The Dis-fluencer Identity Reveal

For future readers who stumble across this and wonder what the heck it is, it's a parody of this article that was the Most Important Thing Ever on Disney Twitter for about an hour and a half before 2019's D23 convention.

It all started in mid-2008. We were only weeks away from the global economic meltdown that would see millions turned out of their homes, leave lasting scars on an entire generation, and--most crucially--give this article a weighty and important context.

I'd known beloved Disney chairman and golf aficionado E. Cardon Walker for years. In fact, I was the one who gave him the idea to fake his death in 2005. He'd invited me to join him for lunch on the second floor of Epcot's Electric Umbrella restaurant. Naturally, someone of my great importance and intense physical attractiveness wouldn't normally be caught dead in the Electric Umbrella. But I think I realized what a great story it would make in eleven years time, so I assented.

Card and I were practically alone up there on the second floor, which was strange since my strong personal magnetism usually causes people to be uncontrollably drawn to me. In between bites of his barely-edible quick-service cheeseburger, Card was opining on the difficulties Disney faced in the changing global marketplace. "Lemme tell ya, kids these days, they ain't the same as they useta be," he said. "What with their Ataris and their fax machines. We gotta get 'em while they're young, really speak to 'em on their level with something they can relate to."

Card leaned forward slightly. "That's why I'm thinkin' board games. All different kinds of 'em. Y'know, Pete's Dragon, The Black Hole, Adlai Stevenson--characters that kids today are really into!"

Then my old friend Card changed the subject to something we'd discussed many times in the past--his aborted 1976 Presidential campaign. He'd been all ready to go with a great campaign slogan and everything. "Just tell me that 'I've Got A Hardon For E. Cardon' isn't the greatest thing you ever heard!" he said, stabbing his finger at me in a Harrison Ford-like manner. (Hollywood legend Harrison Ford is someone else who owes their career to me, but that's a story that's best left for when I make it up for another time.) But alas, just before he was set to announce, his candidacy was derailed by a fierce ARPAnet campaign led by a young upstart named Alvarez "Al" Lutz. After the turmoil of the Nixon-Ford years, Lutz believed that America's next Chief Executive should have, in his words, "really big teeth". And in 1976, no one's teeth were bigger than Jimmy Carter's. Seriously, the man was part beaver.

Sadly, Card and his human-sized chompers were no match for Al Lutz and his massive three-person audience. (The Internet revolution was still a couple decades away at this point.) So Card had to stay in his dead-end job as Chairman of the Walt Disney Corporation. He never forgave Al for that, and on that afternoon in 2005 he hatched a plan: "What if we co-opt Al Lutz's name for our own purposes?" he said.

It was a great idea, but unfortunately Bob Iger beat him to the punch back in 2001. So Card and I decided to create another kind of online Disney "influencer": one with no influence at all! Difficult? Yes. But as Thomas Edison once said, true genius is 51% inspiration, 65% perspiration, 37% whiskey, and 82% intellectual property theft.

Anyway, Card and I decided that I would create an Internet persona named "David Landon". He'd start small with a few message board posts, then start a blog. But--and this was the key to the whole plan--he would pretty much stop going to the Disney parks after 2010 or so, and his posts would mostly be bland and uninteresting. Also, he would be late to the whole social media party and would never establish a meaningful presence there, either.

As the years went by, our plan worked perfectly. As "David Landon" cleverly flew under the radar, Bob Iger's Disney gobbled up intellectual property like Cookie Monster gobbles up . . . whatever it is he eats. Doritos? Kale? I can never keep track of what these "millennials" are into.

After the company's acquisition of Marvel started to reap huge rewards with the ever-increasing popularity of the Marvel film series, I worried that "David Landon's" influence on Disney might be too overt. So when he was invited to appear on a popular Disney podcast, I did my best impression of a stuttering idiot. And it worked! The Disney behemoth continued to roll along, vacuuming up intellectual property the way a ShopVac sucks up evidence at a crime scene before the police arrive. And when Bob Iger completed his piece de resistance--the $9 billion acquisition of Lucasfilm--"David Landon" reacted with a bizarre stream-of-consciousness rant full of obscure references that might've made people wonder if he was suffering a stroke, assuming they read it. Which they didn't.

Once it was clear that Disney no longer needed me, "David Landon" left off writing about the company and mostly talked about Star Trek. And wouldn't you know it, that particular franchise is suddenly in the midst of a multimedia renaissance! Its future looks even brighter now that CBS and Viacom have re-merged. And through it all, "David Landon" looked for all intents and purposes like a bland nobody with no influence over anything! Exactly like Card Walker and I planned!

