Conservative media critic Joe Concha on Sunday explained why Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is winning many of the battles in the ongoing “culture war.”
Whether it’s COVID-19 “theater,” abortion, or transgender policies, DeSantis has adopted a simple formula and approaches them the same way, which may profit him later, Concha wrote in The Hill.
“What makes the governor popular among his supporters is that he doesn’t appear to give a damn about what the Florida press or the national political media think about how he’s leading his state. He has a plan and principles that appear to be unwavering,” Concha noted.
“Ron DeSantis is a culture warrior, just as [former President Donald] Trump was before him. His positions may be unpopular with Democrats and the press — but if Florida is an indication of sentiment in other swing states, such as Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, this will serve him very well if he becomes 2024 GOP nominee.”
The Florida Republican offered another example on Tuesday of what Concha referred to.
According to media accounts, DeSantis addressed the Disney company’s recent outspoken opposition to the Parental Rights in Education law. DeSantis enacted it on Monday, thus after July 1 banning school districts and teachers from implementing lesson plans or classroom activities for K-3 students that entail sexual orientation or gender identity.
On Monday, Disney issued a statement saying the law “should never have passed and should never have been signed into law.”
“Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts, and we remain committed to supporting the national and state organizations working to achieve that. 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.”
DeSantis returned fire on Tuesday, telling reporters, “For Disney to come out and put a statement and say that the bill should have never passed and that they are going to actively work to repeal it – I think, one, was fundamentally dishonest. But two, I think that crossed the line.”
“This state is governed by the interests of the people of the state of Florida. It is not based on the demands of California corporate executives. They do not run this state. They do not control this state,” he added.
Continuing DeSantis noted that he talked with GOP Florida house Speaker Chris Sprowls, who told him Disney never contacted him to object to the bill as it went through the Legislature.
“Why weren’t they speaking up at the outset?” he asked rhetorically. “And then for them to say they’re going to actively work to repeal substantive protections for parents as a company that is supposedly marketing its services to parents with young children, I think they crossed the line.”
“People asked me kind of about their posture on the bill, and I said, you know what? If we would have put in the bill that you were not allowed to have a curriculum that discussed the oppression of the Uyghurs in China, Disney would have endorsed that in a second,” DeSantis added.
“That’s the hypocrisy of this, and we’re going to make sure we’re fighting back when people are threatening our parents and threatening our kids.”
Some human rights activists have accused China of genocide in its treatment of the Uyghurs, who live in a majority Muslim region of northwest China.
In April 2021, the left-wing group Human Rights Watch accused China of “crimes against humanity” in its treatment of the Uyghurs.
In a report, HRW said those crimes included “imprisonment or other deprivation of liberty in violation of international law; persecution of an identifiable ethnic or religious group; enforced disappearance; torture; murder; and alleged inhumane acts intentionally causing great suffering or serious injury to mental or physical health, notably forced labor and sexual violence.”
Disney is not the only company that is hypocritical in its acceptance of China’s treatment of the Uyghurs while decrying supposedly abuses in America.
The NBA, Apple, Nike, and Coca-Cola have faced criticism for not just turning a blind eye to China’s oppression.
The latter three were slammed in 2020 for opposing a bill in Congress that would have blocked Chinese imports from the region where Uyghurs are imprisoned, a measure that passed the House by a 406-3 vote.
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