Josh Hawley Somehow Under Impression That It's Netflix's Job To Help Him Raise Bigoted Children
Hawley spent his time at an antitrust hearing whining about LGBTQ+ characters.
This week, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos testified before the Senate about his company’s plan to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD), an already enormous media conglomerate that also includes HBOMax. Senate Democrats, being normal, were concerned about antitrust issues and were skeptical that any acquisition of the WBD by another media group would not be problematic.
Republicans, on the other hand, took the opportunity to scold Sarandos over what they consider to be not just a liberal political bias, but actual “social engineering” designed to, as a report from the Heritage Foundation put it, “advance left-wing radical political ideologies and undermine and demean traditional American values.”
By this, they meant that there are shows on Netflix featuring LGBTQ+ characters. Oh, the humanity of it all.
During the hearing, noted free speech lover Sen. Josh Hawley complained that he and his wife have to watch shows on the streaming service before they can allow their children to see them, for fear said children might learn that gay or trans people exist — or worse, see them portrayed in a humane way. (Hawley’s remarks come at 52 minutes in.)
“Why is it,” he asked with a very serious look on his face, “that so much of Netflix’s content promotes a transgender ideology? Almost half of your content for children — I’m talking about minor children, I’m not talking about teenagers — promotes a transgender ideology agenda.”
Transgender ideology, by the way, means “acknowledging the existence and humanity of transgender people.” Sort of how acknowledging the existence of women with brown hair is “brunette ideology,” and acknowledging the existence of bears is “bear ideology.” See how much sense that makes?
To be clear, however, that is not true. Even in the Heritage Foundation’s report, practically all of the shows they cite as supposedly promoting this “transgender ideology agenda” are rated TV-MA. The only exceptions are Dead End: Paranormal Park, which features a trans protagonist, and The Babysitters Club, which features a single transgender child.
If Josh Hawley cannot avoid those two programs, that is a Josh Hawley problem, not a Netflix problem. Hawley is free to not subscribe to Netflix and to instead subscribe to a Christian streaming service that promotes the ideology with which he wishes to indoctrinate his children. Indeed, the whole point of antitrust legislation is to provide different options for people. There are currently at least four different streaming services that provide Christian children’s content and he is welcome to use those instead.
“Why are the programs so full of this highly sexualized, highly controversial agenda? I don’t get it,” Hawley continued.
This may come as a surprise to Josh Hawley, but neither Dead End: Paranormal Park nor The Babysitters Club are porn. The mere existence of transgender or gay characters does not mean that something is “highly sexualized” any more than the existence of heterosexual or cisgender characters does.
I would like to note that the “anti-woke” cartoon that was supposed to stream on Xitter but never got it together featured a non-binary character, and that conservatives were not too upset about that. Apparently it’s fine to have these characters so long as they are being set up to be mocked.
Also during the hearing, Sen. Eric Schmidt, also of Missouri, complained that Netflix created “the wokest content in the history of the world” — which is not necessarily true but also not actually illegal, despite what many conservatives seem to believe.
“The overwhelming majority of your stuff is overwhelmingly woke, and it’s not reflective of what the American people want to see,” Schmitt said. “Why in the world would we give a seal of approval or a thumbs up to make you the largest behemoth on the planet related to content?”
Except it very clearly is what the American people want to see. Netflix is the world’s most popular streaming service, with over 300 million subscribers — 100 million more than Amazon Prime, the second most popular service. PureFlix, which produces what Schmitt clearly believes the American people want to see, has only 1 million subscribers. Great American Family, the cable network that Candace Cameron started in response to Hallmark making Christmas movies featuring same-sex couples, has a viewership of about 111,000 during primetime.
Stranger Things, which the Heritage Foundation’s report described as “centered on a character's journey to coming out as gay” (which should come as a pretty big surprise to the Demogorgon), is one of Netflix’s most popular series ever.
As hard as conservatives have tried to make “go woke, go broke” a thing, companies like Target that have backed away from “woke” have been fucked, while Costco kept its DEI policies and has since thrived. Movies like Wicked and Sinners have achieved massive box-office success, while every Sydney Sweeney film has flopped. The Washington Post lost 250,000 subscribers after its shift to the right, has been hemorrhaging them ever since, and will likely lose even more after firing over 300 journalists this week. Recent polling has also shown that the American people side with the Democrats on transgender issues by 22 percent.
Just because you keep saying something is true doesn’t mean it is.
That being said, is it the contention of these men that people who don’t want to raise their children to be bigots should not have any entertainment options available to them? Or that people who create programming should, instead of making the shows and movies they want to make, create shows that Josh Hawley wants to watch or wants his children to watch? Does he want to use the power of the government to force them to do so? Because that sure would be a pretty big violation of the First Amendment.
If Josh Hawley and other Republicans wish to raise their children to be bigots, that responsibility lies with them, not with anyone else. We have more choice in what to watch now than we have ever had before, and they are free to take advantage of that in the same way everyone else does. Watch what you want to watch, don’t watch what you don’t. It’s not that hard.
As Parker Molloy notes, Republicans have had success with this formula before. It’s what they used to force Facebook to the Right, ultimately making it so they wouldn’t check facts or crack down on fake news, as doing so would seem “biased” towards the Left. Simply planting the idea that companies are biased towards the Left has repeatedly resulted in formerly neutral companies becoming significantly biased towards the Right. While Sarandos repeatedly denied the accusations coming from the Republican legislators, explaining that they have a wide variety of programming for people across the political spectrum and that this is what makes the company popular and profitable, it’s entirely likely that they will follow suit and start cutting down on the number of LGBTQ+ characters in their programming.
Let’s hope they don’t fall for it this time.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
There's this little feature called "parental control" if your delicate sensibilities are so easily offended.
"Indeed, the whole point of antitrust legislation is to provide different options for people. "
The thing with these types is, it is not that they don't want to see it, more important to them is that YOU don't get to see it, they want to control everyone else's choice.