Once again South Knox Bubba has delivered me a juicy scoop via the New York Times. Apparently Disney has told its subsidiary Miramax that it can't distribute the new movie by Michael Moore, he of "Bowling for Columbine" fame. The movie documenting Bush-Saudi family ties in relation to 9/11 is called "Fahrenheit 911".
I have to say I'm shocked that Miramax ever got involved as a potential distributor for this movie, just what were they thinking? I turns out the principals of Miramax are Bob and Harvey Weinstein who are big ticket Democrat donors. But really, no one at Miramax should be surprised that their Big Brother, Disney pulled the plug on the deal. The explanation mentioned in Bubba's source article in the New York Times is that Disney told Miramax the movie will sour its relationship with Jeb Bush and jeopardize special tax credits that it is receiving. Publicly Disney is just saying it doesn't think a family oriented company like Disney should be distributing movies that might alienate part of its fan base.
Now as a regular reader of LDTT you should know that the former argument is clearly the real one with more truth in it. True, Disney is a bland family entertainment company, however that is what it created the Miramax brand to sell all its violent non-family oriented productions without tainting its squeaky clean Mickey Mouse image. Never mind that "Fahrenheit 911" could probably make it hundreds of millions that would far exceed the value of tax credits. Its the cozy "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" relationship with the Bush family and Jeb in Florida (HQ of the Axis of Disney) that Disney doesn't want to upset.
I have to admit I always had Disney pegged as staunch GOP supporter, its exactly the squeaky clean family oriented corporation that goes hand in hand with the puritanical GOP manifesto. However it seems I couldn't have been more wrong and like many big corporations Disney plays both sides of the fence. Open Secrets shows that the Disney Political Action Committee actually gives almost exactly equally to both the GOP and the DNC. In fact in 1998 it gave more to the Democrats then Republicans (60/40 split). In 1997 it worked with both Democrats and Republicans and got passed a bill to extend copyrights, handily preventing the copyrights on Mickey, Pluto, Goofy and Donald from falling into the public domain in the next ten years which would have cost it billions in lost merchandizing revenues.
Does anyone else see how clearly corporate personhood issues are at work here?
I think perhaps Moore might be even smarter than we think. I think I can see this will drum up plenty of free publicity for his movie and a new distributor will swiftly step up to the plate, quite possible on of Disney's competitors. Regardless, I don't think this is going to do anything to hurt the success of Fahrenheit 911, and it at least removes any possibility that a distributor like Disney might want to exert some heinous editing privileges on the release.
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