When asked about the Netflix military drama Boots, a Pentagon press briefing reportedly slammed the streamer’s wider programming as “woke garbage.” The comment came in response to a question about the show and landed like a political grenade in an otherwise predictable press cycle.
The show in question is a low‑budget adaptation of a memoir that has quietly risen on streaming charts. EW asked the Pentagon for comment, and the Press Secretary responded by criticizing the streamer’s leadership, stating that the military would not “compromise our standards to satisfy an ideological agenda.” The remark included an explicit swipe at children’s programming on the platform.
That swipe is not happening in a vacuum. A recent cancel campaign that targeted several children’s shows, and at one point even drew high‑profile attention online, makes the reference obvious. For background on that online backlash, see the internal story “Elon Musk Urges 227 Million Followers to Cancel Netflix Over Three Shows.”
For those keeping score, Boots is not currently billed as a limited series, but it’s based on a single memoir. Low budget plus decent viewership usually bodes well for a second season in the streaming economy. Still, the political noise around the show could complicate the usual renewal math. The streamer has not been reported to have issued a response to the Pentagon remark.
The military taking a potshot at a streaming schedule over a show based on a gay Marine’s memoir is precisely the kind of theater that gives culture wars their popcorn moment. It is worth watching whether this becomes another short‑lived scandal or an actual factor in how streaming platforms make their content decisions going forward.
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