Believe it or not, the Hill ran an op-ed by conservative pundit Jonathan Turley this weekend, headlined “Happy birthday, Adam Smith: The invisible hand just slapped Disney.”
In an amusing aside, Jonathan Turley has somehow offended Chat GPT. If you don’t know who Turley is, you aren’t going to get any help from Chat GPT:
Actually, Turley is a constitutional scholar and conservative commenter with an extensive Wikipedia page, who apparently makes ChatGPT fizzle out.
Anyway. Turley’s op-ed opens with Disney’s recently-filed annual SEC financial report. It was a stinker. But what most caught Turley’s eye was the report’s admission that — guess what? — messing about in controversy and politics might be hurting the company’s bottom line. The report wordily acknowledged that:
“We face risks relating to misalignment with public and consumer tastes and preferences for entertainment, travel and consumer products. Consumers’ perceptions of our position on matters of public interest, including our efforts to achieve certain of our environmental and social goals, often differ widely and present risks to our reputation and brands.”
Eureka! The geniuses at Disney discovered the long-lost concept of misalignment with customers. (And what would they do without euphemisms?) But seriously, why on Earth would any allegedly capitalist company set “environmental and social goals” that are misaligned with their customers? If directors know the ESG goals are misaligned with customers, but do them anyways, should shareholders get to sue the directors for sabotaging the company’s share price?
Add those to the list of unanswerable rhetorical questions.
Ultimately, citing article from last year, Turley suggested that Disney’s CEO Bob Iger might finally be trying to scale back a little on the woke politics. But I don’t think so. Or if he is, it’s only a little. Headline from last week:
Is it just me? Or did South Park just run an episode about this same exact thing?
It’s really too bad Disney can’t fire its customers and get new, woker ones aligned with its ESG goals. On a more serious note, this kind of story is what sometimes makes me think that a little depression might actually be good for this country.
These companies must be swimming in so much money it makes them think they can ignore customer preferences.
Turley thinks the cause is short-sightedness. In his model, executives don’t stay at a company long enough to benefit or hurt from financial performance. But they win awards and accolades for all their virtue-signaling. If that’s true, it’s only because executives who don’t deliver good financial performance aren’t paying the price.
Either way, now is the time for all of us to triple-down on Disney. Cancel everything! Let’s have an anti-Disney Christmas. Wouldn’t that be nice?
