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Buddy’s Soap Box

What we all want

A patriotic Texas howdy from Buddy,

The left is now daffier than Daffy Duck ever was. Daffy’s antics were hilarious, especially in his rambunctious early years. The left is just as funny, but in a macabre sort of way, a way that is very dangerous for our nation.

We have in our polity people who believe in open borders.  We have people who believe that criminal rights matter more than victim rights. We have generals in our military fretting over new uniform designs for pregnant soldiers. We have a Supreme Court nominee who claims not to know what a woman is. We have people who do not understand that endlessly printing money causes inflation. We have people who believe toddlers should be taught LGBQWXYZ options.  We have people who think the police are bad and those who burn and loot are good. We have people who do not believe in free speech. We have people who believe the world is drenched in racism and sexism and in every kind of ism imaginable. We have people who believe that anyone who has a different opinion is a liar and a racist. We have people who do not understand the importance of fossil fuels. We have people comfortable with killing babies in the womb. We have people who hate our nation and its history. We have people who believe the elimination of voter ID is a good thing. We have people believe men should be free to participate in women’s sports. We have people who believe guns cause crime.  We have people who believe government should be raising our children. We have by and large a media that endorses all the above and suppresses any opinion to the contrary. We also have politicians who likewise endorse all of the above. And we also have someone in the White House who lines his own pocket at the expense of his nation.

If you are comfortable with the above you are a woke liberal and are to be pitied. 

And you deserve to be trounced in any and all future school, city, county, state, and national elections, including the upcoming midterm, and continuing with the presidential election where Pres. Donald Trump will begin his second term.

Walt Disney, A bad case of woke disease

Walt Disney was one of the greatest popular culture icons of the last century. Were he alive today, he would not be happy with the Magic Kingdom’s current management. You can be sure of that.

In the following guest column, Paul Gleiser has more to say on the subject, and given that he expresses my views and that of many others, I need not further elaborate.

However, I do want to reflect here on my memories of Walt Disney and his Magic Kingdom. Beginning in the late 1920s and continuing through every decade that followed, Walt’s wholesome magic was always there as part of our childhood reality. Walt’s cartoons, animated movies, comic books, big little books and all manner of licensed products were around long before I was born in 1947. I, like millions of children from my generation, grew up watching the Wonderful World of Disney, seeing such movies as Peter Pan, Pinocchio, and Bambi. In 1960, my family drove on vacation from Texas to California to visit relatives living in Anaheim.  At the core of my memories from that vacation is our visit to Disneyland. Decades later Judy and I returned to Disneyland with our young son, Conan, and he experienced Walt’s special magic as well. Disney World in Orlando also became yet another magical place for our son and the whole family.

I could go on and on about how much Walt Disney and his kingdom mean to me.

In taking the position it has, Disney management has made a serious mistake.

I’ll leave you with the following image. In 1966, Walt Disney left us.

G. B. Love, the founder and longtime editor of the Rockets Blast/ComiCollector asked me to draw a memorial cover honoring Mr. Disney.  I was happy to oblige.

GUEST COLUMNS

The Mouse Gone Woke

by Paul Gleiser  Published April 1, 2022   You Tell Me Texas

According to figures contained in a study published by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, approximately 1.4 million U.S. adults identify as transgender. Divide that number into 331.9 million – the total population of the country – and you are confronted with the realization that our culture is being hijacked out of concern for the sensibilities of four tenths of one percent of our fellow citizens.

The latest manifestation is the Walt Disney Company. Disney – once the company that parents could count on for high-quality, enjoyable and, above all, safe entertainment for their children – has gone woke.

After being silent for nearly a year while the bill was being debated in the Florida legislature, Disney management has now forcefully spoken out against the “Parental Rights in Education” act that passed with majority popular support. Dubbed by its critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, (a deliberately misleading moniker), the law prohibits lessons about sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade in Florida public schools.

It’s actually difficult to wrap one’s head around the idea that such a law should ever be necessary in the first place. At one time simple common sense would have sufficed. Anyone with a lick of it can tell you that five-year-old children are in no way ready for curricula on sexuality. Talking to kindergarten children about sex isn’t education, it’s pedophilia.

And thus, another iconic American company succumbs to the radical, woke Left.

So sad.

Disney was once an American treasure. It was once a responsible, respected and widely admired steward of childhood imagination. It was once a protector of childhood innocence.

Today’s Walt Disney Company is none of those things. Today’s Disney executives are busy eliminating bigoted and transphobic phrases like, “Ladies & Gentlemen, Boys & Girls…” from recorded theme park greetings. They’re proudly announcing that by the end of this year, half of the characters in their movies will be LGBTQIA. (And is it me, or do they keep adding letters to that designation?)

Disney built its family-friendly reputation character-by-character, movie-by-movie and theme park-visit-by-theme park-visit over a period spanning most of a century. That reputation now stands in ruin, all in genuflection to an inordinately noisy – yet vanishingly small – portion of the American population.

The Walt Disney Company was built by children. It was the one studio in Hollywood that aimed the majority of its efforts at a childhood audience. If Disney is concerned about nurturing and educating children, good for them. Such concern is a part of the company’s DNA.

But if childhood education truly is their concern, Disney’s efforts are misdirected. To the extent that gender dysphoria is a problem, its sufferers represent a tiny, tiny fraction of children. Meanwhile, as Disney is obsessing over sexuality and gender pronouns, upwards of 70 percent of public school kids in America can’t read at grade level (while Chinese school children are busy doing multi-variable calculus).

If the Disney Company turned its considerable resources toward addressing that childhood concern, I’m sure Walt himself would be proud.