So the geniuses at the Walt Disney Company, which rebooted Rosanne to near Super Bowl numbers, decided that one drunk tweet was enough to cancel the whole thing.
During my working career, I once did some daily hire technical work in Disney’s ABC News division. It was a great company to work for.
I watched budgets being administered. I helped report news. I helped make it look and sound good on TV.
I NEVER saw this company walk away from the numbers Rosanne was generating because its current CEO happens to be preening himself to potentially run for President (If Trump can do it, so can I) and using the assets of his shareholders to do so.
And the double standard.
Keep in mind what has happened to ESPN personalities who crossed the line in the other direction.
Also keep in mind that the target of an AT&T acquisition, the Turner Broadcasting System’s Samantha Bee, in a scripted, recorded performance called Ivanka Trump a “feckless cu*t” which actually aired. Then, she apologized once and Time Warner said, see, she apologized (I’m paraphrasing).
Was Ms. Barr right? Well, let’s say that you don’t have to hire Hill and Knowlton to discover that some PR battles are better left fought another day. And Rosanne should have learned from her rendition of the National Anthem in San Diego that there are certain things you just don’t do. She can add making fun of Valerie Jarrett to that list.
What about Ms. Bee?
I’ll let the management of AT&T deal with that when they finally win their anti-trust suit to take over the likes of her and her friends at CNN. My guess is that the term “editorial independence” means different things to people in Atlanta and people in Dallas. And, I’m willing to bet that ATT does not have as cavalier an attitude to the interests of its shareholders as, say, the current management of the Walt Disney Company.
Remember, corporations are solely about money. The minute more than one person is using the protection of a corporate entity, the emphasis is no longer on society or politics or anything other than making money legally.
Disney stepped waaaaayyyy over that line last week and the reckoning often doesn’t happen immediately but it almost always inevitably happens.
One other thing.
Bob Iger is a corporate executive, NOT an entrepreneur. He would have to grow a large pair of testicles to get anywhere close to what the President is and, even then, would not be close. His actions in the Rosanne case show me that not only is he testosterone challenged but has risen to (or past) his Peter-principal level in life.
People like Iger almost never get much farther.
There are plenty of people out there—some of whose politics I agree with, others not so much—who would be capable of mounting a credible challenge for the Presidency should they want to open the books on their lives.
Iger simply doesn’t have it, despite his sycophants telling him things to the contrary.
He would be a lot smarter to worry about the economic fortunes of his shareholders than his future as a politician. He can still do things for his shareholders.
The rest of us?
Not so much.