Let's get one thing straight: Carl Hiaasen doesn't like the Walt Disney Company. Whenever the giant entertainment conglomerate stumbles, as it did with its proposed Civil War theme park in Virginia, Hiaasen cheers. When a rhinoceros mysteriously dies at Disney's new theme park, Animal Kingdom, Hiaasen secretly hopes for the worst, because, as he writes, "no scandal is so delectable as a Disney scandal."

A native of Florida, author of such thrillers as Lucky You and Strip Tease, and a journalist for the Miami Herald, Hiaasen comes by his dislike for Disney honestly. He has witnessed the relentless success of the Disney machine firsthand with the development of Disney World and other properties around Orlando. In Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World, Hiaasen paints a witty and sarcastic portrait in this nonfiction account of a company who can control the press, manipulate local governments, and because it's Disney, get away with it. Team Rodent is a quick, entertaining read that even the most loyal Disney shareholder (except maybe Michael Eisner) will find enlightening and amusing. --Harry C. Edwards


Entertainment Weekly, Troy Patterson
After opening with an overbilious screed against the company's signature blandness, the author settles down and rakes good muck.


Book Description
"Disney is so good at being good that it manifests an evil; so uniformly efficient and courteous, so dependably clean and conscientious, so unfailingly entertaining that it's unreal, and therefore is an agent of pure wickedness. . . . Disney isn't in the business of exploiting Nature so much as striving to improve upon it, constantly fine-tuning God's work."
--from TEAM RODENT

TEAM RODENT
How Disney Devours America

"Revulsion is good. Revulsion is healthy. Each of us has limits, unarticulated boundaries of taste and tolerance, and sometimes we forget where they are. Peep Land is here to remind us; a fixed compass point by which we can govern our private behavior. Because being grossed out is essential to the human experience; without a perceived depravity, we'd have nothing against which to gauge the advance or decline of culture; our art, our music, our cinema, our books. Without sleaze, the yardstick shrinks at both ends. Team Rodent doesn't believe in sleaze, however, nor in old-fashioned revulsion. Square in the middle is where it wants us all to be, dependable consumers with predictable attitudes. The message, never stated but avuncularly implied, is that America's values ought to reflect those of the Walt Disney Company, and not the other way around."


From the Publisher
Rarely is a book this much of a pleasure to work on, because I stopped on page after page to read and crack up at Hiaasen's sharp and pointed wit--and then be shocked by the nasty things I never knew about Disney! I just went to Disney World for the very first time ever last year, so I was curious to see what Carl Hiaasen had to say about it--and I don't think I'll be going back again!

E.Gaffney, production




From the Publisher
Here are some questions we at Library of Contemporary Thought have put together to help you in a reading discussion group of our titles. TEAM RODENT 1) Hiaasen says that we need sleaze in our lives--that it provides a moral compass. Disney is so savagely clean, they eliminate all hints of sleaze. Is this good or bad.2) Hiaasen says Disney is scary because they're trying to improve upon nature. They create a fantasy and want to convince people to choose their fantasy over reality. 3) Frank Rich, in the New York Times, says that it's dangerous that Disney controls so much--they can use ABC news to cover the opening of a new theme park, further blurring the distinction between news and entertainment. What makes this so dangerous?4) Do you know that, in Florida, Disney is above the law? They have their own government, police force, and fire department. Hiaasen feels they get away with way too much because they control Florida's economy. Do you agree? Haw can this be stopped? Should it be stopped?5) Children love Disney characters. Do you? What message is sent by these characters? Hiaasen feels Mickey Mouse has as much influence as Jesus Christ. Agree or disagree? Good or bad?6) What do you think of the sit-com Ellen? Was ABC (Disney) right to cancel it?7) There is a lot of bad news about Disney's new Animal Kingdom. Have you heard any of it? Is Disney able to control the news?8) What do you think of the religious right boycotting Disney because of their support of homosexuals?9) Would you want Disney coming into this town to "clean it up" the way they've cleaned up Times Square?10) Would you want to live in Disney's mostly white, very safe town called Celebration? Do you think that such towns--with very specific idealistic and governmental goals--are good for America?


From the Publisher
In 1996 the Walt Disney Company reported $18.7 billion in revenues, a thunderous 54 percent jump from the previous fiscal year. By 1997 Disney's revenues had surpassed $20 billion. This torrent of money comes from films, television, home video and stage plays, radio and tv stations, theme parks on three continents, computer software, toys and merchandise, sports teams and hotels, real estate holdings, shopping centers and retail stores, housing developments and even a cruise line. Today Disney touches virtually every human being in America for a profit. And according to veteran journalist Carl Hiaasen, that is rapidly becoming true as well in France, Spain, Germany, Japan, Great Britain, Scandinavia, Australia, China, Mexico, Brazil and Canada. 'Disney is well on the way to devouring the world,' says Hiaasen, 'the same way it devoured this country, starting first with the youth.'


