Ben Shapiro is a Disney adult. Well, he was one, until Disney just got too “woke” for him to handle. So Ben and his buddies at The Daily Wire are going to make their own movies and TV shows for children that will get rid of the deeply offensive things that Disney movies preach, like diversity and equality.
Shapiro first teased the idea of getting into the business of making kids’ shows on his podcast last week. While whining about Disney’s tepid opposition to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Shapiro called the company’s leadership “cowards” who were failing to “give you a safe place to let your children be entertained.” So now he’s going to take up that mantle. “If you want entertainment that’s going to cater to your children, we’re going to start making kids content over here at Daily Wire specifically,” he said. “So you don’t have to be catered to by companies who hate your guts and cater to the people who despise your values.”
In an employee town hall event, Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing (nice last name, the jokes write themselves) echoed these sentiments, stating, “Americans are tired ... of giving their money to woke media companies who want to indoctrinate their children with radical race and gender theory,” before pledging to spend $100 million over the next three years to make animated and live-action children’s shows.
So what kind of shows will Daily Wire Kids be making? All we know is that they won’t be “woke” which typically doesn’t tell us anything because woke is a completely meaningless scare word. But in the case of Shapiro, we’ve actually got a pretty good idea of what it means based on how he uses it.
Take Shapiro’s recent review of The Batman, in which he whines about the “woke touches” throughout. What are these supposed strokes of wokeness? “Every white character is apparently bad,” Shapiro says, ignoring the white protagonist of the film. But here’s the real tell: “Catwoman is a woman of color who is, of course, good. And you have the Black female mayor, who is good. And you have the Black Jim Gordon, who is good.” That’s right, it is too “woke” if any white people are bad and if any Black people are good. That’s pushing an agenda, according to Ben.
As for the wokeness within the ranks of Disney that has Ben’s undies in a bunch: It’s gay people. Ben is upset that Disney is showing gay people. “I have to ... pre-screen to see just how clear the LGBTQ [content] is going to be,” he said on his podcast, accusing Disney of trying to force “Pride festival films” on children. What sparked this? A single same-sex couple kiss that will reportedly appear in Lightyear, a movie that isn’t even out yet.
In Shapiro’s world, Disney doesn’t actually believe or support any of what it shows. It is “being held hostage by the woke.” They’re trying to indoctrinate your kids with this stuff! Can you believe it?
Obviously, it is not radical or activist to depict gay people or people of color, to acknowledge that they exist, and to extend dignity by showing them being real, fully formed people. It is radical to erase them and their experiences. That is what Daily Wire Kids promises to do.
