No. 423 - Mickey Louse

Perhaps no cultural icon is more heinous than the big-eared antichrist himself, a rodent who's perpetrated nothing short of crimes against humanity, and along the way burnishing his three-circled symbol that gleams like a proud pentagram.

On the surface, the culture spawned from the Happiest Place on Earth is sunshine and rainbows, a utopian playland where everyone lives happily ever after, but the drivel spewed from this company's sundry TV stations, music label, movie production company, and all of the other pawns in its multi-media empire, is nothing short of toxic.

Disney Corp. is a prime example of a far-reaching enterprise gone awry, one that places a stranglehold on childrens' psyches at a time when their reality is still being shaped. The company's eponymous founder has long since passed, but his ideals live on in a mutated manner that was likely never intended by the Walt-astic forebear of all that is mouse; that aside, it's only fitting that Disney's current iteration, which has always been touted as "kid friendly," actually plays a large part in the deterioration of pre-teen culture.

Children are essentially instructed who to worship as the next tween celebrity -- Hannah, Jonas, Cody, Zach or Cheetah, or whoever else is instantly thrust into the kleig lights with shaggy hair and a winning smile.

This enterprise takes advantage of young minds during their most susceptible years, and that alone is not necessarily a vile act, although this demographic should be developing their imaginations throughout these years, not staring into the TV screen like zombies as they're spoon-fed pop culture junk food. They'll have their adult lives to indulge in mindless entertainment.

The real transgression lies in the way these pre-teen stars are hyper-sexualized and thrown into adult situations. Many of the current celeb icons are trust fund kids or silver spoon adolescents with stage parents, most of them with nothing better to do than answer their hormonal whims and party like it's 2099. And the message to pre-teenagers is to be innocent yet look like tarts, to consume but be moderate, to pursue intellect but villify the geeks of the world.

And parents worldwide are in turn subject to horribly written jokes and plot lines that couldn't even live up to the quality of a Mad Lib. Current Disney sitcoms reveal a theatrical and literary mastery that only Shakespeare himself could have created -- if Shakespeare had a full frontal lobotomy, that is.

Then there are the movies, revisionist propaganda at its finest, along with the historical dark skeletons that the Mouse Mafia itself can't even spin into profits, so they remain locked away like a bad drug habit. (Song of the South, anyone? How about the black handmaiden centaur in Fantasia? Get the blackface ready for the Disney on Ice rendition of these and other cultural embarrassments.)

Princesses and frail women weaken at the knees until the uber-male heroes come to their aid. Animals give life to the most deplorable of racial stereotypes, whether it's rasta lobsters, jive crows, Asian cats or derelict hyenas. Generations of bigotry, chauvenism and repressed dreams rolled up into one cute, castrato-esque, pants-less mouse.

This mouse must be stopped, or at least ignored into irrelevance. Might we suggest a lollipop laced with rat poison, sprinkled with a tad of pixie dust and arsenic?