I’m undecided why Jared Polis despatched his tweet taking Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to job for his strong-arming of Mickey Mouse and the remainder of the Disney gang after they criticized DeSantis’ benighted, wink-to-homophobes, Don’t Say Gay laws. Let’s simply be completely happy he did.
And that’s to not point out — though Polis made certain he included it — DeSantis’ unrelated war with Twitter, which apparently entails the Twitter board attempting to dam Elon “Anything Goes, Especially on Twitter” Musk from taking the corporate personal.
When it involves Polis, I can consider at the least a couple of explanation why he thought to intervene.
It may very well be, as rumors proceed to flow into, that Polis actually does see himself as sometime operating for president and desires to be out in entrance in criticizing DeSantis, who’s clearly operating for president, providing himself as a barely extra secure model of Donald Trump. If you’ll recall, two Colorado Democrats — John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet — each briefly ran for president in the final go-round.
It may very well be that as the primary brazenly homosexual individual elected governor, Polis felt the necessity, or perhaps even the accountability, to handle DeSantis’ legislation punishing Disney for relying on, you recognize, First Amendment protections in criticizing anti-LGBTQ laws.
It may very well be that libertarian, pro-business Polis truly cares whether or not previously corporate-friendly Republicans at the moment are solely pleasant to un-woke companies.
Or it may simply be that it’s just too irresistible to lampoon DeSantis, who’s in direct competitors with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to indicate which governor may greatest legislate his approach into the inevitable (however perhaps not anytime quickly) post-Trump, Make America Insane Again sweepstakes.
In case you missed the news, right here’s Polis’ tweet:
“Florida’s authoritarian socialist attacks on the private sector are driving businesses away. In CO, we don’t meddle in affairs of companies like @Disney or @Twitter. Hey @Disney we’re ready for Mountain Disneyland and @twitter we’re ready for Twitter HQ2, whoever your owners are”
The tweet is attention-grabbing on so many ranges.
Polis goes after DeSantis for being “authoritarian,” which is definitely the way in which that Democrats are hitting Republicans today. Here’s Polis in an interview with Fox News Digital after his tweet:
Polis mentioned that whereas DeSantis is “welcome to disagree” with any firm, “when government starts threatening private companies with retribution based on their free speech, that takes us down the road towards authoritarianism.”
Polis, who thinks Democrats ought to spend extra time on Fox and speaking to folks they don’t essentially agree with — which, for Polis, would come with not a couple of Colorado liberals — went on to accuse DeSantis of “cancel culture,” which is simply concerning the nastiest factor, in need of “grooming” youngsters, in the Republican vocabulary.
Polis didn’t simply accuse DeSantis of being an authoritarian, but additionally a “socialist,” which will need to have given DeSantis coronary heart palpitations. Nothing has made Republicans happier than Bernie Sanders, a self-identified socialist, operating for president. Republicans had been calling Democrats socialists for 100 years, after which Bernie comes alongside to agree, at the least in his case.
I assume Polis is utilizing “socialist” each as a dig and as a nod to the GOP anti-wokeness marketing campaign, which has devolved, at the least in the Disney case, into telling an organization the way it must be operating itself.
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And then, in fact, Polis tells Disney and Twitter that each are welcome to do their enterprise in Colorado, and nevertheless they see match. Mile High Disney? Can you image it? (Nah, me neither.)
Taking on Disney is sort of a take a look at in Florida. Disney has greater than 80,000 staff in the state and operates as an odd self-governing district, which places Disney in cost of a lot of the governing features of a metropolis. They gained this energy a few years in the past from, in fact, the Florida state legislature. It appears the Orlando property isn’t such a small world in any case.
DeSantis has argued that ending Disney’s self-governance profit would set a extra degree enjoying area for Florida companies. And whereas which may be true, is there anybody who truly believes that’s what DeSantis is speaking about? Would you be courageous sufficient to boost your hand when you do?
In case you’re confused by all this and thought, as many people (naively) did, that the gay-rights difficulty was principally put to relaxation by advantage of Supreme Court selections, state legislative work and, most of all, the startling turnaround in the polls, which now present one thing like 70% of Americans approving of homosexual marriage, it’s clear now that the difficulty is back, if in a barely completely different kind.
There was, in fact, the notorious wedding-cake skirmish. But we couldn’t have figured on the emergence of the transgender points — Which toilet to make use of? Which sports activities crew to play on? Which remedy choices shouldn’t be included in the GOP’s oft-cited parental rights? This has turn into a severe Republican difficulty and a nod to the QAnon varieties who stay to unfold the weird conspiracy idea that high-ranking Democrats are concerned in child-sex-trafficking rings that solely Donald Trump can break up.
The Don’t Say Gay legislation, which is now being thought-about by as many as 13 Republican-controlled state legislatures, would be sure that Ok-3 college students aren’t taught about sexual orientation or gender id and would additionally enable mother and father to show in lecturers who, as they may have heard from the mouths of their 6-year-olds, may very well be crossing some type of sexual line. Texas has its anti-abortion vigilantes and now Florida has its turn-in-your-teacher legislation, which might have flown in at the least one Republic I can consider. That could be, in fact, the late, unlamented German Democratic Republic, higher often known as East Germany.
We’re already listening to from the right-wing fringes — or perhaps they’re not fringes — that anybody who opposes the Don’t Say Gay legal guidelines clearly should favor the sexualizing and grooming of younger kids.
The most well-known put down of this concept got here from a younger Michigan state senator, Mallory McMorrow, whose speech from a “straight mom” of a 1-year-old has gone viral. She had been accused by a Republican senator, by identify, of supporting “grooming and sexualizing” kids in a fundraising e-mail.
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And, sure, Don’t Say Gay matches neatly with the legal guidelines towards educating Critical Race Theory — an obscure topic that started being argued in legislation faculty lessons in the ’70s, however which isn’t taught in any elementary faculties of which I’m conscious — which could as effectively simply be known as the Don’t Say Black (And Definitely Don’t Say Slavery) legislation.
To offer you an thought of simply how loopy this all is, Florida just lately rejected a bunch of arithmetic books for not assembly their requirements. The New York Times analyzed the proposed books and located obvious regarding examples, akin to an image of a, uh, Black child saying, “To learn together, disagree respectfully.”
What may very well be extra anti-American in the 12 months 2022 than to make a severe name for respectful disagreement? Jared Polis settled for one semi-respectful — if fairly humorous — tweet. Which is seemingly nonetheless authorized in most states at the moment, however who is aware of as soon as Florida actually will get to work?
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too a few years to depend. He has coated Dr. J, 4 presidential inaugurations, six nationwide conventions and numerous brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow.
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