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If Carl Hiaasen's dream is to be banned forever from Disney World TEAM RODENT is surely the stuff dreams are made of. Tough, acerbic, raunchy and funny, Hiaasen serves up Mickey Mouse and his warm, fuzzy colleagues en brochette --- heads, tails, and polyester whiskers.
"Disney is so good at being good that it manifests an evil;" Hiaasen writes, "so uniformly efficient and courteous, so dependably clean and conscientious, so unfailingly entertaining that it's unreal, and therefore is an agent of pure wickedness...Disney isn't in the business of exploiting Natures so much as striving to improve on it, constantly fine-tuning God's work."
In an attempt to dispel the feel good fuzziness invoked by Disney's Fantasy Land, Hiaasen draws back the curtain and exposes the wizard behind the hype. Michael Eisner, aka Insane Clown Michael, is the CEO of Disney Productions, aka Team Rodent, and in charge of it all. From land grabs in the 1960s, to a more recent failed attempt to turn the Manassas National Battlefield in Virginia into a well sculpted "America Project," Hiaasen quotes local planners who call the mega-corporation "arrogant, demanding, aloof, confident, efficient, powerful, successful and profitable" in their methods of operation.
TEAM RODENT maintains a presence in eleven countries on three continents. The theme parks have drawn more than one billion visitors. An astonishing list of companies owned or controlled by Disney includes television network ABC, several cable channels, Monday Night Football, syndicated shows such as Regis and Kathie Lee and Siskel and Ebert. Eleven AM radio stations and ten FM stations call Disney boss, seven daily newspapers and endless numbers of spinoff commercial enterprises from software, sports franchises, real estate holdings, retail stores, housing developments, shopping centers and within the year, a cruise line fatten the rapidly expanding coffers of the Disney Empire.
Yet, Hiaasen admits, some people get rich --- very rich, when they follow in Mickey's footsteps. Eisner exercised company stock options in December of 1997 to the loony tune of $565 million. In the Manassas case, which was resoundingly vetoed by area landowners, historians and environmentalists, the debate continues on whether the ultimate decision to keep Disney out was the correct one. The questions were more quality of life than economic, however, and as Hiaasen says, "Enough Orlandos, already."
Hiaasen has long been an investigative reporter and more recently a columnist for the Miami Herald. For fans of his South Florida mysteries, there can be no question whence comes the grist for his creative mill. His six bestselling novels skewer developers, tourist attractions and local politicians as the arch villains.
Just 83 pages long, TEAM RODENT is brief, pithy, entertaining, informative, and because it's Hiaasen, often downright hilarious. Team Rodent won't dissuade me from taking the kids to Disney Land, but after a peep behind the curtain, I'll know where my money is going.
--- Reviewed by Roz Shea
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