Conservative and Right Wing cancel culture

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Disney pulled a transgender storyline from “Win or Lose,” an eight-episode Pixar streaming series that debuts in February, the company said Tuesday.

“When it comes to animated content for a younger audience,” a Disney spokesperson said in a statement, “we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.”

The character will remain in the show, but references to the character’s gender identity have been removed, the company said. The alteration involves “just a few lines of dialogue” near the end of the season.

“Win or Lose” centers on a co-ed middle school softball team in the lead-up to a big game, with each episode focusing on a different character’s perspective. The animated series features the voices of “Saturday Night Live” alumnus Will Forte and “Fresh Off the Boat” actor Ian Chen.

The storyline alteration drew criticism from Chanel Stewart, an 18-year-old transgender actor who voiced the transgender character.

“I was very disheartened,” Stewart told Deadline, an entertainment news website. Stewart told the publication that Disney called her mother Monday night to let her know about the change.

“From the moment I got the script, I was excited to share my journey to help empower other trans youth,” Stewart said. “I knew this would be a very important conversation. Trans stories matter, and they deserve to be heard.”

Disney CEO Bob Iger has said he wants the company to move away from themes that could be perceived as political. “Infusing messaging is not what we’re up to,” Iger said in an interview with CNBC in early April. “We need to be entertaining.”

Cancel culture was originally a Conservative idea, broadly, in a historical context - and it is figuratively on the horizon again, so all of those wokeologists are going to be the subject of a nice feast - being cancelled (not by me) - but by other Conservatives who don't value freedom.

Oh, the irony.

You reap what you sow etc.

Especially since Canada will surely be annexed by the orange man, and I will hate that.

An apt description is like a septic tank. The really big chunks always rise to the top.

Two words: Hays Code

Tom Hanks riled Donald Trump supporters on Sunday with the return of his MAGA-touting hillbilly character on Saturday Night Live.

The veteran actor was one of dozens of SNL alums who appeared on the sketch show’s 50th-anniversary special.

In one skit, Hanks appears as a man named Doug on a parody game show called Black Jeopardy hosted by Kenan Thompson. The sketch originally aired in a 2016 episode.

For the part, Hanks wore a red “Make America Great Again” hat in addition to a flannel shirt and T-shirt with a bald eagle on it. Despite not being part of the game show’s demographic, the Southern man is hilariously still capable of correctly answering the questions.

In the initial sketch, Doug backs away from the show’s host when he tries to shake his hand before eventually caving in.

Once again, Doug hesitated before shaking the host’s hand in Sunday’s episode. “Don’t like that, whoa, whoa, whoa,” he tells Thompson’s character Darnell Hayes, adding during another point of the sketch, “Maybe I’ll start a show for you to come on and we’ll call it White Jeopardy.”

On X, prominent Republicans tore into the sketch over Hanks’s portrayal.

“Tom Hanks went on SNL dressed like a slob mocking millions of Trump supporters - portraying them as dumb, racist, rednecks,” one post began. “Keep it up libs. You'll never win another election again.”

Popular right-wing commentator Benny Johnson raged: “Donald Trump just won a landslide election and has never been more popular with Americans. They have learned nothing.”

Another conservative commentator, Mario Nawfal, wrote: “Hollywood still doesn’t get it: Portraying Trump supporters as racist caricatures while he’s winning record minority support. SNL’s trying 2016 jokes in 2025.”

Former Robert F. Kennedy Jr. aide Link Lauren also weighed in on the sketch, claiming that Hanks’s character is why the show isn’t receiving higher ratings.

“Tom Hanks just came out on SNL in a MAGA hat for a bit where he acted like he didn’t want to shake a black man’s hand,” his post began. “This show wonders why their ratings are in the gutter. Trump won the popular vote. This tired trope that MAGA is racist is disgusting. SNL is an unfunny show for snobbish liberal elites. The current Republican Party is a big tent coalition compromised of many former Democrats. Good riddance, SNL!”

After resigning over her comments about Barron Trump — remarks she believes were taken out of context — the former president of NYU’s College Republican club told The Post she now regrets stepping down.

“I’ve been killing myself trying to support the conservative movement,” Kaya Walker, a senior, told The Post. “Everybody knows that it’s an uphill battle being a Republican at NYU.

“I’ve put my everything into building up my chapter,” she added. “I built [attendance] up exponentially. It’s been insane, especially this past year, we’ve seen such a rise in membership and had such a great time.”

Walker resigned Sunday night, after AF Post, a popular conservative news profile on X, tweeted quotes she had given Vanity Fair calling fellow NYU student Barron an “oddity on campus.”

“He goes to class, he goes home,” Walker told Vanity Fair of Barron, who lives at his family’s Upper East Side home rather than on the Greenwich Village campus.

