Why The Recent Firing Of A Marvel Exec May Be Good For The Gays

Former Marvel Entertainment Chairman Ike Perlmutter was ousted amidst the recent shake-ups at Disney, and now he’s pointing the finger at what he says is the company’s refusal to pay attention to their bottom line above all else.

“I have no doubt that my termination was based on fundamental differences in business between my thinking and Disney leadership, because I care about return on investment,” he told the Wall Street Journalin a recent interview.

Continuing to paint himself as a victim, the 80-year-old billionaire also claimed he was ousted for challenging “the company’s way of doing business,” and took pride in advising Disney to stay out of Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s way during last year’s “Don’t Say Gay” chaos.

“Don’t get involved in politics,” he recalled telling executives. “You’re going to get hurt. It’s a no-win situation.”

Perlmutter also claimed to have called DeSantis to personally inform him that he was right about Disney having no business weighing in on something that would impact so many of their employees.

Though DeSantis has very clearly taken retaliatory action against Disney in the wake of their belated stance against the discriminatory law, it should also be pointed out that Disney first drummed up controversy by declining to get involved in politics in the first place — which was seen as business as usual for the giant corporation.

There’s also the matter of what counts as “getting political” being so difficult to define these days, with conservatives frequently bemoaning the mere existence of LGBTQ+ characters in films or TV shows as part of a “woke leftist agenda,” and critics of DeSantis’s anti-LGBTQ+ crusade insisting that it shouldn’t be “political” to ensure all people have rights and dignity and the ability to exist openly in public.

Being so slow to embrace the LGBTQ+ community may have served Marvel and Disney in the past, but it can’t last forever. And despite Perlmutter’s tantrum over being let go, fans already seem thrilled that someone holding onto archaic ideals is out the door, hoping it will pave the way for progress in the MCU on multiple fronts.