"Mickey Mouse" has to come to mean wimpy, soft, weak. It wasn't always so. My first acquaintance with the Mouse was in a little compact book entitled "Mickey Mouse, the Mail Pilot." Published back when private pilots often flew the U.S. Mail, Mickey ran into a gang of bad guys -- very bad guys -- holed up in a dirigible. Things looked bad for Mickey for a while, but he kicked their butt.
Now Mickey is locked in combat with a smoother villain -- one with degrees from Yale and Harvard, a governor who wants to turn America into a larger version of what he's doing to Florida. While America begins to turn away from Donald Trump, this fellow hopes to win national office by out-Trumping Trump. A Trump who speaks in complete sentences. An ingratiating Mussolini.
I'm not sure how attacking the world of Disney fits into his plans. I suspect it doesn't. But like his Trump mentor, this guy has a thin skin, and he can't stand losing. Rather than lose a fight he himself gratuitously started, he'll kill the goose that lays Florida's golden eggs, and his own goose as well.
Because beneath Mickey's easy-going facade, the Mouse is a fighter. A happy warrior. And a winner.
As the Mail Pilot book concluded:
"Ya know, Minnie," said Mickey, as they walked happily homeward, "flyin' the mail has taught me a lesson I'll never forget!"
"What's that, Mickey?" asked Minnie.
"Whenever you have a job, no matter how hard it is," he replied, "or how much you hate to do it, just buckle down an' remember, the mail must go through! Before ya know it, th' job's done -- an' ya feel just swell!"
Hey, I'll lay my money on the Mouse over the Yalie. Go Mickey!
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