Publication Date: May 5, 1998 | Series: Library of Contemporary Thought
"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."
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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
Review
After opening with an overbilious screed against the company's signature blandness, the author settles down and rakes good muck. -- Entertainment Weekly, Troy Patterson
Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in Florida, where he still lives with his incredibly tolerant family and numerous personal demons.
A graduate of the University of Florida, at age 23 he joined The Miami Herald as a general assignment reporter and went on to work for the paper's weekly magazine and later its prize-winning investigations team. Since 1985 Hiaasen has been writing a regular column, which at one time or another has pissed off just about everybody in South Florida, including his own bosses. He has outlasted almost all of them, and his column still appears on most Sundays in The Herald's opinion-and-editorial section. It may be viewed online at www.miamiherald.com or in the actual printed edition of the newspaper, which, miraculously, is still being published.
For his journalism and commentary, Hiaasen has received numerous state and national honors, including the Damon Runyon Award from the Denver Press Club. His work has also appeared in many well-known magazines, including Sports Illustrated, Playboy, Time, Life, Esquire and, most improbably, Gourmet.
In the early 1980s, Hiaasen began writing novels with his good friend and distinguished journalist, the late William D. Montalbano. Together they produced three mystery thrillers -- Powder Burn, Trap Line and Double Whammy -- which borrowed heavily from their own reporting experiences.
Tourist Season, published in 1986, was Hiaasen's first solo novel. GQ magazine called it "one of the 10 best destination reads of all time," although it failed to frighten a single tourist away from Florida, as Hiaasen had hoped it might. His next effort, Double Whammy, was the first (and possibly the only) novel about sex, murder and corruption on the professional bass-fishing circuit.
Since then, Hiaasen has published nine others -- Skin Tight, Native Tongue, Strip Tease, Stormy Weather, Lucky You, Sick Puppy, Basket Case, Skinny Dip, The Downhill Lie and Nature Girl. Hiaasen made his children's book debut with Hoot (2002), which was awarded a Newbery Honor and spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller lists. For young readers he went on to write the bestselling Flush (2005) and, most recently Scat (January 2009). The film version of Hoot was released in 2006, directed by Wil Shriner and produced by Jimmy Buffett and Frank Marshall. ("Hoot" is now available on DVD).
Hiaasen is also responsible for Team Rodent (1998), a wry but unsparing rant against the Disney empire and its creeping grip on the American entertainment culture. In 2008, Hiaasen came back to nonfiction with The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport. The book chronicles his harrowing and ill-advised reacquaintance with golf after a peaceful, 32-year absence.
Together, Hiaasen's novels have been published in 34 languages, which is 33 more than he is able to read or write. Still, he has reason to believe that all the foreign translations are brilliantly faithful to the original work. The London Observer has called him "America's finest satirical novelist," while Janet Maslin of the New York Times has compared him to Preston Sturges, Woody Allen and S.J. Perelman. Hiaasen re-reads those particular reviews no more than eight or nine times a day.
To prove that he doesn't just make up all the sick stuff in his fiction, Hiaasen has also published two collections of his newspaper columns, Kick A** and Paradise Screwed, both courageously edited by Diane Stevenson and faithfully kept in print by the University Press of Florida.
One of Hiaasen's previous novels, Strip Tease, became a major motion-picture in 1996 starring Demi Moore, and directed by Andrew Bergman. Despite what some critics said, Hiaasen continues to insist that the scene featuring Burt Reynolds slathered from his neck to his toes with Vaseline is one of the high points in modern American cinema.
This review is from: Team Rodent : How Disney Devours the World (Paperback)
Having grown up in Pinellas county Florida in the 60s it was easy to hate and be militant toward the obvious developers such as Hunt Corp., etc. In "Team Rodent", Carl Hiaasen provided me with the much-needed jolt to get over the quasi-hypnosis caused by a bunch of cuddly cartoon characters. Disney is nothing more than a corporate conglomerate that is wreaking far-reaching havoc on the environment under the guise of good family fun. Hiaasen's humor is not only welcome, it is necessary as it enabled me to get through the material that otherwise would have had me throwing up. I read this entire book on one flight and couldn't help but laugh out loud when reading about his scenario of the bull alligators in Bay Lake. People around me were giving me funny looks. It's not often a book causes me to lose control to that extent. There is a glimmer of hope offered when reading how the people in Virginia were able to thwart Disney's plans near Manassas. Unfortunately for Florida it's too little, too late. The only negative I could come up with in the book is the reference to orcas as "killer whales". A similar expose' needs to be done on Sea World. And by the way Carl: Let me know if you need any assistance with those bull alligators.
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This review is from: Team Rodent : How Disney Devours the World (Paperback)
First of all I must admit that if I heard that Carl Hiaasen had edited the Dubuque, Iowa telephone book, I would rush out and buy it. I enjoy him because I love his humor, and because I share his environmental concerns. As a retired senior executive of a large corporation, I also have no illusions about the goals of business. We need gadflies, and Carl's buzzing about can only bring issues to the surface to be thought about and discussed. Disagree with him you may, but I see nothing wrong in presenting facts about the power and plasticity of the Disney world. Many folks want their big brother provided sanitized entertainment, and will evidently brook no criticism of the source of their pleasure. For myself I am interested to find out how yet another big business manipulates local governments and the press. It's fascinating to read how devoted fans will pay 25 to 40% more for a home because its built by Mickey and his friends, while disregarding the fact that the same guys built substandard housing in Miami. The way people are mesmerized by the fantastic plastic world of Disney sometimes scares me. Its like some dystopic future world from a science fiction novel.
I will agree that $8.95 is a lot to pay for 83 pages, but it sure is good quality Hiaasen.
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31 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 starsA wickedly funny polemic on a fullly deserving corporation, October 30, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Team Rodent : How Disney Devours the World (Paperback)
As someone who witnessed, firsthand, the attempts by Disney to force feed their American history theme park down the throats of the good people of Northern Virginia, I can say that every word, comma, period and exclamation point in Carl Hiaasen's polemic rings clear and true. Also, sad but true, I have witnessed what Disney has done to Florida, as Hiaasen's so eloquently details in Team Rodent. In my and my collaborator Parke Puterbaugh's book, Florida Beaches (Foghorn), we detected the Disney fallout on nearly every beachhead on the Atlantic coast, and anyone who loves the Panhandle beaches better get ready to be disgusted because Disney (under the guise of a holding company) is getting ready to do to that area what it did to Orlando. I can say, from experience, that Disney is deceptive, sneaky, arrogant, bullying and they also lie regularly, when it behooves them. It would not surprise me in the least that the people who rated this book one star were hired by the company...or are stockholders.
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First Sentence:
Deloused and revitalized Times Square, home to MTV, Conde Nast, Morgan Stanley, the world's biggest Marriott hotel, the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, and soon a Madame Tussaud's wax museum. Read the first pageKey Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Team Rodent, Disney World, Reedy Creek, Times Square, Magic Kingdom, Country Walk, Kathie Lee, Peep Land, Walt Disney Company, Castaway Cay, Gorda Cay, Insane Clown Michael, Key West, Middle America, Civil War, Michael Eisner, Mickey Mouse, Orlando Sentinel, The Great Milenko, America Project, Disneyland Paris, Miami Herald, Prince William County, State Road
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