2023 has been a miserable, terrible, very bad year for the Walt Disney company, with bomb after movie bomb coming in rapid succession. Park attendance is sharply down as well. Woke, in-your-face messaging is causing Disney’s once-loyal audience to run away by the millions. Is it a deserved comeuppance, or an American Tragedy?

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Ron Swansons Alter Ego
January 2, 2024 1:08 PM

Don’t know how many here are PJMedia readers.
Please read Stephen Green’s latest post there. Heartbreaking.

Prayers for the Green family!! (I tried to create a blog post and could not. Doesn’t appear that the member blog is working for me. If someone can, please do so!)

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2024/01/02/a-murder-in-the-family-n4925148

ACTS (TM)
Reply to  Ron Swansons Alter Ego
January 2, 2024 4:16 PM

That is devastating. I’ve been close to and/or known of other situations like this but thankfully never that close, yet, as Steve is to this. I know that I don’t know these guys personally but it feels like I do and it feels like we have a grieving brother in the family.

Ron Swansons Alter Ego
Reply to  ACTS (TM)
January 2, 2024 4:53 PM

Just awful. My M-I-L had a friend who lost a child last year in this way. Just devastating. Can’t even imagine the depth of emotion. Then to be able to write about it and do that well.
Steve has some brass ones in the emotion department that is for sure.

Brother Bob
Reply to  Ron Swansons Alter Ego
January 2, 2024 8:51 PM

Holy s*** Absolutely horrific news. Thoughts and prayers to La Familia Verde

ACTS (TM)
Reply to  Brother Bob
January 3, 2024 4:50 AM

… and the POS that did it lived. I’m of two minds about that sort of thing but the idea that he failed in his attempt to cheat justice and will suffer the rest of his life in prison comes out on top. The thing that worries me is that justice is no longer justice and this dungball may get out of prison some day.

Brother Bob
January 2, 2024 12:14 PM

I had been saying for years that I couldn’t wait for Christie Brinkley to divorce Billy Joel so he could get back to writing great music as opposed to that Uptown Girl crap.

Mary Tambakis
January 1, 2024 3:45 PM

I agree with Bill’s observation that writers of today have not really “experienced” what someone like Frank Capra did. Picked up an autobiography of his called The Name Above the Title where he wrote what gave him the idea of the type of character of George Bailey. He was part of a poor immigrant family in San Francisco where all the kids left home to seek their fortunes, except one brother, Ben, who had to stay with his parents. When he read the story he thought of the major sacrifice his brother made and wanted to make a movie of… Read more »

ACTS (TM)
Reply to  Mary Tambakis
January 2, 2024 5:06 AM

And while it’s obvious I’d still like to point out that the reason there are no modern Jimmy Stewarts to fill a role like that is the same as there are no modern Frank Capras to create that role. In both cases its the same underlying issue — Lack of lived experience. The sad thing is that it doesn’t have to be this way. I’m happy and grateful to live in times that are so materially good we don’t have to live through crushing hardship to come out the other side of adversity as better people. Because not everyone comes… Read more »

DAVID STANTON
January 1, 2024 2:09 PM

It couldn’t happen to a nicer nest of sewer rats. Their plunge into the depths of depravity didn’t just accidentally happen to them. They CHOSE it. The disastrous consequences of their despicable choices are GOOD things. It’s always a WONDERFUL thing when consequences of despicable choices become manifest to others. (BTW, the editing was poor. Everytime Steve chimed back in, he walked all over who was speaking before him.)

Ron Swansons Alter Ego
January 1, 2024 7:36 AM

I think I had posted this previously, and I know that when I told Ronette she agreed it would work, but if I had been in charge at Disney animation the past five years this is what I would have done. Take all of the classic animated movies starting with Snow White. Keep the animation and the scripts!!!!, but re-record the scores and voices using modern technology and sound recordings so that they sound better in the theaters. Release 1 per month, into theaters, for the 2 years leading up to the 100th anniversary. Parents would have taken their children… Read more »

ACTS (TM)
Reply to  Ron Swansons Alter Ego
January 1, 2024 10:23 AM

Disney would do well to hire you and maybe two or three others with similar views. Not the others so that you could argue but so that you could amplify each other and catch things one or two might miss but three or more probably won’t. I agree with Scott that this thing with Disney is a tragedy and not something to revel in. Disney used to be good, solid fun the whole family could enjoy, from parents to toddlers. It’s a net loss to humanity and the furtherance of Americanism when that kind of thing crashes and burns. My… Read more »

Ron Swansons Alter Ego
Reply to  ACTS (TM)
January 1, 2024 3:55 PM

The loss of the essence of Disney is to be mourned. Maybe Bent-Key can fill that void, but it will take some time. Were Disney to get back to the business of being Disney, they would still come out on top.

