Disney Lays the Groundwork for Character Assassination of Nelson Peltz

Calling Former Disney CFO Jay Rasulo out-of-touch, analog and a failure at his next business ventures has not proven highly successful for Bob Iger. The ISS institutional firm has endorsed Nelson Peltz, meaning that 1/3 of institutional investors will likely back Peltz in next week's proxy fight. That puts Peltz in line to possibly win the vote... I think probably about 50/50. After all, if 1/3 of institutions follow ISS and a small percentage outside of ISS' influence follow along, you only need 60% of individual investors to decide Peltz is the man for the job to get the win.

Even if Peltz loses this round, the chance that he sticks around for another year is quite high.

That's why Disney, in this final full week of opportunity, is resorting to a new low. The company and its cheerleaders have been trotting out some rather nasty out-of-context reporting of Peltz intended to make him seem a chauvinist and a racist. To do so, they're taking an article from The Financial Times (behind a paywall so most won't go see the original quote), and generously manipulating it to their advantage in headlines and top paragraphs of news articles. I think this is only the beginning of what they plan to do as they attempt to assassinate Peltz' character.

The calling card of those who ascribe to Iger's new path for Disney (reimagine tomorrow?) is to destroy your opponents with emotional narrative, not with facts. This is why Disney's white paper was so significantly different than Trian's. One was a 120+ page dissertation of fact on the company, the other an emotional appeal to magic, pixie dust, and how hard it is to run a company these days.

For your edification, I have attached only the page in which the quote from Nelson Peltz appears. I don't believe in bypassing paywalls and this is a very small percentage of the overall article. You'll note that what Peltz really seems to want is moderation. Why do The Marvels need to be all women? It's the same question you would ask if The Avengers had ever been all-male. Why should an entire movie be black-cast only? It's the same question would might ask if there were a cast that was purposefully all-white, set in a fictional world that doesn't require it to be so. It is as if those old spirits of tribe-over-friendship have come back to haunt our society. It's the Fox and the Hound all over again. And destroying our stories that taught the evils and darkness of those wicked beliefs have been key to reestablishing the less-than-should-be norm of human history.

After all, remember that Bre'r Rabbit's story is allegory for escaping his would-be subjugators by being savvy in situations they don't understand (born and bred in a briar patch). Even the tar baby with all its negative racial connotations is a story about how being hot-headed lands you in sticky situations.

Disney's current hope is that Peltz or his companions will take the bait and respond to these smears. Their hope is he will find himself in a sticky situation by wrestling with the accusations. But he would do well to remember Bre'r Rabbit's lesson that one should not throw punches back at a trap. It's only too unfortunate that Bob Iger and his crew feel so inclined to behave in this manner rather than to act casually to the chances of a board switching from 100% monolithic to 80% majority.