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Why is Stephen Colbert, the most partisan and least funny man in late-night, generally the top host? By doubling down on #Resistance politics, Colbert built a dedicated audience just big enough to win the ratings war in today’s splintered landscape. He doesn’t have to put up the same numbers as Johnny Carson, so he doesn’t have to appeal to a wide swath of the public.

CNN is trying to be Johnny Carson in a Colbert world. The outlet is failing miserably to fulfill that goal, which is outdated anyway. It’s just a terrible business model, and even worse when you try to transfer it onto a new streaming platform with massive amounts of overhead.

Amusingly enough, Licht knows this better than anyone. In fact, his last job was with Colbert. As a savvy businessman, it makes perfect sense that Licht is quitting Twitter and trying to wrestle the network back to some semblance of neutrality.

As Fischer reported in February, “Licht and [David] Zaslav share a view that CNN was chasing prime-time ratings at the expense of the brand.” The same story, by the way, predicted CNN+ would shrink before it launched.

There’s a market for CNN+’s content, the problem is that it’s tiny. If you want to make money on a niche platform, you can’t spend like it’s a mass media platform. And if you want to be a mass media platform, your product can’t feel like a niche platform.

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Conservatives are once again shooting themselves in the foot and handing the Left an easy victory. In their confrontation with the Disney company over its opposition to an education bill that liberals mislabeled "don't say gay," Republicans are playing into their opponents' hands by picking the wrong side of a culture war that's already been decided against them.

Or so liberals think.

As one Politico writer put it, the very notion that the GOP would "demonize one of America's most beloved and trusted corporations seems so quixotic on its face that it invites a simple question: not 'Why would they do this?' or even 'Why would they think it could be done?' but 'Why would it even seem advantageous to try?'"

On its face, this assessment of the dustup between Gov. Ron DeSantis and the company that operates "the happiest place on earth" seems accurate. That's especially true if you believe that the culture wars over gay and transgender issues were already won by the LBGTQ lobby and its corporate allies years ago.

That assumption is based on the way Hollywood helped normalize gay marriage in films and television shows, powering the push for the courts to ultimately mandate its acceptance everywhere in the country. That campaign illustrated the truth, enunciated by the late Andrew Breitbart, that politics was downstream of culture. Since the entertainment industry remains firmly in the grip of the Left, its leaders likely assume every policy shift they endorse will inevitably be made a permanent part of American culture.

Hence the belief that Florida Republicans are crazy to think they will succeed in stopping the indoctrination of young children to accept radical ideas about gender. If Hollywood, including heretofore family-friendly Disney, plans to promote gender ideology, it's because it believes mainstream American culture will follow along even when it advocates for the use of life-altering medical treatments on minors, with or without their parents' permission.

But while Breitbart's rule still holds, the Left and its corporate enablers, such as those running Disney, are fundamentally mistaken about their power to control public opinion.

Liberals may believe that supporting the right of parents to be involved in decisions regarding their children's well-being and to limit discussion of gender and sexuality issues in classrooms is reactionary. But no matter how many times they call Florida's HB1557 law "don't say gay" and assume that will be enough to ensure its defeat, that doesn't make it so. Nor does it change the fact that there is a huge difference between acceptance of adult gay couples and the attempt to normalize the idea of young children changing their gender, or allowing biological males to compete and dominate in women's sports at the high school and college levels. Such things are not rooted in basic American values.

Moreover, the growing polarization of American political culture means that liberal confidence in Hollywood's power to determine societal norms is also mistaken. In the last three years, the bifurcation of society has become almost complete, with Americans reading, viewing and listening to entirely different sets of press outlets and becoming isolated from each other on social media platforms.

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, many Americans stopped listening to cultural or media outlets that call them racists because of their skin color or their adherence to equality instead of "equity." The same is true of conservatives who are ignoring mainstream media that label them traitorous insurrectionists because they voted for Donald Trump or question the fairness of the 2020 presidential election.

