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It Can Always Get Dumber: Ron DeSantis Moves To Eliminate The Ridiculous Disney Exemption To His Unconstitutional Social Media Bill Because He’s Mad At Disney
from the the-most-ridiculous-place-on-earth dept
"It can always get dumber. As you’ll recall, last year Florida man governor Ron DeSantis, as part of his big push to become the new populist leader of ignorant people, pushed for a law to force social media websites to host political content they didn’t want to host. He convinced the subservient Florida Legislature to pass that bill, but not before his staff personally teamed up with lawyers from Disney to insert a buffoonish theme park exemption, that said the law didn’t apply to you if you owned a theme park in Florida. The bill’s author admitted flat out on the floor of the Florida Legislature that this was done to protect Disney from having to worry about the law.
Of course, that was back in the before times, when the GOP wanted to cater to Disney, the largest employer in Florida, and a company that is often deeply connected to that state’s politics. It was little surprise that the company was able to get that obviously, blatantly corrupt and silly carve-out, because that’s how it works. . .
So, to be clear: Disney is a terrible company for many, many reasons (often detailed here). The social media bill is clearly unconstitutional. The Disney theme park exemption was both unconstitutional and a shameful public display not just of the corrupt level of coordination between Disney and the government, but the shamelessness with which they knew they could do that kind of meddling. The exemption shouldn’t exist. The law shouldn’t exist. The education law is equally problematic, and a full frontal attack on teachers’ autonomy in creating the best lesson plans for students.
But, deliberately attacking a company, and making legislative moves to punish that company in direct response to that company’s speech (especially political speech) is also unconstitutional retaliation. Even if the underlying move — getting rid of the exemption — is the right thing to do. What’s even more ridiculous is that by doing something like this, DeSantis hands Disney all the ammo it needs to go point out that this is retaliation for its political speech (though, in this case, they’re unlikely to bother, since the entire bill is going to be tossed out as unconstitutional anyway).
Of course, it’s quite clear that DeSantis honestly doesn’t care about what’s constitutional, or what’s right, or what’s in any of these laws. He wants to run for President in 2024, and the only way to do that is to fuel the moral outrage machine better than the last President.
And so here we are. In the most ridiculous place on earth.
And I’d rather be anywhere else."
Filed Under: 1st amendment, content moderation, culture war, education, florida, free speech, punishment, retaliation, ron desantis, social media, theme park exemption
Companies: Disney
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