And yes, having heroes on film that we could see in our parents was essential to learning what being an adult meant.

ACTS (TM)
Reply to  Ron Swansons Alter Ego
January 2, 2024 4:45 AM

I find it hopeful that in the midst of all the “get woke go broke” nonsense going on today there are still solid, right thinking people who recognize the entrepreneurial opportunities and seize on them. Like TDW and Bent-Key, that’s a great example. Jordan Peterson is in the process of doing the same thing with education as Bent-Key is doing with entertainment. Empires rise and fall and that goes for business empires as much as it does for political ones. I’m also very much looking forward to Bill’s new series “Things to come”. He’s going to point out that in… Read more »

Ron Swansons Alter Ego
Reply to  ACTS (TM)
January 2, 2024 5:18 AM

Have you watched the speech from early Dec that Bill just posted? Well worth the 45 minutes. One of the best of that type that he has given and full of the Things to Come, with a dash of r/k thrown in. For those who have been watching Bill for years, it is almost the center of the spiral he has been on.

ACTS (TM)
Reply to  Ron Swansons Alter Ego
January 2, 2024 5:46 AM

Yeah, watched it yesterday within minutes of it being posted here on the site. It was great, Bill at his very best and all unscripted and off-the-cuff. There are so many things that I agree with Bill on that I find I have to pinch myself occasionally just to be sure I’m not going down a confirmation bias rabbit hole. I don’t think I am heading for that rabbit hole because Bill himself seems to avoid rabbit holes too. Which means that if you look for it you see some serious departures from some of the silly nonsense that many… Read more »

Keith Jackson
December 31, 2023 1:01 PM

As a beginning fiction writer/storyteller, I’d like to remind everyone that there are no new plot lines. Satisfying plots are hard-wired into our brains, no matter which culture forms our lives. Whether based off of the Bible, Shakespeare, or Grimm, modern plots are all derivative story lines. Plot lines that hit you in the face as recognizable, such as Disney’s “The Lion King” – a mash-up of Hamlet (Brother of the King kills King, son lost, guilty), and the stories of Joseph and Moses, remind us everything has been done. Joseph Campbell’s “Hero of a Thousand Faces” studies the archetypical… Read more »

Last edited 1 year ago by Keith Jackson
ACTS (TM)
Reply to  Keith Jackson
December 31, 2023 3:47 PM

Until these younger writers figure out that they have to give us what we want, not what they want to give us … Their beatings will continue until the situation improves.

Karl Schweitzer
Reply to  Keith Jackson
January 1, 2024 2:33 PM

Probably a mashup of Year Zero concepts, children that know more than old fogey/Ok Boomer older adults, and everyone gets a ribbon/everyone is special type praise that leads the younger writers to think they don’t need to repeat the “tired old cliches” and will produce the Next Big In Thing that corrects all of the social ills.

ACTS (TM)
Reply to  Karl Schweitzer
January 2, 2024 5:50 AM

… and of course the problem with Year Zero and such nonsense is that the mistakes of the past are repeated and not learned from.

It’s like Bill has said regarding being a pilot; “Learn from the mistakes of others, you won’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”.

Or to quote Gandalf … It is “abandoning wisdom for madness”.

Michael Shirley
December 31, 2023 12:53 PM

Please, for the love of God, stop talking over each other! Listening online when you do that means we can’t understand what anyone is saying. Geez…

Michael Shirley
December 31, 2023 12:50 PM

Slow motion train wreck. Elon Must quipped recently “Walt must be spinning in his grave like a drill bit”. I agree.

Daniel Cutshall
December 31, 2023 12:31 PM

No tears for Disney, it is a path they consciously chose to go down. However, great hope that the education that they have been handed, at great expense, will enlighten their choices for their future productions!?!?

RoadRunner NM
December 31, 2023 10:18 AM

I know that Bill has never said that he was perfect (out loud, at least), but I do have to correct one of his statements. Jimmy Stewart was a Colonel in the United States Army Air Force, but after the National Security Act of 1947 was passed, he was promoted to Brigadier General in the United States Air Force in 1959. So Jimmy Stewart was a General in the USAF, not the Army.

RoadRunner, MSGt, USAF (Ret)

Last edited 1 year ago by RoadRunner NM