Earlier this week, Disney announced the “Disney Dream Desk”, a \$900 PC for kids. Honestly, it’s not that newsworthy of a deal: the computer is kind of ugly, and one of the selling points is that it comes pre-configured with oodles of site-blocking software to keep kids from looking at porn (and, as a side effect, a good number of in-depth informative resources on the ‘net, as Boing Boing points out in the link above).
When Disney president Robert Iger went on Fox News to do a brief promotional spot for the Dream Desk (news or commercial…who can tell?), he was suddenly blindsided by host Stuart Varney’s homophobic attack on the (not Disney-sponsored) “Gay Days” at Disney World.
IGER: It’s easy to set up, easy to use, compact, it doesn’t take much room, and most importantly it has what’s called ContentWatch built in.
VARNEY: Well, you know, I — exactly. I mean, in June you have “Gay Days” at your theme parks. You got any ‘Gay Days’ on the Mickey computer?
IGER: Well, this has built into it all kinds of protective devices that protects the kid, or the child from internet sites that a parent wouldn’t deem appropriate. Also, the fact —
VARNEY: Well, you don’t protect the kids from “Gay Days” at the theme parks, do you? Why do you have to protect them in the computer?
IGER: No, we don’t sponsor — we don’t sponsor “Gay Days.” You know, we are a company that lets anyone who is willing to pay through our gates.
Kudos to Iger for handling the sudden, unexpected (and entirely unreasonable and unprofessional) line of questioning as best as he could, that’s for sure.
Varney should, at minimum, be censured by Fox for derailing a promotional fluff piece with his bigoted hysteria. This was an absolutely ridiculous injection of far-right-wing hatred into a situation where it was far, far out of place, and really shouldn’t be tolerated, even by “fair and balanced” Fox News.
(via Boing Boing)
iTunes: “Heaven Says Move (Heavenly Bliss)” by DJ H. Geek from the album Heaven Says Move (1999, 5:46).