![]() |
Disney World is going to be hard-pressed to live up to its billing as "The Most Magical Place on Earth" if it sticks to its plan to reopen the Orlando theme park with limited capacity on July 11.
It will be staffed with disgruntled employees who are scared to death of catching COVID-19.
Disney World could become the most nightmarish place on Earth. How's that for a crisis PR scenario?
A petition drive organized by Disney employees calls for a delay in the reopening the park due to the spike in COVID-19 cases in Florida.
The Sunshine State reports more than 100K cases of coronavirus and a single-day record high of 4,049 new cases on June 20.
Addressed to Orange County mayor Jerry Demings and Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer, the petition notes that theme parks are not deemed essential businesses.
It reads: "As individuals who work in the bustling tourism industry in central Florida, we are responsible for ensuring the safety of our guests and our fellow magic makers… This includes our health and wellbeing. We are encouraged to say something when we see something that we deem is unsafe so we’re speaking up… While theme parks are a great way to relax and enjoy free time, it is a non-essential business; it is not fair to the people who work there to risk their lives, especially if they are at risk or have family members who are at risk. People are more important than making a profit."
Disney fans also have expressed their opinion about the reopening. They swamped Disney's advanced reservations booking system, when it opened for business on June 21.
Facebook is the No. 1 platform for online hate and harassment, according to a survey released June 23 by the Anti-Defamation League.
It found that 28 percent of Americans experienced sexual harassment, stalking, physical threats, swatting, or doxing.
More than three-quarters (77 percent) of them said harassment occurred on Facebook while the rest was experienced on Twitter (27 percent), YouTube (21 percent), Instagram (20 percent) and WhatsApp (nine percent).
The ADL is part of the #StopHateforProfit coalition launched June 17 to ask large advertisers to boycott Facebook to show "they will not support a company that puts profit over safety."
Other members are the NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Color Of Change, Free Press and Common Sense.
The ADL's survey reported big jumps in identity-based harassment. Sixty-one percent of Muslims felt their harassment was due to their religion. That's up from 35 percent from the 2019 survey.
Asian-Americans ranked next, with 55 percent saying harassment was due to race, compared to 20 percent in 2018.
That was followed by Jews for their religious identity (43 percent in 2020, 35 percent in 2018), African Americans for their race (42 percent in 2020, 27 percent in 2018) and Hispanics or Latinos for their race (42 percent in 2020, 30 percent in 2018).
The LGBTQ+ community bucked the trend, reporting a decline (48 percent in 2020 vs. 63 percent) in harassment due to their sexual orientation.


Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gets it wrong... New York governor Kathy Hochul’s decision to take a one-year pause in permitting data centers is a winning issue for her... JD Vance fails to bail out Trump from the mess that he created.
JPMorganChase chief Jamie Dimon warns of lurking risks that could upend Wall Street's gravy train... Iran foreign minister praises Trump's looney "guardian of the Strait" idea... State Dept. scolds NYC's international affairs unit for overplaying its hand... Historian Timothy Snyder graciously puts his '"Hitler and Stalin" lecture series online to alert people that "it" could happen here.
New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, an outspoken critic of Israel, is more popular among American Jews than prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu... Donald Trump is the first leader since Benito Mussolini in 1934 to intervene publicly in his national team’s favor... It's surprising that JD Vance hardly uses the word "Catholic" in his memoir about his conversion to Catholicism.
President Trump killed much of the positive PR that the US has enjoyed as one of the co-hosts of the World Cup... Pride in the US sinks to 25-year low, Gallup finds... White House trashes Smithsonian's US History Museum as the MAGA version of un-American.
Donald Trump claims we are all profiting from Wall Street's rising prices, but the billion-dollar president sure did a lot better than the rest of us... Venezuela hopes the $300M in US reconstructiion aid will follow the same growth trajectory as the White House's East Wing ballroom project.



