Disney: The Mouse Betrayed

Disney: The Mouse Betrayed
The dark shadow of America's entertainment giant.
Customer Review: Scary. A MUST READ for Parents Considering a Disney Trip.
Forget the political propaganda some posters are trying to attach to this book. It isn't only for Conservatives or "right-wingers". Truth has no political ties. Everyone should know of the horrors Disney has been covering up for years. These facts aren't gained from one source, nor are they a product of the author's imagination. Schweizer dug deeply into Disney's hidden secrets, talking with a ton of employees, many who weren't afraid to be named. He includes dozens of documents that Disney tried to hide - documents that expose the child molesters Disney hired to entertain your children. Though Disney knows about unsafe conditions in their amusement park they do nothing to correct them. The pending lawsuits from deaths or serious injury are cheaper to deal with than the cost of repairing the dangers. It's all about profit and greed. If only half of this book is true it's a frightful read. You and your children may be at serious physical and emotional risk. If you go to Disney World and get hurt, don't sign anything. Don't let the older kids wander off by themselves, not even for a second. Read the book and judge for yourself the presented facts .
Customer Review: Poisonous
I bought this as an impulse buy, confusing it for Stewart's "Disney War." It took me about a page and a half to figure out it was actually right-wing propaganda written with the intent of furthering a Christian-based agenda to tear down the Disney empire for having had the audacity to get "too big." I worked at the Disney studios of the 90's as well as the theme park of the 80's. I was like many a mystified "Disnoid," having been raised to believe that if you wish upon a star you could get anything you wanted, and that you were always the star of the movie. Working at the parks deconstructed my concept of a world of "magic" and working for the studio instructed me on the ways and means of big corporations. Growth usually comes with pain but it's necessary. There's nothing less attractive than a grown adult stubbornly refusing to leave the world of childhood fantasy. I was bitter and cynical for a long time after my experiences and would have written a book similar in (initial) intent as the Schweizers, had I not grown up. Reading this book actually made me re-examine my bitterness and take the side of the Disney corporation. It is just a business after all. The Schweizers will try to convince you that Disney is "bad," using a bar for measuring badness that they assume their readers share. It's interesting to read about the things they criticize from a different perspective. An example--I had an accident while working at the park in the 80's and was amazed at the efficient way the company handled it. As a guest I would not have wanted to see someone stumbling around with a bloody head waiting for an ambulance, nor did I have any right to sue, as might have happened today. They whisked me away to a hospital and compensated me fairly, one time, for something that should not have happened but was, after all, an accident. Would the Schweizers be happier if everything stopped while stretchers were paraded through the park every time something happened? Of course much of the book is concerned with perversion, much of it centering on the "obvious" shared traits of pedophiles and the "gay mafia" that had a stronger presence in the Disney corporation than it currently holds. The ideas the Schweizers are trying to sell--something along the lines of if you go to Disneyland you're likely to be sodomized--would be disturbing if they weren't so ridiculous (quote: "some cross-dressers even tried to hold their OWN parade down Main Street, but it never got fully organized," ha ha). And the presentation--there's even a warning at the beginning of one of the chapters--is done in that "can you BELIEVE this?" style that makes Michael Moore's films so inflammatory. I found these chapters almost enjoyable on a salacious level--the Schweizers seem to take great glee in discussing the grittier, "naughty" topics, presenting just enough detail to entice the reader but withholding as much to make the reader curious, a good advertisement for the very thing they would condemn: "Just how bad ARE Larry Clark's movies/photos? I MUST know for MYSELF." Of course, in the Schweizer world the worst thing you can possibly do is be a man who loves other men. To quote the film "Victor/Victoria": "Kill him but mustn't kiss him." There's rampant misinformation as the Schweizers bend facts to further their agenda, making these authors the ultimate hypocrites since the point of their book is to point out that this is what the Disney Corporation is doing. I know at least two of the people quoted in the book and their comments were not solicited; they were taken from public resources and quoted completely out of context. Hardly surprising since the foundation of many a Christian's religious belief system is based on this process. I know very few Christians who have slogged through the bible, even less who have taken the time and energy to research the meaning behind the book. With that in mind I did my best to give "Disney: The Mouse Betrayed" a thorough, unbiased and fair reading. There are sections that are well researched and present indisputable truths; ten years on the world has become more than aware that there was a lot of money-grubbing, greed, and deceit involved in the "Eisner" years of Disney. No one is really surprised anymore that big corporations deal in this sort of excess, even if they are organizations founded on providing family entertainment. However, I find it interesting to note that Disney is still doing fairly well for all of that (and for better or worse) and that the Schweizers' book has faded into obscurity (it can be had for a buck twenty-five on this very page). Their would-be poisonous diatribe against The Mighty Goliath failed; the antidote, much like the cure for the obsessions of Christian fantaticism in general, was education and rationality.


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