When news is sprung on you like this, there’s every reason to assume the worst.
In particular, we’ve been trained over the last couple years that when someone says something like this . . . .
. . . . That’s generally a sign that we’re about four minutes away from a New Yorker article and grab your umbrellas because the other shoes are going to start falling down like rain.
When something like this comes out of nowhere, in a town where although nobody knows anything, everyone needs to pretend all day long like they are the only ones who know everything. So if it’s a surprise to us, it must’ve been a surprise to Iger, too. I mean, we would’ve heard!
So who snuck up and stabbed him in the back??
There’s also the fact of this news being sprung in the middle of a confluence of events already bonkers enough to make your head fly off trying to take it in. Iger couldn’t have just decided to quit in the midst of the Coronavirus scare, which has spooked the stock market, right after the new Star Wars project was announced, the Harvey verdict, the day after Dee Dee Myers stepped down? You’re not so naive to believe that’s all a coincidence, are you?!?!?
As a chronicler of this, of course, I am obliged to root for the most underhanded conspiracy possible. Hearing the news my mind raced to:
So Emma Watts gets fired two weeks ago, and looks Iger in the eye and says: You think I’m the one leaving this place? We’ll see about that buster.
And she goes to her ex-boss, Disney’s largest shareholder Rupert Murdoch, points to the flat line on the Disney stock chart on his wall and says: THIS! is what happens when you get too old and complacent to get Baby Yodas to Walmart by Christmas. I can’t sit here and watch this menace hold back your valuation any longer!
Mr. Murdoch nods and rubs his chin and picks up the phone and says, “Get me the warden of Rikers Island.”
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