During his closing monologue on Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher said that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) was correct when he accused Disney of sexualizing children, compared drag queen story hours to behavior that everyone agrees “borders on abuse” in other contexts.
After discussing the allegations of mistreatment of child stars by Nickelodeon in the “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” documentary, Maher said the documentary “also exposed hypocrisy, because it must be pointed out that, when the evil Governor of Florida was saying the exact same thing about kids and creepy stuff at Disney that liberals now find intolerable at Nickelodeon, he was dismissed as a hick and a bigot. But why would a kids’ content factory like Disney be all that different than the one at Nickelodeon? … [I]n 2021, Disney child star Alyson Stoner confessed she only ‘narrowly survived the toddler-to-trainwreck pipeline.‘ The next year, child star Cole Sprouse told The New York Times that young actresses at the Disney Channel were ‘heavily sexualized’ from an early age. Willie Sutton said he robbed banks because that’s where the money is, and the reason we find pedophiles in the Boy Scouts and the rectory and kids’ TV is that’s where the kids are. DeSantis wasn’t wrong. But we’re so tribal now, the left will overlook child f*cking if the guy from the wrong party calls it out. Sure, Nickelodeon messed up Amanda Bynes, but The Mickey Mouse Club was where Britney Spears got her start, and she’s perfectly fine. And get this: After Brian Peck, who was one of the lead creeps at Nickelodeon, served 16 months in prison for the molesting he did there, Disney hired him, naturally, to work on a children’s series.”
He continued, “And not just Hollywood, there are Instagram moms these days who are practically OnlyFans-ing their itty-bitty beauty queen daughters by having them wear skimpy bikinis and eat bananas to build social media stardom. … And people who believe in social justice have agreed this is wrong and this is bad and exposing kids to an adult world of lurid costumes and garish makeup borders on abuse. Now, hurry up and get in the car, we’re late for drag queen story hour. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a drag queen, but maybe it’s time to admit that, sometimes, drag queen story hour is more for the queen than the kids. Sure, kids love a clown, but does the clown have to have tits? … If you want kids to be more tolerant, why not have handicapped people read them stories? Kids are more likely to encounter disabled people than drag queens in life.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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