If there’s one thing guaranteed to spark outrage on Fox News, it’s any person or entity concerned about racial sensitivity, even Disney and the Muppets.
In case you missed it, today’s racial grievance is about Disney+ adding a content warning about “negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures” to old episodes of The Muppet Show. The Guardian has more:
Disney+ has not detailed the “negative depictions” that necessitated each content warning but, in one episode, from season five in 1980, Johnny Cash performs while standing in front of a Confederate flag, which has a longstanding association with white supremacy.
In another, from season three, Spike Milligan appears in a multitude of caricatured national costumes as part of a performance of It’s a Small World After All, including as a Chinese person with exaggerated front teeth and a long braid.
Fox & Friends welcomed Sen. Tom Cotton for some right-wing poutrage in a segment FoxNews.com called, “Cotton calls out Disney's double standard after adding disclaimers to 'The Muppet Show.'”
The U.S. was on the verge (just reached) of half a million deaths from coronavirus but sure, let’s pause for yet another salvo in Fox’s never-ending culture war.
Unlike Fox’s Raymond Arroyo – who recently attacked Disney for ditching racial stereotypes in its “Jungle Cruise” ride – cohost Steve Doocy concern-trolled that Disney didn’t go far enough. As if negative messages about people of color are not regularly featured on Fox.
DOOCY: So rather than get rid of that content, which is very expensive, they’re putting that label at the beginning of it. What do you think about that?
COTTON: Total Mickey Mouse move, guys. But seriously, I mean, Disney is putting these kind of disclaimers on the Muppets or other old movies in its catalog – not removing them from Disney+ because they don’t want to lose the revenue from its subscribers. But at the same time, just last year, they thanked an agency at the Chinese Communist Party that is responsible for concentration camps and genocide, in Xinjiang province, for helping them film a movie. It is outrageous and appalling.
First of all, while I don’t condone Disney’s behavior toward China, there is no connection between that and putting a warning about offensive content in a TV show.
Second, if Cotton cares so much about human rights, maybe he should rethink his heartless support for Trump's family separations at our border and putting kids in what look a lot like concentration camps, right here in the U.S.
Not that any of the three cohosts mentioned that.
But then those were children, not fetuses. Cotton suggested that we should hate Disney’s disclaimer because they stand for abortion rights, too.
COTTON: It’s kind of what they did a few years back here in the United States. If you recall, they threatened to cut Georgia off for the site of filming and making movies ‘cause the Georgia legislature wanted to protect unborn children. Yet they’re perfectly willing to work with Chinese communists who are responsible for genocide against their own people. It’s really appalling.
Cohost Brian Kilmeade didn’t seem to take this particular outrage all that seriously. “Do you think we’ll have a Muppets commission to look at this?” He asked. “Would it be bipartisan?”
Cotton laughed but he was quite serious about his grievance. “Again, it’s not just the Muppets. They’ve got disclaimers on all kinds of shows on that catalog. But they haven’t taken those things down. They still want that $12.99 a month.”
You can watch Fox launch its latest right-wing weapons against anything that whiffs of liberalism below, from the February 22, 2021 Fox & Friends.