UPDATED: Bernie Sanders Goes the Eff Off On Disney and ABC at California Rally, Disney Responds

Whoever said “You’re arm’s too short to box with God” never met Bernie Sanders, who took on the next best thing at a rally in California Tuesday afternoon. During an extended riff that got a huge reaction from the crowd, Sanders took on entertainment giant The Walt Disney Company and its subsidiary, ABC Television right in Disney’s front yard. Sanders began by asking the crowd if any of them worked for Disney, and if they were paid a living wage.

To an enthusiastic and angry “Nooo!”, Sanders spent almost four minutes going off on Disney for paying low wages and outsourcing merchandise manufacturing to China, and predicting that his challenge to the company would be suppressed by ABC News:

Where are Disney’s the many t-shirts, the zillions of products that Disney manufactures, where are they made, here in Anaheim? Nooo, they’re made in China…And they exploit people in China, and they bring these products back into this country. Well, I think it would be very nice for the Disney corporation to start building factories in the United States so American workers can start manufacturing them. And let me make a prediction that that statement will not appear on ABC tonight.

As it happens, Disney pays its theme park hosts $9.47 an hour, which is, as it turns out, also less than a dog trainer. As for Sanders’ charge about ABC News, a search of TV transcripts shows ABC a close second to CBS in mentions of “living wage” at 74 and 77 respectively, with NBC a distant second at 29 mentions in the past three months. In fact, ABC’s last news report to feature the words “living wage” was a report this past Friday on Sanders’ South Dakota speech, in which he slammed Walmart for its failure to pay a living wage. We’ll see if they follow suit tonight.

Update: Director of Media Relations & External Communications for Disney Resorts Suzi Brown sent the following statement to Mediaite in response ti this article (via email):

Mr. Sanders clearly doesn’t have his facts right. The Disneyland Resort generates more than $5.7 billion annually for the local economy, and as the area’s largest employer has added more than 11,000 jobs over the last decade, a 65% increase.  These numbers don’t take into account our $1 billion expansion to add a Star Wars-themed land, which will create thousands of additional jobs across multiple sectors.

Sanders didn’t question the number of jobs Disney provides in the Anaheim area, and in fact, acknowledged it. His criticism was of the wages paid for those jobs.