From the Inside Flap
"Disney is so good at being good that it manifests an evil; so uniformly efficient and courteous, so dependably clean and conscientious, so unfailingly entertaining that it's unreal, and therefore is an agent of pure wickedness. . . . Disney isn't in the business of exploiting Nature so much as striving to improve upon it, constantly fine-tuning God's work."
--from TEAM RODENT

TEAM RODENT
How Disney Devours America

"Revulsion is good. Revulsion is healthy. Each of us has limits, unarticulated boundaries of taste and tolerance, and sometimes we forget where they are. Peep Land is here to remind us; a fixed compass point by which we can govern our private behavior. Because being grossed out is essential to the human experience; without a perceived depravity, we'd have nothing against which to gauge the advance or decline of culture; our art, our music, our cinema, our books. Without sleaze, the yardstick shrinks at both ends. Team Rodent doesn't believe in sleaze, however, nor in old-fashioned revulsion. Square in the middle is where it wants us all to be, dependable consumers with predictable attitudes. The message, never stated but avuncularly implied, is that America's values ought to reflect those of the Walt Disney Company, and not the other way around."


About the Author
Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in South Florida and presently lives in Tavernier, smack in the middle of the Florida Keys. He is currently Metro columnist for the Miami Herald, where his award-winning columns on rapacious development, egregious business practices, and corrupt politicians have helped clarify issues for the Florida citizenry. Hiaasen turned his hand to fiction in the early eighties. His first novel, Tourist Season, was published in 1986 and named "one of the ten best destination reads of all time  by GQ magazine. He is the author of six other bestselling novels, Double Whammy, Skin Tight, Native Tongue, Strip Tease, Stormy Weather, and Lucky You.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Three decades after it began bulldozing the cow patures and draining the
marshes of rural Orlando, Disney stands as by far the most powerful
private entity in Florida; it goes where it wants, does what it wants,
gets
what it wants. It's our exalted mother teat, and you can hear the sucking
from Tallahassee all the way to Key West.

The worst damage isn't from the Walt Disney World Resort itself (which is
undeniably clean, well operated, and relatively safe) or even from the
tourists (although an annual stampede of forty million Griswolds cannot
help but cut an untidy swath). The absolute worst thing Disney did was to
change how people in Florida thought about money; nobody had ever dreamed
there could be so much. Bankers, laywers, real-estate salesmen,
hoteliers, restauranteurs, farmers, citrus growers--everyone in Mickey's
orb had to drastically recalibrate the concepts of growth, prosperity, and
what was possible. Suddenly there were no limits. Merely by showing up,
Disney had dignified blind greed in a state pioneered by undignified
greedheads. Everything the company touched turned to gold, so everyone in
Florida craved to touch or be touched by Disney. The gates opened, and
in galloped fresh hordes. The cattle ranches, orange groves, and cypress
stands of old Orlando rapidly gave way to an execrable panorama of
suburuban blight.

One of the great ironies upon visiting Disney World is the wave of relief
that overwhelms you upon entering the place--relief to be free of the
nerve-shattering traffic and the endless ugly sprawl. By contrast the
Disney resort seems like a verdant sanctuary. That was the plan, of
course--Team Rodent left the park buffered with thousands of unspoiled
acres, to keep the charmless roadside schlock at bay.

As Orlando exploded, business leaders (and therefore politicians)
throughout the rest of Florida watched and plotted with envy. Everyone
conspired for a cut of the Disney action, meaning overflow. The trick was
to catch the tourists after they departed the Magic Kingdom: induce them
to rent a car and drive someplace else and spend what was left of their
vacation money. This mad obsession for sloppy seconds has paid off
big-time. By the year 2000, the number of tourists visiting the Orlando
area is expected to reach forty-six million annually. That's more than
the combined populations of California and Pennsylvania storming into
Florida every year, an onslaught few places on earth could withstand.
Many Disney pilgrims do make time to search for auxiliary amusement in
other parts of the state. High on the list are the southernmost chain of
islands known as the Keys, where I live, and where only one road runs the
length of the archipelago. Maybe you can appreciate my concern.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Disney is so good at being good that it manifests an evil; so uniformly efficient and courteous, so dependably clean and conscientious, so unfailingly entertaining that it's unreal, and therefore is an agent of pure wickedness. . . . Disney isn't in the business of exploiting Nature so much as striving to improve upon it, constantly fine-tuning God's work."
—from TEAM RODENT

