If you look at Mickey Mouse’s hands, you’ll notice he doesn’t have a middle finger. But if he did, he most surely flipped it at Ron DeSantis this past week.
Florida’s governor had told the world that he’d taken on Disney and won. But while DeSantis was busy tweeting, Disney operatives were busy working, quietly rewriting legal papers in an attempt to ensure the governor’s tough talk never amounted to anything more.
Basically, Disney was playing 4-D chess while the governor’s legal team was fumbling with a bag of checkers. And by the time Team DeSantis figured out what had happened Wednesday, its members could do little more than fume and pout.
DeSantis is so used to picking on easy targets — drag queens and transgender teenagers — that he wasn’t prepared to do battle with someone with the power to fight back.
It’s easy for DeSantis critics to laugh and scoff. Donald Trump certainly did, mocking his former protégé for getting bested by a cartoon mouse.
But the reality is that this whole situation stinks.
In fact, allow me to submit a perhaps unpopular take — that there are no purely good guys or motives in this fight.
Ron DeSantis and GOP lawmakers are trying to use bully power and petty politics to punish a private company for expressing opinions they dislike — in this case, Disney’s opinion that LGBTQ families should be treated like human beings.
But the petulant pols are so bad at what they do, they’ve proven themselves incapable of understanding the laws they’re trying to manipulate.
Still, Disney doesn’t deserve to run its own government. Many of us have argued as much for years. Unfortunately, lawmakers in this state have been happy to do Disney special favors for decades — as long as Disney cut them checks.
Just two years ago, DeSantis signed a law exempting Disney from a crackdown on social media companies after the company gave his political committee $50,000.
The ludicrous bill, which was invalidated by a federal judge who noted the special-interest favoritism, included a carve-out that exempted any company that “owns and operates a theme park.” DeSantis signed the bill less than two months after cashing Disney’s check and after records show his staffers swapped emails about the language Disney lobbyists wanted in the law.
[ DeSantis, Florida GOP did favors for Disney – until Disney stopped giving them money | Commentary ]
DeSantis clearly did a favor for a corporate donor, blowing a castle-sized hole in the tough-on-corporations narrative he tries to peddle. In fact, a big part of why corporate America likes DeSantis is that they know he plays ball.
Still, those of us who never thought Disney deserved its own corporate kingdom might’ve still appreciated politicians doing the right thing for the wrong reason — except they were too incompetent to get it done.
First, lawmakers passed a bill that attempted to dissolve Disney’s Reedy Creek government district. But they hadn’t done their homework to understand current laws or that $1 billion or more worth of bonds were tied up in Disney’s self-controlled government. So they had to try again.
To show how you unprepared these people were, just read the two bills they passed.
The first focused on “dissolving certain independent special districts.”
The second said: “the Reedy Creek Improvement District is not dissolved as of June 1, 2023, but continues in full force and effect under its new name.”
So the second bill explicitly said they had not done the very thing they vowed to do in the first. My cat Leona has a better understanding of state statutes.
Also, the ultimate “solution” GOP lawmakers devised was not what they promised.
DeSantis had vowed to make Disney “follow the same laws every other company follows in the state of Florida.” I actually like that plan. That’s how it should’ve been all along. But that’s not what he did.
Instead, he put a group of hand-picked political appointees in charge of the private company. No other company in America works like that. DeSantis didn’t put Disney on the same footing as everyone else. He tried to put Disney under his own personal thumb. And Disney seems to have found a way to at least temporarily thwart him.
If these guys actually had a desire to do the right thing — before Disney cut them off financially — they wouldn’t have tried to twice ram through poorly thought-out laws. They would’ve asked a team of smart government-law experts to devise a way to sunset Disney’s special status in a logical, legal matter.
But logic has taken a beating in Tallahassee over the last two years as book-banning, pronoun-legislating and drag-queen-bashing has become the rage.
[ Disney suspends political contributions in Florida as CEO apologizes for silence on ‘don’t say gay’ ]
I don’t begrudge anyone who laughed at DeSantis last week for getting out-brained by a mouse. It was cringe-inducingly amusing to watch his campaign team stage a meltdown on Twitter, claiming that the governor’s clear loss was really a big win because (just you wait) the governor is always thinking “10 steps ahead.”
The governor’s own appointees had just admitted Disney had outsmarted them. Yet Team DeSantis was claiming it was all part of the master plan. Sure.
[ DeSantis’ Reedy Creek board says Disney stripped its power ]
The reality is that taxpayers and good government are the big losers here.
The DeSantis appointees have already vowed to hire four different law firms to fight Disney, paying the politically connected barristers as much as $795 an hour. And at least for now, Disney gets to keep its special status.
So sure, laugh at DeSantis. But I’m still not rooting for Disney.
While the company has done some great philanthropic things in this community, it has also used money, power and even free park tickets to warp public policy in this state for decades. Everything from secret text messages with county commissioners to try to deny sick time for local workers to back-channel messaging with the governor’s staff to request special favors.
I’m not cheering for the powerful corporation or the pandering politicians. I’m rooting for good government that doesn’t cater to special interests — the one thing neither side seems to want.
smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com
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