Trashing Disney

One thing I’d like to know regarding this whole Disney 9/11 docufiction, Hugh Hewitt recently wrote about how the Disney execs were totally surprised by this assault on their rightwing propaganda film, because they were “dyed in the wool liberals and huge supporters of Clinton and the Democratic Party”. Did those execs agree with that? Because it really seems like a fairly backstabby thing for Hewitt to have done to his new buddies. I mean, here they are bending over backwards to provide anti-Dem claptrap weeks before the election, yet Hewitt turns around and calls them one of the harshest insults imaginable; at least as far as Hewitt’s audience is concerned. And it would completely undermine ABC’s efforts to woe rightwing viewers; which was the whole purpose of this silly movie.

The only possibility I can think is that this isn’t a marketing gimmick to persuade conservatives that ABC is the Fox News of television networks, but rather that they’re really in on some big conspiracy. Because they’d have to know that if ABC became the equivalent of Fox News that their credibility would go down the crapper and that it would just spoil the whole “They’re Out To Get Us” mantra that the conservatives have. So instead, we could see this as a “good cop, bad cop” scenario where ABC pretends to be liberal while secretly shilling for the right.

I have a hard time believing that. But I also have a hard time seeing why they’d ever trust Hugh Hewitt again, after he dished out his strongest insult on them repeatedly. Nor can I see why a relatively smart guy like Hewitt would make this mistake. I’ve always assumed that he wasn’t nearly loony as he pretends to be, but it seems like he’s making a big mistake by biting the hand that feeds him.

But then again, I really think that they’ve bungled this whole thing; largely thanks to ABC’s open desire to woe conservatives. And their big mistake was going so far as to give rightwingers exactly what they always demand; which is the last thing they actually want. They don’t want an unbiased media or even a rightwing media. Because who would they blame their problems on then? No, rightwingers want a leftwing media, which is the only way they can understand why their lives aren’t working out better. Rightwingers want to be victims so they can justify their desire to victimize people, and they want partisan conspiracies to justify their desire to use partisan conspiracies. And so no level of backbending and kowtowing will ever convince rightwingers that ABC is their network. And I suspect that the execs at Disney are going to be internalizing this message pretty damn quickly.

Unless, of course, this really is some sort of silly conspiracy on their part, but I have a hard time believing that. I don’t see corporate execs being the ideologues they’d need to be for this to happen. I just think they were total dopes who got blinded by dollar signs into thinking that they could pimp rightwing propaganda without being punished for it. And to have Hewitt openly trash ABC to his readers should certainly be an education to them all.