If you were browsing news sites yesterday, you may have come across Meryl Streep’s rant about what a racist Nazi anti-Semite that Walt Disney was and what an amazing human being Emma Thompson is.
It’s easy to take shots at a dead man, but Walt Disney’s character was framed by angry left-wing union members in a town where mildly conservative politics led to cries of “Fascist”.
The evidence that Walt Disney ever supported the Third Reich is flimsy and hearsay. There’s far more evidence that his critics supported the USSR.
And the evidence for Walt Disney’s bigotry, by the standards of the day, is also less than overwhelming. That said, if Walt Disney was an anti-Semite that was a flaw that he had in common with Emma Thompson who demanded a boycott of an Israeli Jewish theater in the UK expressing her dismay that the Semitic performers would befoul a Shakespeare festival.
I don’t recall Walt Disney ever organizing a boycott of a Jewish theater. That makes him less of an anti-Semite than Emma Thompson.
Something else that Walt Disney didn’t do was support the rapist of a 13-year old girl, the way that Emma Thompson did when she signed a pro-Roman Polanski petition.
The petition dismissively described the charges against Polanski for drugging and then anally raping a 13-year-old girl as “a case of morals” dating back from 1978. “We demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski,” the petition concluded.
Emma Thompson eventually was talked out of keeping her name on the petition, but it didn’t stop her from signing it.
Things Emma Thompson supports; child rapists. Things Emma Thompson opposes; Israel.
That puts Walt Disney ahead of Emma Thompson in the “Not an awful person” race. And it goes without saying that Walt Disney is well ahead of her already in the talent race considering that Thompson’s accomplishment in life consists of playing Brits in American movies.





















