As the Walt Disney Company continues its attempts to smear Florida's efforts to protect children while signaling its own virtue, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) reminded the company that they don't have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to calling out others for perceived human rights violations.
After Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the state's latest law aimed at fortifying parents' rights and protecting the youngest members of the rising generation from woke indoctrination in school, Disney continued losing its collective mind.
Repeating false claims about what HB 1557 prohibits in early education, the Walt Disney Company released a statement saying the bill "should never have passed and should never have been signed into law" before declaring its "goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts, and we remain committed to supporting the national and state organizations working to achieve that." Disney also tried its hand at virtue signaling by adding "We are dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ members of the Disney family, as well as the LGBTQ+ community in Florida and across the country."
The statement doesn't, of course, claim a commitment to the "rights and safety" of people elsewhere in the world where Disney does business with tyrants — an inconvenient contradiction for Disney that renders the company's triggered shrieking pure hypocrisy.
As Rubio pointed out, Disney chose to film its live-action reboot of Mulan near the Chinese Communist Party's internment camps in which Uyghurs are held — a group against which China is currently engaged in genocide.
The @WaltDisneyCo filmed Mulan near #Uighur genocide camps & then thanked the people who run those camps in the credits
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 29, 2022
But they are outraged that Florida schools will not be indoctrinating 5-year olds on “gender identity” https://t.co/HngBSBMhMj
So, Xi Jinping's tyrannical regime targeting and persecuting Muslim minorities is not a concern for Disney, but God forbid Florida's educators be prevented from pushing radical gender ideology to kids barely old enough to tie their own shoes. It's absurd and, as Rubio highlights, renders Disney's concern moot.
It's not like Disney made an honest mistake in filming Mulan in the Xinjiang province where the Uyghurs are held and persecuted by the CCP. They chose to film there and subsequently defended the decision without even a hint of remorse:
Disney's corporate policy does not appear to care about the human rights issues affecting the #Uighurs. It seems human rights come second to the corporate policy of not upsetting China. (2/2) pic.twitter.com/3wXVQLuVOf
— Iain Duncan Smith MP (@MPIainDS) October 8, 2020
What's more, Mulan's credits go so far as to thank the government of Xinjiang for allowing Disney to film there.
Perhaps Disney should be more critical of the Chinese Communist Party and instead thank Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for his leadership that allowed Disney World to continue operating and profiting (compared to Newsom's orders that shut down Disneyland for more than one year), while creating a draw for Americans to visit his state.