“[AF Post] took it to say that I was saying that Barron was strange for being a commuter — which I thought was crazy because I’m a commuter,” Walker told The Post of the out-of-context tweet, which racked up nearly 100,000 likes and almost 10 million views and led many to wrongly accuse her of making fun of Barron.

“They [made it] look like I was calling the president’s son weird, but I feel like anybody who can read would know that’s not what I was doing,” she said.

Instead, Walker was advised by the College Republicans of America to resign her chapter post — in what I would call a textbook case of cancel culture.

Any fair read of the February 12 article from Vanity Fair shows Walker deserves the benefit of the doubt for empathizing with Barron.

“NYU — and its business school in particular — lacks a central social life, with classrooms and living arrangements dispersed throughout Lower Manhattan,” the article says, before quoting Walker: “Barron’s classmates described his day-to-day comings and goings to me as limited.”

Calling Barron an “oddity” is hardly an insult — it’s precisely how gawking classmates and paparazzi treat him.

“I just feel bad that he’s having this hard college experience, and I understand that he wants to be left alone,” Walker told The Post, clarifying her statement. “I don’t even know Baron Trump. I campaigned for his father. Why would I have any ill intent towards him?”

She also has a track record of sticking up for Barron. When Walker spoke to me for a December article about college Republican clubs, we discussed how the president’s son is perceived at NYU.

“I feel bad for him more than anything,” she said. “He’s kind of watched like a zoo animal. He’s kind of hard to miss. He’s very tall. People post pictures of him in class on their Instagram Story, and I think that’s really strange.”

Since the AF Post’s tweet went viral, Walker said, she and her family have been subjected to an endless stream of nasty comments and threats.

“I don’t know how I’m gonna get through this, honestly,” she said.

In a statement, the College Republicans of America — which has more than 200 chapters nationwide, including at NYU — said Walker’s comment “does not align with the values and principles upheld by our organization” and was “inappropriate.” The group also extended an invitation to Barron to join its NYU chapter.

Will Donahue, president of the CRA, told The Post that chapter presidents are expected to request board approval before speaking to “left-wing journalists” — in this case, Vanity Fair.

“Left-wing organizations have a tendency to misconstrue what we say, and a college student without media training tends to be a ripe candidate for predatory journalists,” he said.

Donahue confirmed to The Post that his organization advised Walker to resign.

“The conversation that we have with Kaya is, ‘Look, this is blowing up out of proportion, to protect your reputation and the organization, the prudent move would be for you to step down,’” he said, clarifying that “she did so on her own volition.”

Walker declined to comment on the CRA or any communications with the group. She said she felt she had no choice to quit — but, in retrospect, “I actually regret resigning.”

The real irony is that Walker got canceled for speaking to a left-leaning source, when Vanity Fair presented her comments perfectly fairly. By contrast, the conservative AF Post actually took them out of context and amplified them.

Up until now all of my posts have been about canceling the libs. This is about canceling one of their own.
GOP club president pushed out over Barron Trump remarks hits back

More than half of books banned during the last school year featured or were about people of color or members of the LGBTQ community, according to a report released Thursday.

PEN America, a nonprofit group that advocates for free expression in literature, released data in the fall that found more than 10,000 instances of schools or their districts removing books from school, classrooms or curriculums last year, affecting 4,218 titles. The analysis released Thursday found that those bans disproportionately affect books about certain identities, including people of color, and also more often apply to certain genres, such as history.

The analysis found that 36% of the more than 4,000 banned titles featured characters or people of color and 25% included LGBTQ characters or people. Of the titles featuring LGBTQ people, 28% featured a transgender and/or genderqueer character. One in 10 of the banned titles featured characters or people with a physical and/or learning or developmental disability, the analysis found.

“This targeted censorship amounts to a harmful assault on historically marginalized and underrepresented populations — a dangerous effort to erase their stories, achievements, and history from schools,” Sabrina Baêta, senior manager for PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, said in a statement. “When we strip library shelves of books about particular groups, we defeat the purpose of a library collection that is supposed to reflect the lives of all people. The damaging consequences to young people are real.”

Book challenges and bans — which are often spearheaded by parents and conservative activists — have skyrocketed in recent years, according to the American Library Association, which found that in 2024 the number of books challenged in libraries across the U.S. reached the highest level ever documented by the nonprofit. During the 2021 school year, PEN America found that more than 1,600 books were banned in schools, compared to the 4,218 removed from shelves last year.

For the first time, PEN America tracked the genres that were banned in schools. The top banned genres last year were realistic fiction, dystopia/sci-fi/fantasy, history and biography, mystery and thriller, educational and memoir and autobiography. Picture books and books with graphic or illustrated content made up nearly one-fifth, or 17%, of all banned books.

The nonprofit found that people of color and LGBTQ people were disproportionately affected across multiple categories. For example, 44% of banned history and biography titles featured people of color, and 26% featured Black people, specifically. Of the banned titles with pictures or illustrated content, 60% had illustrations related to race and racism or featured characters of color.

