My Response to Hiaasen

While I have been told over and over again growing up to never judge a book by its cover, I can’t help but emphasize the negativity I automatically felt from looking at the cover of “Team Rodent”. While I have had my first experiences this semester reading articles critical of Disney, I haven’t read anything with such a pugnacious cover. The title refers to Disney’s franchise cartoon character, the character that basically embodies Walt Disney’s legacy, Mickey Mouse, as a rodent. Furthermore, Hiaasen clearly states his intentions of the book by having “How Disney Devours the World” on the cover of the book. In this case, the content of the book reflects the bellicose nature cover.

            Off the gate, Hiaasen starts criticizing Disney. He touches up on some of the same things Giroux did, such as Disney’s corporate greed and the scarily broad reach of its products and advertisements. However, the main focus of Hiaasen’s denouncement of Disney has to do with secrecy. Hiaasen refers to trust as Disney’s “secret” weapon. In Hiaasen’s mind Disney has basically raised everyone, gaining everyone’s trust, and by doing so has garnered so much autonomy that it could conduct business with a great deal of secrecy. Hiaasen, a proud Floridian, is quick to point out Disney’s secret purchases of approximately twenty-four thousand acres of land in Florida to build Disney World. He refers to these purchases as a “real-estate coup”, for by keeping Disney’s name out of the transactions, they prevented price surges (25). Another worth-mentioning example of Hiaasen alluding to Disney’s “fanatical obsession with secrecy” is when he talks about the “eight-hundred-member security force that patrols” all of Disney’s property. While this security force isn’t affiliated with the police, the “hosts” and “hostesses” often forget to report cases to the police, which is pretty sketchy. The best point Hiaasen makes with regard to the secret culture that embodies Disney is an incident that happened on August 31, 1994. To shorten the long story, a Disney security van pursued two young trespassers in a pickup truck. A mile off of Disney property, the pursuit resulted in a crash and death of an eighteen year old. Apparently when the Florida state highway patrol began investigating the accident, Disney was extremely uncooperative with investigators and refused to release recordings of the radio communications between the security guard that pursued the teens and the company dispatcher.

            In my opinion Hiaasen makes some great points that should spark intrigue and criticism. There is indubitably a culture of secrecy at Disney, after reading Team Rodent it’s undeniable. They have so much money and such autonomy that they get away with some really dark stuff. However, Hiaasen’s profane, politically incorrect, and prejudiced language takes away a great deal of credibility from his argument. To me he seems like an ultra-conservative yokel that listens to fox new on a transistor radio and has a news clippings plastered all over his walls. Some of his conspiracies are so ludicrous that it is genuinely hard to believe he is serious. I was shocked when I saw how normal he looked on the back of the book. Overall, I found this to be an amusing book. While there were some smart points made by Hiaasen, the vulgarity of his language and his crazy conspiracies turn his argument into a joke.