Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom
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No, I'm not talking about the book of that title by nerdist writer Cory Doctorow, although there are some fascinating ideas in said book that are gradually manifesting in real life --- most notably, the idea of Whuffie. I'm talking about people who spend their day smiling for children and spend their evenings struggling to find a meal or lodging. People who play princesses or wizards at Disneyland but who are powerless to break the spell of their own poverty.
The New York Times just did a piece about poverty-stricken workers at Disney's California resort. (The link is an archive link, because fuck the Times, fuck their transparent agenda, and fuck their puppetmaster Carlos Slim.) The most damming part: "According to the report, 15 percent of employees who responded to the survey said they have received food stamps or visited a food bank."
I've never personally visited Disneyland, although Danger Girl has been there many times. I've probably been to Disney World in Florida a dozen times, starting when I was six or seven years old and including a trip I took there with DG a while back so I could see the places she worked when she was an intern with the company. I'm not sure I'll go back now. Disney is an obscenely profitable firm that espouses a variety of social-justice causes, up to and including rotting the Star Wars Universe from within via the mandatory inclusion of Mary Suewalkers. That's fine --- but to talk the SJW talk without walking the social justice walk seems a little too much even for me to accept.
A few weeks ago, when I was with my son in California, we looked at the cost of a ticket to Disneyland. It was $135 per day. A hundred and thirty-five dollars. To walk around in a place where young women are paid eleven bucks an hour to smile at my boy then go "home" to a car parked by the side of the road with homemade curtains drawn around the windows. It's a hell of a business model, and it must thrill the investors, but it stinks to high heaven. Something is rotten in the Magic Kingdom.