Of banned history and biography titles, 25% featured LGBTQ people and 9% featured trans and genderqueer people. More than one-third, 39%, of banned titles with pictures or illustrated content included LGBTQ themes and characters. Picture books made up about 2% of all banned titles, and PEN America found that “nowhere is the attack on stories of LGBTQ+ children and families more apparent” than in that category, where about 64% of all banned titles have LGBTQ+ characters or stories.

The analysis also found that book bans often affect titles that feature more than one marginalized identity. More than half, 54%, of all banned books with LGBTQ characters or people also featured characters or people of color.

Educational institutions that receive federal funding have become ground zero for the conservative-led effort in recent years to limit students’ access to information about race and racism as well as the LGBTQ community. Proponents of the restrictions argue that such information can make students uncomfortable and that students shouldn’t have access to sexually explicit material.

In Florida, for example, the state Department of Education in November released a list of hundreds of books — including “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut — that officials had removed from some schools across the state. Sydney Booker, a spokesperson for the department, told The Associated Press at the time that no books are being banned in the state.

​​“Once again, far left activists are pushing the book ban hoax on Floridians,” Booker said. “The better question is why do these activists continue to fight to expose children to sexually explicit materials.”

Critics of the bans argue that restricting access to information harms all students’ abilities to learn, can promote further discrimination and doesn’t allow students of color and LGBTQ students to see their lives reflected in books.

PEN America noted in the analysis that more than half of all U.S. schoolchildren are students of color, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Younger generations are also increasingly identifying as LGBTQ, according to a recent Gallup survey, which found that nearly one-quarter, 23.1%, of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ.

The nonprofit’s analysis also found that sex-related content is one of the most criticized subjects in book-banning efforts. However, PEN America found accusations that the targeted titles are “explicit” to be exaggerated. Out of the more than 4,000 overall titles banned last year, PEN America found that 31% had references to sexual experiences but with minimal detail, while 13% described the sexual experiences “on the page” with more descriptive sex scenes between characters.

References to a World War II Medal of Honor recipient, the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan, and the first women to pass Marine infantry training are among the tens of thousands of photos and online posts marked for deletion as the Defense Department works to purge DEI content, diversity, equity and inclusion content, according to a shocking database obtained by The Associated Press.

The database, which was confirmed by U.S. officials and published by AP, includes more than 26,000 images that have been flagged for removal across every military branch. But the eventual total could be much higher.

One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details that have not been made public, said the purge could delete as many as 100,000 images or posts in total, when considering social media pages and other websites that are also being culled for diversity, equity and inclusion content.

The official said it's not clear if the database has been finalized.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given the military until Wednesday to remove content that highlights diversity efforts in its ranks following President Donald Trump’s executive order ending those programs across the federal government.

The vast majority of the Pentagon purge targets women and minorities, including notable milestones made in the military. And it also removes a large number of posts that mention various commemorative months — such as those for Black and Hispanic people and women.

But a review of the database also underscores the massive confusion among agencies about how to conform with Trump's radical order.

In some cases, photos seemed to be flagged for removal simply because their file included the word ”gay,” including service members with that last name and an image of the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II.

Several photos of an Army Corps of Engineers dredging project in California were marked for deletion, apparently because a local engineer in the photo had the last name Gay.

A photo of Army Corps biologists was on the list, apparently because it mentioned they were recording data about fish — including their weight, size, hatchery and gender.

In addition, some photos of the Tuskegee Airmen, the nation’s first Black military pilots who served in a segregated WWII unit, were listed on the database, but those may likely be protected due to historical content.

The Air Force briefly removed new recruit training courses that included videos of the Tuskegee Airmen soon after Trump’s order. That drew the White House’s ire over “malicious compliance,” and the Air Force quickly reversed the removal.

Many of the images listed in the database already have been removed. Others were still visible Thursday, and it’s not clear if they will be taken down at some point or be allowed to stay, including images with historical significance such as those of the Tuskegee Airmen.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the removed images will be protectively stored somewhere or simply trashed.

Asked about the database, Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot said in a statement: “We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms. In the rare cases that content is removed that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct components accordingly.”

He noted that Hegseth has declared that “DEI is dead” and that efforts to put one group ahead of another through DEI programs erodes camaraderie and threatens mission execution.

The database of the 26,000 images was created to conform with federal archival laws, so if the services are queried in the future, they can show how they are complying with the law, the U.S. official said. But it may be difficult to ensure the content was archived because the responsibility to ensure each image was preserved was the responsibility of each individual unit.

On February 26, the Pentagon ordered all the military services to spend countless hours poring over years of website postings, photos, news articles and videos to remove any mentions that “promote diversity, equity and inclusion."

If they couldn't do that by Wednesday, they were told to “temporarily remove from public display” all content published during the Biden administration’s four years in office.