But now, it's time to pull back the veil and reveal what you intelligent and attractive readers have no doubt already figured out: my real identity is

Just a Spoonful of Truthiness

Over the past week two pillars of the Disney blogging community, Michael Crawford of Progress City USA and FoxxFur of Passport to Dreams Old and New, have posted their year-in-review articles in which they make the shocking suggestion that there's something wrong with the way Walt Disney World is managed.

As expected, the Blame-Disney-First crowd on the Twitters has jumped on the bandwagon. They’ve been especially critical of Magic Kingdom VP Phil Holmes, and not just because he looks like an evil robot sent from the future to destroy us all.

No, these Internet crybabies are upset because Phil put the kibosh on some unnecessary expenditures, things like a thorough Space Mountain upgrade and a new parade and fireworks show. Well, I’m here to say that these complainers just don’t get it. And they come from a long line of non-it-getters. But not Phil. No, Phil understands a very important fact: the Magic Kingdom is the number one most-visited theme park in the world.

Actually, I should rephrase that: Magic Kingdom Park at the Walt Disney World Resort is the number one most-visited theme park in the world. It’s important to phrase things properly, otherwise people might think that Walt Disney World is another planet, not a resort, and that the Magic Kingdom is an actual kingdom instead of a park. You’ve got to keep the public informed.

But I digress. My point is that its status as the world’s number-one theme park means that Magic Kingdom Park is perfect. And you can’t improve on perfection. Phil Holmes knows this, which is why he’s vetoed all these misguided efforts to “improve” the park. Also, he’s a Vice-President, a title that’s also been held by prominent statesmen like Dan Quayle. Who are we to question his decisions? But let me take things a little further. Since Magic Kingdom Park is a part of the larger Walt Disney World Resort, I believe that its perfection rubs off on the entire property. Really, all of Walt Disney World is perfect, and therefore has no need of improvement. Excepting, of course, those empty parcels of land that are ripe for having DVC resorts built on them.

Still, it galls me that there are those Debbie Downers and Negative Norms who refuse to yield to this flawless logic. One of them, Michael Crawford, goes so far as to compare Walt Disney World’s organizational structure to a gaggle of feuding fiefdoms, and even equates it to Europe during the Middle Ages. And he says that like it’s a bad thing! Doesn’t he know that many of Disney’s most beloved stories like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are set in the Middle Ages? It was a time of fantasy and magic! Therefore, what the Internet naysayers see as organizational paralysis is just Disney’s way of making the magic come to life! Just like Walt would have wanted!

Speaking of Walt, I’m tired of hearing people complain that Walt never would have approved of whatever it is that’s burning their britches. The fact is that Walt approves of everything the Walt Disney Company does. For all you naysayers who think that’s impossible because of the tiny reason that Walt died in 1966, consider this: according to U.S. law, corporations are people. Therefore, in legal terms the Walt Disney Corporation is Walt Disney, and any discussion of what Walt would or wouldn’t do is moot. Of course, since corporations are genderless, it’s really not appropriate to refer to Walt with the pronoun “he.” He’s more of an “it” now. Also, his/her name has changed from “Walter Elias Disney” to “Walt Disney Corporation”. But other than that he’s still the same guy gal genderless entity.

Finally, I want to talk about the one thing that Walt Disney World has that no other collection of theme parks, including Universal’s, can match: magic. Walt Disney World is a magical place where dreams come true. I know this because their advertising tells me so. Part of the magic that Disney offers at its parks is a return to the innocence of childhood, when anything seemed possible. For example, most kids believe in Santa Claus. Why? Because parental authority figures like their parents or grandparents told them he’s real, and part of the innocence of childhood is believing whatever parental authority figures tell you, no matter now illogical or ridiculous it is. And outside our families, what parental authority figure is more beloved than our kindly old uncle/aunt, Walt Disney Corporation?

So, if Disney tells us that their parks are magical places where dreams come true, we must accept it without question. If we don’t we’re ruining the magic. Is that what you want to be, a magic-ruiner who makes little kids cry? I didn’t think so.

So, to recap: since it contains the most-visited theme park in the world, the Walt Disney World Resort is a perfect place with no need of improvement and everything that happens there is a magical dream come true. So if a rough ride on Space Mountain turns your internal organs to jelly thanks to a track that hasn’t been replaced since the Nixon Administration, it’s a magical dream come true. Vomiting into a trash can after a ride on Mission:Space? Also a magical dream come true. If you believe otherwise, you’re a cynical, un-magical hater of childlike innocence.

And that’s a spoonful of truthiness.

NOTE FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE READ THIS FAR: The preceding was obviously a work of satire. If you post angry comments to “refute” the clearly satirical and ridiculous claims made above, I will mock you viciously here and on Twitter. You’ve been warned.