The Most Read Stories of 2022
Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee staff! Below are the ‘Most Read’ stories on my website. Thank you for subscribing and I hope you enjoy today’s look back upon the year that was.
Mike
1. Elon Musk Speaks Out
Originally published on March 8, 2022
Lately, Tesla and Starlink billionaire Elon Musk has been showing more common sense and leadership than we’re getting from our own White House. He stood up for increasing American oil production (even though he sells electric cars), and in less than a day, he provided satellite access and equipment for Ukraine to get back onto the Internet. But now, he’s drawing the line at what he sees as doing the same thing Russia is doing.
Putin signed a new law barring Russian news outlets from reporting on his war on Ukraine. In response, many governments (but not Ukraine’s, oddly) are pressuring media and Internet companies such as Starlink to ban Russian news outlets as propaganda. He tweeted, “We will not do so unless at gunpoint. Sorry to be a free speech absolutist.” He added, “And also my sympathies to the great people of Russia, who do not want this.”
I understand the impulse to ban Russian media outlets when we know they’re being forced to censor themselves and air Putin’s propaganda. But if we are aware of that in advance, wouldn’t it be useful for us to know what they’re telling their own people, so we know what we have to counter? Also, you never know when some brave journalist is going to slip in some helpful real information or make a stand that the world should see.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/russian-news-walks-crackdown-media
In America, the Founders gave us free speech and freedom of the press because they trusted the people to have enough sense to know when they were hearing garbage ideas and argue them down and reject them. When the government starts deciding whose ideas are incorrect and unworthy of being spoken, that’s the slippery slope to tyranny.
We were already sliding that way as it is. Letting our government use Russia as an excuse to outright ban certain media outlets from the public square would only move us further down the well-known path of all fanatics, who eventually become what they once claimed to hate.
2. The Disney you knew is gone
Originally published on April 7, 2022
I grew up faithfully watching the Mickey Mouse Club on our black & white TV and singing along with the opening and closing songs. I knew all the Mouseketeers by name and probably had a crush on the girl Mouseketeers like Annette Funicello. On Sunday nights my family watched Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, although I never saw it in color. Color TV wouldn’t be something my family had until I was in high school. There wasn’t a Disney World in Florida back then—just a Disneyland in California, and I dreamed that someday I’d get to go there. The Disney brand was magic and Walt Disney was like everyone’s favorite uncle who was rich and had all the cool stuff. The Disney movies were dependably wholesome, family-friendly, and had a moral lesson embedded in the plot. Parents knew that their kids could see a Disney film and be entertained without being embarrassed or indoctrinated.
Just a few years back, we took our entire family to Disney World. Sure, it was mostly about taking the grandkids there and making sure they were indulged to the hilt.
But the wonderful family-friendly company that Walt Disney founded is gone, replaced by creepy corporate executives who have lost their minds and will likely lose a lot of their customers. They certainly have lost me.
Disney executives have outright lied about the Florida legislation that prohibits government schools from teaching sexual content to pre-schoolers and young elementary children. What person in his or her right mind want 4 year old children to be taught about homosexuality, transgenderism, and sexual expression? Disney execs repeated the utterly debunked lie that the bill was a “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Such language was nowhere in the bill. But it gets worse. In a conference call, other Disney leaders expressed the goal that in future Disney movies, at least half of all the characters in a film with be gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, queer, or something other than heterosexual.
And theme parks will be forbidden to say “hello boys and girls” and instead will be required to say “welcome dreamers and friends.” And no more will little girls be called princess when they show up in a gown. I guess boys could be a princess under the new perverted Disney code. Who knows?
This is so outrageous it’s hard to believe that the Disney company has become such a purveyor of soft-porn and woke-ism so that instead of entertaining children with fantasy and magic, Disney’s new model is sexual fantasy, outright betrayal and rejection of traditional values of marriage and gender, and instead of moral neutrality, Disney has opted for immoral advocacy.
Will their remake of Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs be called The Nymphomaniac and the 7 Male Prostitutes? Will Lady and the Tramp be re-named “The Lesbian and the Housing Challenged Non-gendered Animal?” Will Beauty and the Beast be renamed “The Bi-Sexual and the Child Predator?” And Swiss Family Robinson will now be about a dysfunctional family that becomes homeless and lives in a local park after wrecking their VW hippie van.
I simply refuse to believe that this dishonesty and insanity from Disney represents what American parents and grandparents want to purchase for their children. But the only way to push back against this filth is to find other products and places when you purchase entertainment for your family.
This is no longer about party politics. A clear majority of Florida Democrats support the law prohibiting schools from indoctrinating 4 and 5 year old children about various sexual agendas that are probably NOT the agendas of parents. I guess the small number of people supporting the perverted version of a public school will next want to trade in yellow school buses for white, windowless utility vans typically called “kidnapper vans” since that is pretty much the direction Disney is taking with your children.
I am old enough to remember when parents would say, “Sure, you can watch that movie. It’s a Disney movie so it will be safe.” Not anymore! This ain’t kid’s stuff. And I for one don’t want to enrich the people that have destroyed the Magic Kingdom and turned it into the Perverted Palace. Mickey shouldn’t be the face of Disney anymore. The Disney character most representative of the company would be GOOFY!