Major League Baseball and the Walt Disney Co. top a watchdog’s list of the “worst of the woke” enterprises that displayed intolerance in the name of tolerance this year.
Major League Baseball made the top 10 of the New Tolerance Campaign’s list for its April decision to move the All-Star Game out of Atlanta to protest Georgia’s new election law, which allows up to 17 days of early in-person voting. It moved the game to Colorado, which has 15 days of early in-person voting.
Disney made the list for firing “The Mandalorian” actress Gina Carano for comparing the treatment of conservatives to Jews during the Holocaust in an Instagram post but allowing her co-star Pedro Pascal to compare Trump supporters to Nazis.
What’s more, Disney showcases a “Diversity and Inclusion Commitment” on its website, yet it filmed part of the live-action movie “Mulan” in Xinjiang, a region notorious for religious persecution, and thanked Chinese Communist Party “entities responsible for human rights abuses” in the movie’s end credits.
“From Wall Street to Main Street, online and in-person — you’d have to be living under a rock not to have encountered some degree of virtue signaling by CEOs, celebrities, and so-called socially conscious brands over the past 12 months,” said Gregory T. Angelo, president of the New Tolerance Campaign, which aims to spotlight intolerance double standards.
“But even more astounding is the rank hypocrisy on display from these self-styled champions of diversity, equity and inclusion,” added Mr. Angelo, former president of the Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative LGBTQ group.
On its website, the New Tolerance Campaign says it has assembled more than 30,000 grassroots activists in all 50 states in efforts such as challenging universities’ speech policies and companies’ relationships with entities that abuse human rights.
The campaign’s worst of the woke list “highlights the worst offenders who failed to live up to their stated values while pushing phony tolerance” in 2021, Mr. Angelo said.
The group named the Women’s Tennis Association its “champion of true tolerance” for suspending tournaments in China over the disappearance of female star Peng Shuai after she spoke out on social media against the communist authorities.
“Their CEO Steve Simon continues to stand his ground, suspending all WTA tournaments in China until the safety of star athlete Peng Shuai is assured,” Mr. Angelo said. “One would expect any professional athletic association to do the same in support of human rights, but in a year in which major corporations and sports associations bent over backward to ignore the brutal oppression of the CCP to rake in cash from the Chinese market, the bold stand of the WTA is worthy of commendation.”
Emerson College, a private liberal arts school in Boston, made the list for suspending a campus chapter of Turning Point USA for “anti-Asian bigotry” in October after the student group distributed stickers criticizing China’s human rights abuses.
The catch-all category “Elites Who Flouted their Own COVID Rules” helped round out the top 10 list, which includes Walmart, Amazon, CVS Health, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the investment management firm BlackRock and Big Tech, represented by Facebook and Twitter.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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