And I think everyone's blaming Chaepec, but Iger is not blameless here either. You know, this is a guy who did everything right as CEO except the succession issue. He retired and then unretired several times. He had a couple of people who were in line to take over for him, Tom Staggs, Kevin Mayer. None of that worked out. Both

those guys left the company and they're now starting, they're starting their own company. So, you know, Iger has not been great about this. And it, I think, shows in the fact that he and Chepec don't really get along. Do you think it would be more fair to say that the reason Disney is experiencing

this crisis right now is because A, Chepec is so much different than Iger? Or B, because something has changed in America writ large, whether it's like the blooming of the culture wars or the past, power of workers? Like, is this more about Shepak, or is it more about everything outside of Disney in the culture? I think there's a couple things going on. And first and foremost, I think there has been a massive shift in the culture in general with this new generation of workers in the workforce,

where they do expect their companies to take positions and to have their back, so to speak. And that is something that is, I think, older generations don't quite understand, but younger generations do want that out of their employer. And that's, that's, that's, that's, you know, it goes beyond media, goes beyond Disney. But Disney specifically, the employees there have been trained over the Iger years to expect this kind of behavior, where Iger would take positions. He was very adamantly against the Trump administration's ban on Muslim immigrants. He took a position on that. He took a position on a bill in Georgia that that would have banned abortion at the, quote, heartbeat stage.

And that was something that Disney has a lot of business in Georgia because they make the Marvel movies there. And employees saw Iger as a statesman-type CEO that wasn't afraid to take positions and kind of relished it. I mean, there was a point where Iger was considering running for president as a Democrat. So, you know, that was a very serious consideration that he had. So, you know, I think because Disney employees saw that, then they get a bit of whiplash when they see.

Bob Chepec come in and say, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. I think that's a fantastic answer. You know, I wanted to frame the question relatively neutrally and hear what you had to say, but I think you absolutely nailed it. I think that absolutely something has changed in the last 10 to 20 years, and that something is that the millennial generation is just different. Young people today have an expectation that the companies that they work for take political stance.

It's sort of the flip side of bring your whole self to work, that's somewhat loathsome phrase that we should, you know, come to work and be ready to reveal our entire selves. We sort of have that expectation of the companies that we work for, that they represent our values. And I think the fundamental mistake that Chepec made, and maybe this wouldn't have been a mistake in 1983 or 1957, but the fundamental mistake that he made in 2022 is in thinking that you can be non-political when a culture politics war, a culture war swirling around you. Like, avoiding a culture war, or trying to remain silent during a culture war is a political decision. It's political because no matter what you do, you start a political chain reaction. If you say you're for the bill, let's just say

we're talking specifically about this Florida bill. If Chepec says, I'm for the Florida bill, that's politics. If he says it's against the bill, he's against the bill, that's politics. If he says he is no opinion and doesn't want to speak about the bill, well, his employees accuse him of coddling anti-gay laws, and that is a political accusation. So I just think that what he fundamentally misunderstood is that there is no decision here. There is no door that you can open behind which does not exist the sort of chain reaction of politics. And I guess I wonder what you think that that reaction, this moment reveals about how media companies have become set pieces in the culture war today, the fact that they can't extricate themselves from the politics

that's swirling around them. I think that's because there are unique components of the creative community. Creative people have always been, with exceptions, more progressive than the general population, and they consider themselves to be progressives. Companies like Pixar prides themselves. If you go to Pixar and talk to the employees there, you get a very progressive sense of, you know, we are advancing the culture, and they were absolutely blindsided and upset by this decision, and they weren't afraid to speak out. That's the big difference now. I mean, you're seeing this at companies across the country in the world, places like Facebook or even Spotify or other places where if the company doesn't make a, if you, if the company does something you disagree with, you're no longer afraid to speak up. And that letter that the Pixar employees sent was absolutely extraordinary. I mean, you would have never seen that 10, 15 years ago.

They were openly questioning the CEO of the company. and they were saying, revealing things that were not known in the general public that they had been censored by their employer. That's a huge deal. And I think it made, it got reversed. They were allowed to put the same-sex kiss back in the movie. That's something that would have never happened before. You know, you just made me think about something, which is that in an economy where everyone is access to Facebook and Slack and Twitter, every employee has the, opportunity to be their own micro media company. And if this was 1970, someone in Bob Chapex

position might have said, well, no one's really going to hear the opinion of, you know, middle manager number 47 at Disney. No one is going to care about the opinion of 47 people necessarily in, you know, Orlando or Burbank. But today, like, the employees of Disney are almost just as much media companies as Disney itself. They have the ability to speak about culture, change culture, and react to it. And that seems to me to be what he fundamentally misunderstood and what a lot of CEOs of a previous generation misunderstand,

that fundamentally there is no option to take the apolitical position in a lot of these fights. It's very likely that if you choose not to comment, that no comment will be interpreted politically, and you will have created the very scenario you wish to avoid. And these people have profiles on social media. You know, Disney's a high profile company, employs a lot of people that are known. And they have followings.

In some cases, they're more powerful than the Walt Disney company itself in terms of getting narratives out there. And that, you know, that's something that they have to deal with. There are numerous Fire Bob Chepec hashtags on Twitter right now. And, you know, this is the way people communicate. I hear from these people all the time employees at Disney who do not care. that they are outspoken and they feel that it is party. And many of these companies have encouraged this behavior.

There's been a whole movement in corporate America towards empowering employees and making them feel that the company is part of their lives, not just an employer, but we are a family. Well, in families, people talk and people speak up. And it's almost like these companies sometimes want the employees to consider themselves a family until it gets uncomfortable. Matt Bellany, the town podcast. Thank you very much, sir. Good to see you. Thank you.

Planning this with Derek Thompson is produced by Devin Manzi. Thank you so much for listening to this show. If you like us, follow us on Spotify, rate and review on Apple Podcasts. We will be back with our second episode this week on Friday. We will see you then.