Race, Gender, and Loathing in the Failed Run at Disney

There was a subtext in the bruising battle for board seats, yet the public pension fund CalPERS, a self-described supporter of DEI, backed opponents of diversity

There are more angry old white men in Palm Beach than usual today.

The last gambit of the corporate raider Nelson Peltz in his quest for seats on the board of Disney was to attack the “wokeness” of the company’s Marvel movies. But his effort to hitch a ride on the politics surrounding this tired red-alarm word came off as just a thinly veiled swipe at racial and gender diversity that was probably planted in his tanned octogenarian head by his pool buddy Ike Perlmutter, the former chairman of Marvel.

Peltz’ pelting of The Mouse House with woke-yokes reminded me of a column I tried unsuccessfully to peddle in 2018. The title was “The Inconvenient Truth About Black Panther,” and neither The Daily Beast (which had run a few of my columns) nor The Hive (which had run none) wanted to touch it.

Maybe they were too woke back then and didn’t want to cast a cloud over the parade celebrating a cultural milestone and source of pride for many Black Americans; a virtuoso piece of superhero moviemaking that had critics practically genuflecting as it blew the doors off the box office.

One point of the column was that once the $52.4 billion sale of 21^st Century Fox to Disney was completed, Rupert Murdoch and his clan would become significant   shareholders in Disney, whose Marvel Studios made Panther.

Therefore, the success of the film would put more wealth in the pockets of the Murdochs and increase the power of Fox News to spread specious stories, rail against the Black Lives Matter movement, and coddle the oddity plopped in the Oval Office.

But there was another reason that the commercial success of Black Panther was problematic: Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter. The chief of Marvel, who reportedly tried to block the production of Panther, had a history of racial insensitivity, at the least. 

When Disney bought Marvel Entertainment in 2009, Perlmutter, an immigrant from Israel who started out selling toys on the streets of New York, was in control of the company after fending off some of the sharpest elbows in the takeover game – including those of Carl Icahn and Ron Perelman.

Perlmutter came out of the merger with more than 21 million shares of Disney, making him then the second-largest shareholder. In an unusual arrangement, Perlmutter remained head of Marvel after the merger and retained control of all related consumer products, operating from his home in Palm Beach.

In August 2012, Matthew Garrahan of the Financial Times reported that Perlmutter’s pressure on Disney’s consumer products division (DCP) led to the departure of three Black women executives, who referred to themselves as “The Help,” after the film of the same name. Another woman executive claimed Perlmutter, who was known to be packing, had threatened to put a bullet in her; she moved to a job elsewhere within Disney, the FT story said. The late Nikki Finke reported in Deadline later that year that the execs had settled lawsuits against Disney.

The FT piece also said that Perlmutter pushed to replace the Black actor Terrance Howard in the sequel to the Marvel hit Ironman because he was too expensive. To cut costs, Perlmutter wanted another Black actor for the role, the less pricey (then) Don Cheadle, and told a Disney executive something to the effect that no one would notice because Black people “look the same.”

Perlmutter, through a lawyer, denied making that comment. But Peltz in the final days of his drubbing by the original Toontown seemed to be parroting similar lines.

In a March interview with the FT, Peltz said: “Why do I have to have a Marvel [movie] that’s all women? Not that I have anything against women, but why do I have to do that? Why can’t I have Marvels that are both? Why do I need an all-Black cast?”   

Peltz became Perlmutter’s ventriloquist dummy because out of the 33 million-plus shares of Disney that Peltz’ Trian Partners controls, some 25 million belong to Perlmutter. And Perlmutter was not just another Florida geezer looking to squeeze a better return from Mickey and Minnie: With Ike, it was personal.

In 2015, then-Disney CEO Bob Iger, perhaps weary of scrapping with his irascible underling, stripped Perlmutter of almost all his power at Marvel. And last year when Perlmutter backed Peltz in an earlier run at Disney board seats, Iger, who had returned to Disney’s corner office in 2022 after stepping down in 2020, gave Ike the full-on bum’s rush.

Perlmutter has been bawling in his borscht ever since.

It’s not clear if that’s on the menu at Mar-a-Lago, where Perlmutter reportedly dines frequently. But Ike is more than just another guest at Donald Trump’s gauche club: According to OpenSecrets, which tracks political donations, in November 2016, Perlmutter and wife Laura gave $5 million to the Great America PAC, whose sole purpose was to elect the tubbiest president since William Howard Taft. That earned Laura a seat on the Inauguration Committee, and once Trump was in office, there was even chatter about the secretive Perlmutter joining the Administration.

So, it is hard to imagine that there was not some political element driving the run at Disney, especially given its long-running war with the Trumpism of the failed Judas of Florida, Governor Ron DiSantis.

Now that the board-seat election is over, the Peltz-Perlmutter crowd are not the only ones dining on crow (if that isn’t on the Mar-a-Lago menu, it should have been after the 2020 election). Institutional Shareholders Services, a self-described impartial proxy advisory firm with some sway, has feathers in its mouth after endorsing Peltz for a board seat, though it declined to do the same for former Disney CFO Jay Rasulo, who was in bed with Peltz and Perlmutter (or at least under the same beach umbrella).

But the biggest serving of crow belongs to CaPERS, California’s enormous public pension fund, which controls more than 6 million shares of Disney: It supported both Peltz and Rasulo for board seats, Reuters reported last week.

That was not just downright goofy given that the website of CalPERS bullhorns its commitment to “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion,” adding: “We’re constantly working towards improving DEI in our workplace, culture, investments, health programs, and suppliers.” In fact, it qualifies as “Awful & Odious.”