By JOYCE MILLMAN
Would you like to join my Disney boycott? Well, it's not exactly a boycott. It's more like a well-organized grudge. Actually, it's not well organized. It's not even organized. It's just this thing that my husband and I have against Disney, that we've been kvetching about for four years now, since our son was born. But we won't quit! Even though that damned Mouse is awfully tenacious.
Unlike recent boycotts by fundamentalist zealots, our beef with Disney has nothing to do with the company's liberal policies towards gay employees or with subliminal sex messages in "The Lion King". (As an old rock critic, I'm all for subliminal sex messages; the more, the better.) No, what we have against Disney is this: We resent the fact that it is virtually impossible, unless you're living among the Amish (maybe), to raise a child without some exposure to Disney.
I laugh when I remember how, before we became parents, my husband and I confidently declared that we could do it, we could raise a Disney-free kid. Our idea of Disney as a pernicious mega-corp that could nonetheless be barred entry into our lives with just a little vigilance was as fuzzy as our idea of what parenthood would actually entail. We were so naive.
Next page: The hegemony of Mickey
