The Old Disney CEO Just Called Bob Iger a Chicken
I wouldn’t want to be Bob Iger this week. Maybe I’d want to be Bob Iger the week he screens the live action version of Tangled (it will be bad), but I don’t want to be the Disney CEO this week, when he’s tanked his legacy by capitulating to the Trump administration’s bullying almost instantly. Jimmy Kimmel has been yanked off the air indefinitely, and Iger is the face of that decision as CEO of ABC’s parent company, Disney.
This has pissed off a lot of people, from other late-night hosts to a former Disney CEO. Michael Eisner, who was the CEO of Disney from 1981 through 2005, decried the cowardice defining corporate leadership under Donald Trump’s second presidency on X.
“Where has all the leadership gone?” Eisner tweeted. “If not for university presidents, law firm managing partners, and corporate chief executives standing up against bullies, who then will step up for the first amendment?”
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The people will, hopefully. But it’s still so embarrassing to have the most powerful individuals on the planet cower to the whims of a man with a French fry addiction and a bad spray tan.
“The ‘suspending indefinitely’ of Jimmy Kimmel immediately after the Chairman of the FCC's aggressive yet hollow threatening of the Disney Company is yet another example of out-of-control intimidation,” Eisner continued. “Maybe the Constitution should have said, ‘Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, except in one’s political or financial self-interest.’ By-the-way, for the record, this ex-CEO finds Jimmy Kimmel very talented and funny.”
It’s unlikely that Eisner’s public comments will sway Iger’s decision-making. There’s still no clarity on when or if Kimmel will come back to air, and the FCC hasn’t indicated that the agency will back down from its mission to remove late-night hosts from television for criticizing Trump. It must be incredibly embarrassing for Iger, though — to not only be dragged around by the neck by Trump but to also be shamed by his predecessor about his astounding lack of leadership and courage.