Now, even demographic groups that Democrats believed to be unshakably liberal are joining the backlash against woke doctrines about race and gender being imposed in the schools. When Disney, acting under the pressure exerted by both left-wing employees and liberal opinion leaders, chose to publicly oppose the Florida law, it started something it couldn't finish.
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DeSantis and the GOP are not trying to turn back the clock to the 1950s while the rest of the country has moved on. They are actually in tune with much of mainstream America, which is rejecting the Left's demonization of those who think parents should be in charge of their kids' education and that sex ed, including indoctrination about gender, isn't appropriate for kindergarten students.

Disney, as one former writer for the network recently acknowledged, has long been involved in the sexualization of children, and it is not so powerful as to be able to mainstream ideas about race and gender that ordinary Americans reject as racist or too left-wing. And as it takes on a popular governor who is unafraid of such confrontations, it is about to find out that its influence may fall short. The GOP could inflict serious financial damage on a corporation dependent on state acquiescence in a sweetheart deal from which it has long profited.

This sort of comeuppance has been long in coming. But it will still shock the cultural Left to learn that there are limits on its power and that there are some things it can't make Americans swallow, no matter how hard it tries through its programming and public advocacy. Backlashes against pop culture are also upstream of politics, and that wave of anger about wokeness could swamp not only Disney but its Democratic Party supporters this fall.

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A diverse coalition of ministers, politicians, former corporate executives, and others is saying enough to corporate America's embrace of far-left politics, launching a wave of new initiatives to stop a years-long trend of corporations going woke.

Former McDonald's CEO Ed Rensi on Wednesday said companies have "no business" being in politics and has launched a new advocacy coalition to fight woke corporate politics.

"Corporations have no business being on the right or the left because they represent everybody there and their sole job is to build equity for their investors," Rensi told Fox Business, adding he believes progressive policies are negatively affecting shareholders.

Rensi will serve as executive chairman of the Boardroom Initiative, which comprises three pro-free enterprise advocacy groups: the Job Creators Network, the Free Enterprise Group, and Second Vote.

"These are groups that have been working kind of independently, but we decided to join forces and capitalize on all of our strengths," Elaine Parker, president of the Job Creators Network, told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Thursday. "We're going to fight back against all this woke capitalism in all of its forms. And the reason why is because we've got to protect our shareholders, the employees, customers, and the community from its overall spread."

Parker explained that the Boardroom Initiative will combat woke corporations and boards in a variety of ways, including filing shareholder proposals, advancing viewpoint diversity on corporate boards, and utilizing digital channels to spread the awareness of its mission.

"All of this is kind of happening below the radar, but we're starting to see it bubble up with some of the big headlines," she said.

Disney has certainly made headlines over the past few weeks for publicly criticizing a recently passed bill in Florida that bans instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms for grades K-3. The company announced it would suspend political donations in Florida and support organizations working to oppose the new measure.

In response, the Florida legislature voted Thursday to strip Walt Disney World of its private government status, a step supported by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Disney is just the latest prominent example of corporations supporting left-wing positions on hot-button issues.

Last year, for example, Delta and Coca-Cola lambasted a newly passed election bill in Georgia meant to minimize voter fraud. Critics, including the two companies, said the measure was designed to suppress voter turnout, especially among minorities — a claim denied by those who supported the bill. Major League Baseball even moved its All-Star Game out of Atlanta due to the voting law.

Another corporation accused of going woke is Bank of America, which has encouraged employees to be "woke at work" and told white employees to "decolonize your mind" and "cede power to people of color," according to Manhattan Institute fellow and investigative reporter Christopher Rufo.

Corporate leaders are "speaking out on policies that don't impact their companies," said Parker. "This is social engineering. These are issues that they shouldn't be getting involved in ... They have a responsibility to their shareholders to produce profit and value for the company."

