"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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The Library of Contemporary Thought Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group Copyright © 1998 by Carl Hiaasen

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hiaasen, Carl. Team rodent : how Disney devours the world /

Carl Hiaasen.—1st ed. p. cm. — (The library of contemporary thought)

ISBN 0-345-42280-5 (alk. paper)

1. Walt Disney Company. I. Title. II. Series.

PN1999.W27H53 1998

384'.8'()979494—dc21 98-16565

CIP

Text design by Holly Johnson Cover design and illustration by Ruth Ross

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition: May 1998 10 9 8 7 6