DISNEY SHOULD LEAVE FLORIDA FOR ANOTER STATE

 

                                        …Cinderella’s Castle needs a new home

 

Why is Governor DeSantis so popular in Florida…..?

Mickey Mouse needs to leave Florida.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-from Hell) got his state legislature this week to abolish the favorable tax arrangement that that brought Disney World to Orlando and kept it there for 55 years. It’s the latest attack against corporate America from the Trump right, which has already threatened Twitter, Facebook, Citigroup and Delta Air Lines. But now they’re canceling Mickey and Minnie?

Taking aim at Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas and Moana? It’s not only cruel, it stupid and is going to cost Floridians with much higher taxes.

Suddenly, sad times are upon the “Happiest Place on Earth”.  The Democratic governor of Colorado, has promised to “grant Mickey and Minnie full asylum in Colorado” and offered Disney a “Mountain Disneyland” retreat from “Florida’s authoritarian socialist attacks on the private sector.”  Many Disney fans online are urging Disney World to leave Florida.

Of course, you can’t just put a resort with six theme parks and two dozen or so hotels on a magic carpet ride to, say, New Jersey. (As it is, central Floridians could be stuck with more than $1 billion in debt and a current, massive property-tax increase because of DeSantis’s anti-Disney vendetta.) But Disney is the place where dreams come true, and the whole of Disney World, which employs roughly 80,000 Floridians and attracts tens of millions of paying tourists every year, we should hope that Disney will abandon Florida entirely.

DeSantis would be left with a 25,000 acre House of Horrors in Orlando: an abandoned resort in a state nobody now, wants to visit, thanks to DeSanitis.

His “don’t say gay” legislation makes Florida unwelcoming to LGBTQ people. His voter-suppression laws and race-baiting attacks on teaching history and race, make Florida hostile to Black, Latino and Asian Americans. Rising anti-Jewish comments (Florida’s most famous former president just had a video at Florida's Mar-a-Lago that was characterized by antisemitic swipes at Mark Zuckerberg). 

It all gives Jews pause about the state.  DeSantis’s MAGA-signaling anti-immigrant and antiabortion laws repel more large numbers of the population. His banning of math textbooks should send educated Floridians packing. His opposition to Medicaid expansion and Florida’s excessive Covid-19 death-rate over the past year  they have sent too many Floridians to the morgue.

Soon, there won’t be much of a constituency left.  As J.D. Vance, a Republican Senate candidate from Ohio, put it in a just released private message from 2016, “We are, whether we like it or not, the party of lower-income, lower-education white people, and I have been saying for a long time that we need to offer those people something.”

So offer them a theme park!  Rename Disney World’s ruins, DeSanty World.

DeSanty World would make the Carousel of Progress turn in reverse, reimagining the Disney classics to suit its growing audience of Snow White nationalists. Pinocchio would dream of becoming not a “real boy” but a “Proud Boy”. Lady Tremaine, the wicked stepmother, would become the heroine of Cinderella, championing parental rights.  Bambi would be seen from the hunters’ point of view.  Aladdin’s new soundtrack would warn of “A Whole New World Order,” and Mulan would be reviled for spreading the Cronavirus.  And all would cheer for QAnon’s own Captain Hook as he battles to prevent villainous Peter Pan from grooming the Lost Boys.

Some attractions would require only minor changes. The Barnstormer roller coaster (“a staggering series of stupendous stunts”) would be dedicated to DeSantis instead of Goofy. The Mad Tea Party and Festival of Fantasy Parade could pretty much stay as they are, and the Hall of Presidents would just be dispossessed of its 46th inductee.  “DeSanty World” would build a wall around the Alien Swirling Saucers. And, because of the park’s new open-carry gun policy, the whole thing would become a Frontierland Shootin’ Arcade.

There would be a new 101 Dalmatians Dog Whistle attraction that would feature DeSantis, who said, when he had a Black opponent in 2018, “The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up.” The existing Under the Sea Journey of the Little Mermaid would be repurposed to promote offshore oil. The Frozen Ever After boat ride would refute what he calls the climate change hoax. Splash Mountain, is already getting re-themed around “The Princess and the Frog,” and would now swap the evil voodoo practitioner Dr. Facilier with the more evil Dr. Fauci.

Then, after all but the QAnon faithful had self-deported from DeSanty World, the few remaining stragglers would sing as one: It’s a small world after all.

(Thank the Washington Post Editorial Writer, Dana Milbank, for my writing this article about what could eventually be “DiSanty World.”)

Copyright G. Ater 2022