Fox News found its latest thing to be outraged about on Monday, devoting multiple segments to complaining that Disneyland’s Snow White ride is the latest victim of liberal “cancel culture” and the “woke” mob because a single newspaper article offered mild criticism about the inclusion of a new kissing scene.
With the California theme park reopening for the first time in more than a year last week, Disneyland unveiled an updated ride based on the 1937 children’s classic, replacing Snow White’s Scary Adventures with Snow White’s Enchanted Wish. The revamped ride includes major upgrades such as laser projections and new animation, as well as offering up a more cohesive storyline in line with the movie.
In what was largely a positive review of the new attraction, the San Francisco Chronicle’s digital publication SFGate published a travel piece on Friday claiming it was problematic for the ride to include a “true love’s kiss,” which features the Prince breaking Snow White’s sleeping spell by kissing her. “Haven’t we already agreed that consent in early Disney movies is a major issue? That teaching kids that kissing, when it hasn’t been established if both parties are willing to engage, is not OK,” the article’s reporters asked.
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Of course, it didn’t take long for Fox to gin up an outrage cycle off of one paragraph of a digital travel write-up. Beginning with an article on Fox Business’ digital site, which said the new ride was “prompting backlash” while citing only the SFGate piece, the network mentioned the “canceling” of Snow White nine times on Fox News and five additional times on the Fox Business Network through mid-Monday morning.
On Fox & Friends, for instance, the hosts devoted several segments to the issue and even made it a focal point of their interview with Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), who came armed with his usual assortment of colorful colloquialisms.
“So now they’re trying to cancel Snow White. Your thoughts?” Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked the Republican lawmaker.
“You know, sometimes I think we are so screwed,” Kennedy exclaimed. “I don’t know where these jackaloons come up with this stuff. I don’t mean to be mean. I’ll try to be nice if they try to be sane and I shouldn’t discourage it, I guess, because so many of my Democratic friends believe in it, but it’s just such utter nonsense.”
The senator went on to grumble that the single article’s supposed cancelation of a classic Disney film is “about as popular with the American people as head lice” and that liberals are “so out of touch with the lives and concerns of ordinary Americans, I don’t know why they spend their time on this political correctness.”
The obsessive coverage continued on the network’s so-called “hard news” programming. Welcoming on Fox News contributor and The Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway, anchor Dana Perino claimed the “woke movement” is now taking aim at Disneyland and that Snow White had been “canceled.”
“I think it shows how woke-ism destroys everything fun in our society,” Hemingway responded. “But it’s a real issue because of how prevalent these woke culture warriors are in affecting everything that we read and experience.”
The pair would then debate at length the merits of the SFGate article’s argument regarding consent, with Perino grumbling that the “left thinks they can go in and rewrite the ending to other people’s work” while Hemingway complained that liberals would force the Disney ride to go on forever.
“It would involve people coming to the end and having the prince ask for consent over and over and over again to someone who would just lay there and they would have to sit there until the park closed and that’s not an enjoyable ride,” the conservative pundit declared.
Throughout the first few months of 2021, Fox News and right-wing media have bounced from one culture war outrage to the next, obsessing over Mr. Potato Head, Dr. Seuss, The Muppets, Lil Nas X, the AP style guide, and a soap company no longer using the word “normal,” among countless other examples.