One way in which companies have embraced wokeness is through Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) evaluation, a rating system used by investors to measure a company's advancement of policies designed to address climate change, increase board diversity, and support a progressive "social justice" agenda.

On Thursday, Utah Treasurer Marlo Oaks coordinated an effort by political leaders across the state to send a letter to S&P Global Ratings President and CEO Douglas Peterson and President Martina Cheung demanding that S&P withdraw ESG indicators as part of its credit ratings for states and state subdivisions.

"ESG is about controlling and forcing behaviors," Oaks said in a statement. "It attempts to do through capital markets what activists and their government allies have been unable to do through democratic processes. S&P should be concerned about whether investors will get paid back, not whether a state policy lines up with their political beliefs, whatever those may be."

Many of these leftward shifts in corporate boardrooms are motivated by stakeholder capitalism, experts say.

Stakeholder capitalism is the idea that companies should serve not only their shareholders but also other interests and society at large, according to Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and author of "Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam."

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has been one of Corporate America's biggest promoters of stakeholder capitalism.

Stakeholder capitalism is not about politics ... It is capitalism," Fink wrote in his annual letter to American CEOs in February. "Putting your company's purpose at the foundation of your relationships with your stakeholders is critical to long-term success."

"Your company's purpose is its north star in this tumultuous environment," he added. Shareholders "do need to know where we stand on the societal issues intrinsic to our companies' long-term success ... It is more important than ever that your company and its management be guided by its purpose."

Last year, BlackRock helped elect three climate-focused candidates to Exxon Mobil's 12-member board, describing its vote as an effort to push Exxon to fight climate change. BlackRock is a major Exxon shareholder.

Beyond climate change, many corporations have also taken up the mantle of the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM).

Indeed, spurred by the social unrest that tore through urban America in 2020, many companies have invoked the BLM slogan and pledged to donate money to the organization.

"Corporate leaders assumed that they were reducing their political and reputational risk by adopting [left-wing policies], especially on topics like climate change and workplace diversity," said Richard Morrison, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "In many cases, this seemed like a smart move at first, but only because prior to the last few years, there was almost no countervailing conservative activism from the other side. That has now changed."

On Wednesday, black leaders called on Papa John's, Coca-Cola, and other "woke corporations" to show support for police officers after they "blindly" supported BLM and its affiliates.

The call came from Concerned Communities for America (CCA), a group of black leaders that lambasted BLM for "hate mongering" and asked corporations to pledge to support law enforcement rather than BLM.

Perhaps the most infamous example of corporate wokeness is Big Tech's censorship of content — censorship that conservatives believe is meant to silence them and promote left-wing views.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the world's richest man, has cited social media platforms' suppression of content as a key reason why he's currently trying to buy Twitter, saying Twitter's higher-ups are infringing on freedom of speech and his goal is to change that.

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has also spoken out against the company's board of directors in a further indication that corporate leaders' behavior is alienating large swaths of the country.

Activism against corporate wokeness is slowly being turned into policy. Beyond Florida's battle with Disney and Utah's letter to the S&P, the Texas legislature last year passed a law that denied financial institutions who refused to do business with oil and gas companies or gun manufacturers the opportunity to do business with the Texas state government.

"In terms of a government response, I think the Texas one is legitimate — the state government can set certain standards for the vendors it wants to do business with, whether that's buying food for public schools or hiring a company to provide state agencies with financial services," said Morrison. "But states that try to reach out beyond their own role as a consumer and force 'woke' firms to renounce left-wing policies is over the line."

Morrison cited Florida's recent vote against Disney as one such move that went "over the line," describing it as a "political vendetta."

He added that it's "perfectly legitimate" for Congress to stop federal agencies from pressuring or forcing companies to adopt certain policies and priorities.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, for example, is pushing to adopt a new rule that would force corporations to radically expand their climate change disclosures.

"Congress should limit the jurisdiction of the SEC to its traditional role of facilitating financially material disclosures and not allow it to branch out into environmental and social policy," said Morrison, who noted Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texs) has a bill now, the Stopping Excessive Climate Reporting Act, to do just that.

