From the day in November of 1963 when Walt Disney decided to locate his new theme park in the area south of Orlando, Disney's corporation has had a seemingly perfect symbiotic relationship with the state of Florida.  Disney wanted a Disneyland-style park somewhere in the eastern part of the country after realizing that the vast majority of the visitors to his Anaheim venue came from the west coast.  There were many more potential patrons out there, and Disney wanted them, and the fortune they would spend, to have a theme park bearing his name available to the eastern part of the country.

St. Louis had been a major contender for the park until the evening that a tipsy August Busch, Jr., the head of Budweiser, insisted to Disney that any amusement park without alcohol sales would be a foolish venture.  This ran counter to the family-style venue that Disney imagined, so St. Louis was scratched as a possibility.  Niagara Falls and a few other northern sites were eliminated because of the weather factor; Disney wanted the park to be open year-round, and icicles hanging from Magic Kingdom castles would not have been an attractive look.  Florida was the obvious choice.

Disney, using shell companies, secretly bought up vast tracts of land in the area south of Orlando.  It was important that the buyer remain unidentified to prevent massive escalations in land prices, which surely would have occurred had area residents known the purpose of the purchases.  Other areas of Florida, notably Palm Beach, had been anxious to land the coveted nod from Disney, but Walt saw what he wanted in Central Florida, and there was no looking back.

The Florida Turnpike, then being constructed, would run north and south and join I-75, bringing hordes of tourists from the north.  I-4 ran east and west and brought Florida residents from both coasts.  It was and is the perfect crossroads.  Everyone was happy, except possibly the landowners in Palm Beach who thought they had a shot at landing the park in their backyard.

The fact that the Disney Corporation was run from the People's Republic of California didn't seem to be a problem.  Disney had been shifting a large number of its workers to the more tax-friendly Florida in recent years.  But then along came Florida's HB1557, a seemingly innocent bill aimed at prohibiting sex education for kindergarten through grade 3 in Florida's schools.

We all know the nonsense propagated about the 'Don't Say Gay" law and the progressive drivel offered by the supporters of the LGBTQ, etc. agenda.  The Disney Corporation at first remained silent on the matter.  Then, prodded by "woke" members in their midst, they decided to condemn the bill, saying it never should have been passed and asking the courts to strike it down.  A determined Governor Ron DeSantis says it is a good, commonsense bill that will be enforced.  Woke progressives, lacking common sense, will try to defeat it.

Gov. DeSantis will prevail.  The Disney properties, conservatively estimated to be worth just slightly less than $4 billion, cannot be picked up and relocated to a more 'woke" location.  Florida, for its part, cannot afford to lose the billions in tourist dollars and the resultant hundreds of millions in sales and hotel tax dollars that Disney brings in.  Not if it wants to continue to be a no-income-tax state, that is.

Picture a Gary Cooper High Noon gunfight, with DeSantis facing off against some trans, or pan, or whatever sexual member of the Disney Crew.  I like the governor's chances.  If a state loses revenues, it can, though grudgingly, raise taxes.  If the Disney Corporation so turns off its tourist trade by appearing to be pandering to a group indifferent to the innocence of children that they stop coming to the park, or lose state-provided tax incentives, there's comparatively little they can do.

Stay tuned.  We all know that the progressives are persistent, but they've never been up against a guy like the Florida governor. 

Image: kordite.