Disney and Sportsball: The continuing radicalization of the American right
By 
You know that Tucker Carlson kid who’s on Fox News every night? He’s a good fine reporter. Some people say he smokes crack but I don’t believe it:
The right-wing media machine has a new villain: Disney.
Right now Fox News, conservative talk radio, and a constellation of right-wing websites and influencers are all training their firepower on the entertainment giant. Disney CEO Bob Chapek’s belated stand against Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill has given way to right-wing media portraying the company as a “woke” organization seeking to “groom” children with what they characterize as a radical LGBTQ agenda.
Yes — really — Disney. The family-friendly, fun-for-everyone, intentionally inoffensive brand is being challenged like never before, largely by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other GOP politicians who are playing to the cameras to raise their own profiles.
“They have a sexual agenda for six-year-old children,” Fox host Tucker Carlson declared on Wednesday night. “You’d think that’s illegal in some way. It’s certainly immoral. It’s creepy as hell. And yet they are the country’s leading purveyor of children’s programming. That’s a problem, no?
“Later in his show, Carlson spoke about executives at Disney who have sought to normalize LGBTQ lifestyles by representing them in movies and other projects. “Sounds like the behavior of a sex offender,” Carlson said. “Normal people do not sexualize underage children.
“Carlson’s rant is just one of many examples. An hour earlier, Fox host Jesse Watters made similar arguments, dubbing the company’s theme parks as “The Wokest Place on Earth.” The truth is that characterizing Disney as a creepy company which aims to morally bankrupt kids — an extreme position — has become quite mainstream in GOP media circles.
It’s awfully swell of the folks at CNN to inform us that mainstream GOP talking points now include plenty of certifiably insane conspiracy theories — did you know that one of America’s largest corporations wants to turn your kids gay? — but if you take half a step out of the boat you’ll find that this week’s magic word in GOP circles is “grooming.”
Where does this stuff come from I wonder?
In January 2004, when Jayson Boebert was 24, he was arrested for exposing himself to two young women at a Colorado bowling alley. His future wife Lauren Roberts (as she was then known), who was 17 at the time, was also present and was told she was no longer welcome at the bowling alley.
Jayson Boebert pled guilty to “public indecency and lewd exposure” after that incident, according to The New York Post, and was sentenced to four days in jail with a subsequent two years on probation.
Salon has obtained a witness statement written at the time by Erica Anne Coombs, one of the two young women involved in the bowling alley incident, who still lives in Lauren Boebert’s congressional district. Coombs wrote that after harassing a third person identified as Nora, Jayson Boebert told Coombs and another young woman, identified as Trisha Walies, that he had a tattoo on his penis.
“Trish and I said ‘ya, whatever’ and turned away to ignore him,” Coombs continued. “Then Jayson came up behind us and pulled his penis out of his pants. His thumb was covering the head, and all I saw was the shaft. Trish and I turned away and went and told Larry.” That refers to Larry McCown, the owner of Fireside Lane in Rifle, Colorado, who called the sheriff’s department.
When Garfield County sheriff’s deputies arrived, McCown told them that he had repeatedly asked Jayson Boebert to leave the bowling alley but that Boebert had “refused to leave and became belligerent.” Boebert told deputies he had not exposed his penis, but had stuck his thumb through the fly of his pants as a prank. Trisha Walies disputed that in her account, writing: “I know that wasn’t a thumb because thumbs aren’t 6 inches long.” Lauren Roberts told deputies she had not seen Jayson Boebert expose himself.
Take the skinheads bowling.
Meanwhile, “sportsball” is rapidly becoming a target of the right wing culture wars, what with all the woke NFL teams doing woke things like having woke slogans in the end zone that make Ben Shapiro feel like he’s lost his safe space.
I know this sounds insane, but many in the MAGAverse have started aggressively attacking anyone who watches sports. There are some allowances for stuff like MMA, but they believe it’s feminine to idolize sports stars in these spaces now.
The big things users gripe about on extremist far-right sites in the last few months are: Trans people, gay people, LGBTQ allies, and people who like sports. They call it sports “sportsball” and complain constantly.
It’s going to take awhile before the Reasonable Moderate Centrists and the Even the Liberals finally figure out that “extremist far-right” and “Republican” are now synonyms.