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This brings us to Disney. Democrats and National Review-esque conservatives would like to portray Disney’s foray into Florida politics in opposition to Florida’s recent laws regarding sexual instruction in grades K-3 as an act of principle, and the loss of their special economic zone near Orlando unjustifiable as political punishment. But Disney’s principles have always been limited by pragmatism; look no further than the company kowtowing to China, even on sacred LGBT or racial issues, such as removing a lesbian kiss from Star Wars in China, or when they removed African American star John Boyega from all Chinese posters for the films.

Disney’s recent corporate behavior has been therefore to defer to those it cannot defy, and to dictate to those whom it can dominate. When it comes to China, Disney chooses appeasement. In the U.S., Disney faces cancellation from the Left and cultural elites if it defies them, hence the willingness to fire fan favorite Gina Carano from the hit Star Wars spinoff series “The Mandalorian” for refusing to put pronouns in her Twitter bio and being a Republican. Carano, one of the first female MMA fighters, is a trailblazer, but she was fired because Disney assumed any outrage among viewers or conservatives would be minimal, while their left-wing employees and the entertainment media would harass the company until they acted.

Disney has been correct in their calculus – until now. That is the real purpose of Florida’s actions. It is not, per se, about Disney’s opposition to the recent law. Efforts to stop it were ineffective, and the law passed. It was rather about changing the incentive structure. Disney was willing to oppose the Florida law and Governor DeSantis because the company believed that if they did not, left-wing activists and the media would attack them, but if they did, they would get cheers from the left and media while DeSantis and Republicans would shrug and do nothing. The incentive was clear. Being “woke,” even ineffectively, was free. That, in a nutshell, explains corporate wokeness: it is a rational cost-benefit calculation, not a broad-based ideological commitment to some sort of post-modernist Marxist worldview.

By not “doing nothing,” but rather taking action, Governor DeSantis, the Florida legislature, and newly assertive conservatives have sent a very clear message not just to Disney but to every company: the incentives have changed. If you decide to attack conservatives on the assumption they will merely “take it,” then you will now face retaliation.

This will not, as the National Review worries, endanger corporate free speech. If Disney executives and shareholders feel that “wokeness” is worth a financial tradeoff, they are free to pursue it. There are undoubtedly many woke consumers in America. But Disney will now have to balance pandering to them with the newly clarified costs of alienating everyone else – which will not mean abandoning all political positions that aren’t conservative, but likely will involve avoiding issues where 70% of the public is opposed to the message the left wants them to push. Pandering to vocal minorities will no longer make business sense.

This is a “conservative” approach to the antitrust goal of thwarting the abuse of concentrated economic power, in methods as well as ends. It functions not through coercion, but through the same incentive structures as the free market. By changing the costs and benefits of options, it forces companies like Disney to think much harder about taking biased political stands. That, ultimately, is what conservatives should seek in any sort of marketplace. A balance, in which no one side becomes all powerful.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Batwoman and some other dumb woke DC dumpster fire of a show on the CW was announced as cancelled today.

Any Firefly fan should ask them how a show that only pulled in 300k viewers managed 3 seasons, hop in a time machine and go back and tell Cool Young Joss how it's done.

If everybody needs to be genderacesexswapped and retarded though, never mind.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Oh yeah...

I forgot to mention that the Obama family lost their deal with Spotify.

Nobody wants to hear those goons talk about how important free speech is as long as it's free speech that they agree with.

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Generation Drag follows five teens and their families as they anticipate their biggest drag performance at Dragutante, a drag show designed as a platform for LGBTQ+ teens to express themselves. The show gives an intimate look at the lives of these families as they courageously support their kids who are navigating their true identities. The series drops all six-episodes on Wednesday, June 1st on discovery+, the definitive non-fiction, real-life subscription streaming service.

