Trump's Social Media Venture Abruptly Loses Key Officials; Sparks Concerns

[Rideback]

Great article on the Disney flap. One of the great ironies is that the DeSantis crowd fails to distinguish between gays and pedophiles. The Right seems to have once again jumped the shark in order to embiggen their search for political boogie men. Gay people, transpeople aren't the crowd that are pedophiles.

Debunking the gay myths

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate ... s-debunked

In other words, the 'groomers' are more likely to be married white men...

Meanwhile, the ones getting arrested and sent to jail for pornography are not from the Left, they're from Trump's own camp, own administration.
https://crooksandliars.com/2022/04/form ... cted-child

[PAL]

Oh, this is so good. Ha ha ha.

[PAL]

I lived in Florida for a bit. There was a nude bathing beach and gays frequented it, along with non gays too. I didn't go, as I was past my skinny dipping years. There was no uproar then. This was in the mid-90's. Now it is probably banned.
Notice I said I lived there for a bit. It's easy to say, don't live there, or in a certain place, if it has gone so ultra conservative, or even twisted in their thinking. But people need to stay and fight this twisted thinking the Right is putting forth.
Good article. Thanks.

[pasayten]

Hey... I am right leaning and not freaking out... I do hate Trump and all his mannerisms... kind of want the GOP to go back and be more McCain like... it's the Trumpsters who drank the kool aide that are freaking out...

The Right’s Disney Freakout
April 1, 2022

By Michelle Goldberg
Opinion Columnist

I don’t know Latoya Raveneau, but I feel terrible for her. An executive producer at Disney, she was a speaker at a recent virtual all-hands company meeting about Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Inside Disney, there had been considerable anger that the company, one of the state’s largest employers, had donated to politicians behind the bill and hadn’t done more to fight it. Raveneau stepped up to defend the company’s queer friendliness, only to become a national object of right-wing fury and disgust.

On a video call, Raveneau spoke about her initial apprehension about taking a job at Disney, fearing she wouldn’t be allowed to include gay characters in the projects she worked on. Instead, she said, everyone she’s worked with has welcomed her “not at all secret gay agenda,” letting her add “queerness” to the animated show she directs, a revival of an early-aughts series called “The Proud Family.”

The results of Raveneau’s agenda seem sweetly anodyne. The show’s main character, Penny Proud, has a flamboyant gay friend who has to deal with bullying, and another character has gay dads. There’s been some reporting about the groundbreaking nature of the show in the entertainment press, but as far as I can see, it hadn’t caused much if any controversy. Then the conservative activist Christopher Rufo stepped in.

Rufo obtained video of the all-hands meeting, and he presented clips of Raveneau’s remarks, along with those of several other Disney executives, as evidence that Disney is sexualizing children. The story has blown up on the right, where Raveneau’s arch reference to a gay agenda is being treated as an admission that she has a plan to corrupt kids.

“This isn’t programming. This is propaganda for grooming,” hissed Fox’s Laura Ingraham on Wednesday. “Disney isn’t just grooming children with radical sexual propaganda — now they’re bragging about it,” said a writer for The Federalist. Raveneau has landed in the middle of a renascent moral panic, one that combines elements of QAnon with old tropes about gay predators.

When I spoke to Rufo on Thursday, he was frank about wanting to punish Disney for giving in to employee pressure to oppose the Florida law. “Perhaps the lesson that they’re learning — and certainly the lesson that they should be learning — is that they should stay out of politics,” he said.

Dig deeper into the moment.
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Until recently, Rufo was best known for his work mobilizing the right against critical race theory. But in recent months, both he and the movement he helped catalyze have turned their attention to gender and sexual identity. He believes there’s a lot of latent alarm among parents over changing ideas about gender, and he intends to tap into it.

“I think there’s an opportunity to do the reporting, to build the narrative, much in the same way as critical race theory,” he said.

Rufo’s work helped inspire a wave of state legislation limiting the way teachers can talk about race, history and current events, under the guise of banning critical race theory. Now, a new wave of legislation is targeting what teachers can say about L.G.B.T.Q. issues. As PEN America reported, the fight against critical race theory “has primed the public to support sweeping censorship of classroom speech. For anti-L.G.B.T.Q.+ activists, this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, a chance to ram through bills that are far more restrictive than anything the public would normally accept.”

The most notorious of these new laws is Florida’s H.B. 1557, the “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity for kids below fourth grade, and any such instruction that is not “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate” for older students. It has an enforcement mechanism similar to the recent Texas abortion bounty law, allowing individual parents to sue for damages and recoup attorney fees if they win. What constitutes “classroom instruction” is unclear, but many fear it could include any mention of gay or transgender people, including students’ families. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it on Monday.

To justify the law, the right has taken to accusing anyone who opposes it of wanting to expose young kids to explicit material in order to prime them for abuse. On Twitter, DeSantis’s press secretary wrote, “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.” The QAnon idea that the right’s political opposition is a cabal of pedophiles has gone mainstream.

