Rachel Dobkin in Newsweek:
Comedian Bill Maher‘s “Kid ‘N Prey” segment on Friday went viral on social media after he criticized the child entertainment industry. On Friday’s episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher reacted to the recently released documentary Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, which exposed the sexual abuse and hostile work environment that child actors faced at the hands of adults at Nickelodeon. The comedian posted the segment from his show on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday night with the caption, “It turns out for pedophiles in Hollywood, ‘It’s A Small World After All.'” It has amassed 28.3 million views as of Saturday afternoon. Maher said he was “grossed out” by the revelations in the documentary, adding that “it didn’t just expose a dangerous workplace. It also exposed hypocrisy.”
He said that when Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis “was saying the exact same thing about kids and creepy stuff at Disney—that liberals now find intolerable at Nickelodeon—he was dismissed as a hick and a bigot, but why would a kid’s content factory like Disney be all that different than the one at Nickelodeon?” During a legal feud with Disney that started when the company’s then-CEO Bob Chapek publicly opposed a controversial bill that restricts certain instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida schools known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, DeSantis accused Disney of adding a lot of “sexuality into the programming for young kids,” which the company denied. The legal dispute was settled in March.
Maher referenced a 2014 CNN article that reported that at least 35 Disney employees were arrested on sex crimes involving children since 2006, according to court records and other documentation.
More here.