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"Do not take a stance you cannot reverse, especially when the decision is not final. This topic is a textbook '50/50' issue," the email reportedly said, according to the report. "Subjects that divide the country can sometimes be no-win situations for companies because regardless of what they do they will alienate at least 15 to 30 percent of their stakeholders... Do not assume that all of your employees, customers or investors share your view."

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Disney $107.68.

Netflix $177.66.


I don't hear any of the Corps weighing in on Abortion, do you?

Good.

Stay in your lane.

--------------------------------------------------

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
I have recently heard mention of ista-phobia.

What is it?

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Also, Netflix lays off 150 employees, with their PR firm lying and saying that it is a business decision and not because of the performance of its employees. Yup. Sure thing, Netflix. Go right on ahead and pretend that using layoffs as a tool to clean house of your undesirables isn't something that big companies haven't been doing for over 40 years now.

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While the restatement of the streaming platform's company creed might be interpreted as mere words — little more than a calculated feint to placate a customer base weary of cultural revolution and ideological purges — Netflix appears to be backing it up with actions.

Nearly 70 contractors writing for the company's left-wing brands such as the black-centric "Strong Black Lead" and the Asian-focused "Golden" were let go from the company as part of a downsizing effort the company has undertaken over the past several weeks.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Keep churning out that woke crap. You already ruined Star Wars, and it looks like the MCU has run its course too.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

These people are un-fireable, being protected classes on the Oppression Pyramid. It doesn't matter how little work they do, how little value their presence brings to the company or how much damage to the bottom line their employment eventually brings to the company. If it weren't for layoffs, the only way you were ever going to be getting rid of any of them is if somebody had video footage of them sexually assaulting somebody lower than them on the Oppression Pyramid.

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Originally posted by Jongsstraw:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Keep churning out that woke crap. You already ruined Star Wars, and it looks like the MCU has run its course too.

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I give 'em credit for at least ruining everything spectacularly .... with lotsa shit blowing up and stuff!

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Originally posted by Jongsstraw:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

These people are un-fireable, being protected classes on the Oppression Pyramid. It doesn't matter how little work they do, how little value their presence brings to the company or how much damage to the bottom line their employment eventually brings to the company. If it weren't for layoffs, the only way you were ever going to be getting rid of any of them is if somebody had video footage of them sexually assaulting somebody lower than them on the Oppression Pyramid.

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Before I retired 11 years ago this month I was working for a very large int'l. corporation. I swear this multi-national giant was quite obsessed with all that kind of libtard crap. There were dozens and dozens of employee "groups" established to air everyone's little grievances and gripes, mostly in groups based on ethnic and racial status. It was really just a not-so-clever way of protecting the lame and useless. That's what's important to them .... well at least for public consumption.

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Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
Picard is still on air, it must have some fans or else they fund a show that is making a financial loss

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Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
Independent Journal Review

'Sound of Freedom' Investors Get Massive Payout After Film Strikes Gold at the Box Office

https://ijr.com/sound-freedom-investors-get-massive-payout/

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In early September, Az livestreamed his gameplay of starfield when the early access was released, and during the character creation screen at the start of the game, he saw a pronoun selection consisting of "he/him" "she/her" and "they/them" which is what the NPCs will refer to you, regardless of your character's biological sex. At first, he appears visibly shocked and at a loss of words, then later on he pauses mid-stream and lashes out in a lengthy rant about modern/current day politics being shoveled into games and claiming it was also "immersion breaking" and distastefully narcissistic.

This clip went viral across the entire Internet, especially on twitter, causing a massive "woke vs anti-woke" flame war. Many internet personalities called Az out, such as The Act Man, Hasan Piker, and many people on reddit and youtube, calling his rant insensible, man childish, and utterly transphobic. Others defended Az such as The Quartering and other anti-sjw content creators, saying he did the right thing to speak out against game companies that pander to progressive ideology, even if he acted out too harshly

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