This is, of course, not the first time that gay and gender-nonconforming people have been framed as a moral threat to children. In 1977, Anita Bryant, a former beauty queen and spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission, started the anti-gay Save Our Children campaign. “Homosexuals cannot reproduce, so they must recruit,” she said. “And to freshen their ranks, they must recruit the youth of America.”

In recent years, the Republican Party has largely eschewed such language, appearing to make their peace with the presence of gays, lesbians and transgender people in public life. Now such rhetoric is back, and it’s potentially explosive.

Companies’ most valuable asset is their brand, said Rufo, “and we’re going to start to erode that.” In the video of the Disney meeting that Rufo released, Raveneau enthused about how much freedom she’s been given to depict queer characters. But the price of that freedom just went up, and it remains to be seen if Disney will be willing to pay it.

[PAL]

Ken, I meant why bother trying to discuss any of these issues with you. Yeah, we're waiting for the link to the tape.
Calling someone Groomer? How ridiculous you are! Meaningless drivel.

[Rideback]

Still waiting for the link to the tape...

[dorankj]

Ok, groomer. As PAL says: “why bother”, I’ll fight you at the voting booth.

[Rideback]

Justice Jackson's sentencing is considered' 'mainstream' and Josh Hawley had previously voted for judges to be confirmed with similar records. Context is everything.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fact-ch ... d=83565833

Ken, please show the link you're referring to that has the tape of Disney pedophilia

[PAL]

Why bother. He is a blathering misinformation spewer. Ken that is.

[mister_coffee]

okay, Ken.

[dorankj]

In the case of Disney ITS ON TAPE! As for KJB it’s her super low sentencing record, far below standards. You people are the manipulated ones! But don’t let truth get in the way of your political narrative.

[PAL]

The Methow Valley News just came out with an article about "grooming". In no way are the Dems or Justice Brown "grooming". Yes, it's a tactic because the Republicans know their base will believe anything they tell them. They are desparate and will do anything they can to make their base hate others.
They are the ones using children, like as you say, a Russian tactic.
You know who had some kind of sexual misconduct charges is Jim Jordon. See where their little minds are-in the gutter.

[Rideback]

Pedophilia is a Russian age old tactic. They have used it for decades now to rile up the crowds because everyone is sensitive to it and will listen to a charge. Look at how they took first Tom Hanks for gawd sake and now Disney and are accusing them...because if you can get people to distrust the most likeable people and most likeable (I don't even know how to describe how much Disney is beloved by children) children-based company in the world then you've captured the hearts and minds.

They're now charging Dems and Justice Brown along with Disney as being 'groomers'. It's what the Reps do instead of making policy, they obstruct and work to destroy their political enemies. Much like Putin knows he can't fight the US, EU, NATO on a level playing field so his tactic is to get them to fight themselves.

[mister_coffee]

In some ways their emphasis on pedophilia makes a dark and evil kind of sense. Pedophilia is obviously an awful thing and you can get away with doing a lot of awful things in the name of protecting children from it.

This also playing well into the fact that a lot of people in our society appear to be in the midst of a major mental health crisis. I don't know what exactly has caused so many people to go off the deep end all at once, but something obviously did exactly that.

[PAL]

And the crazies are...Marjorie Taylor Green, Boebart, Hawly, Jordon, Cruz, Ginni Thomas, to name a few. They are all hung up on pedophilia. Funny how their minds work.
What does this have to do with Trumps Media venture?

[Rideback]

Trump's social media may indeed be in a dumpster fire but the Koch infrastructure is alive and well, still writing legislation in the states, still paying Josh Hawley's wife to write talking points, still sharing copies of same with Cruz, Blackburn and Graham. The PUTINporn questioning was such a tell, a sign that a compromised politician is one that spends their hours attacking the enemies of their power rather than legislating for their constituents. The Kochs learned this from the Russian playbook and have been using it.

[dorankj]

BTW- funny edit, I think quotes denote something actually said by someone else (me) not your projection on me.

[dorankj]

Target rich environment here! Glad we found some common ground.

[PAL]

Yeah, me too.We know who they are.

[dorankj]

I keep an eye on what the crazies are doing.

[PAL]

So Ken, you like being here with us low discoursers.
Please look at the broader picture for all of our "woes" that you are saying we have. It can't all be on the current admin. Blame game, that seems to be all you know. You are not "Woke".

[Rideback]

The PUTINlogic is getting thick.

[dorankj]

So tell us all, how many children do you have in school here? What risk to your income due to authoritarian mandates have you experienced? How are you affected by crazy gas prices, inflation and world chaos brought on by those currently in power? ‘Me thinks doth protest too much,’ maybe look in the mirror!

[dorankj]

Same thing you-all are doing, but thanks for proving my point!

[PAL]

Dorankj, if you think the discourse is so low here, then what are ya doin' here?