Fantasyland

Meryl Streep made some news at the National Board of Review dinner held last Thursday. She blasted Walt Disney for sexism and support of anti-Semite groups. I'm not quite sure where some of the "facts" come from when people say such things but they rarely seem to come from anyone who actually knew and worked with Walt for any amount of time. The case that he treated women badly seems to hinge on a 1938 letter that said women couldn't be animators. In the context of the time, that was not an unreasonable view and anyway, it was 1938. Disney hired plenty of women in important positions after that.

I've probably over the years heard Walt discussed by two dozen people who spent a lot of time with him. I've heard zero tales of sexism or anti-Semitism. Our friend Floyd Norman, who was the first black animator at the studio, thinks Ms. Streep wasn't talking about the Walt Disney he knew and worked for.