TEAM RODENT
How Disney Devours America

"Revulsion is good. Revulsion is healthy. Each of us has limits, unarticulated boundaries of taste and tolerance, and sometimes we forget where they are. Peep Land is here to remind us; a fixed compass point by which we can govern our private behavior. Because being grossed out is essential to the human experience; without a perceived depravity, we'd have nothing against which to gauge the advance or decline of culture; our art, our music, our cinema, our books. Without sleaze, the yardstick shrinks at both ends. Team Rodent doesn't believe in sleaze, however, nor in old-fashioned revulsion. Square in the middle is where it wants us all to be, dependable consumers with predictable attitudes. The message, never stated but avuncularly implied, is that America's values ought to reflect those of the Walt Disney Company, and not the other way around."

FROM THE CRITICS

Entertainment Weekly

Comic novelist and investigative reporter Hiaasen combines his talents to dis Disney....Hiaasen urges resistance to the conglomerate's hijacking of American culture, leaving it to inspired readers to build a better mousetrap.

Frank Rich

Who is more powerful -- Disney or God? It's a tough call, but no one...has grappled with this spiritual question more hilariously than Carl Hiaasen. -- New York Times

Charles Taylor

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of hearing my best friend's mom express relief that Walt Disney had finally kicked the bucket. When I asked her what he'd done to be such a bastard in her estimation, she told me, "He wanted to rule the world." That may seem like a strange opinion to any kid who was raised to equate Disney with Mickey and Goofy and those silly Kurt Russell comedies we'd go to see every year. And the opinion expressed by Carl Hiaasen in his hilarious and venomous pamphlet Team Rodent -- that his empire has succeeded in ruling small pockets of the world, and can do so because it exerts a pervasive mind control on much of the rest of the planet -- may seem strange to the 46 million people who annually descend on Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., or the millions more who flock to Disney movies, or perhaps the ones distributed by Touchstone, Miramax or Hollywood Films (all Disney subsidiaries). It may seem strange to the people who buy books published by Hyperion or CDs released by Hollywood Records, maybe even the combined billions who tune in to programming on ABC, ESPN, Lifetime, A&E, the History Channel. Getting the picture?

Who could have known, when Uncle Walt left us for that Magic Kingdom in the sky, that his minions would join ranks, mousestepping in his name across the literal and figurative American landscape to establish an empire that will last a thousand years, all the while trading on the trusted Disney name, and the visions of sweetness and light it conjures, to consolidate their holdings? Strength through joy, indeed. Certainly the farmers in central Florida whose land, beginning in the mid-'60s, was being snapped up at $200 an acre by buyers careful to keep the Disney name hush-hush (lest real estate prices shoot up) couldn't have foreseen Disney's master plan. Not true of the Florida legislators who, after Disney revealed itself and its intentions, went to outrageous lengths to secure the money Mickey could pour into their state. Hiaasen, in addition to being one of our best popular novelists, is a longtime investigative reporter with the Miami Herald, and he details goings on that would do the con men and sleazebags in his mysteries proud.

To ensure it landed Disney, Florida created the Reedy Creek Improvement District, a geographical district that comprises Disney World and its surrounding lands. The effect is to allow Disney to operate as an autonomous district. The supervisory board is elected by landowners (the Disney corporation), and since there is no voting population to speak of, the corporation is free to call the shots, to establish its own zoning laws, to pressure the state Assembly to allocate money for its sewage treatment rather than allot the dough to another county's proposed low-income housing. And it's free to refuse to obey state law -- it refused, for instance, to hand over the manual of Disney's security force after a member of that force engaged in a high-speed chase that ended in the death of 18-year-old Robb Sipkema, whose only apparent transgression had been horsing around at night on company property. Though the security force works for Reedy Creek, a public entity, Disney's lawyers succeeded in convincing a worm by the name of Judge Belvin Perry Jr. that relevant files were private property.

Hiaasen details Disney's talent for asserting its presence to gain the trust of officials or the public and then absenting itself at the first whiff of trouble. When a housing development promoted by Disney was found, after Hurricane Andrew blew it off the map in 1992, to have had incredibly shoddy workmanship, Disney succeeded in persuading the court to leave its name out of the class-action suit that followed, the reasoning being that a jury could assume the pockets on Mickey's shorts went awfully deep.

If you've ever read one of Hiaasen's mysteries, you know he can be killingly funny (if you haven't read one, for God's sake, stop wasting time with this). Team Rodent is a swift, hilarious read. At one point, Hiaasen fantasizes about breaking into Disney World to populate its lake with a truckload of hungry bull gators. His conscience precludes this -- he's afraid a gator might get hurt.