One of my most frequently-trotted-out attacks against conservatives is that they rarely understand their own history. They rarely understand that what they are arguing for today is the ideological legacy of maniacs who have come before them, the same maniacs who argued for things that no rational conservative would try to argue today for fear of appearing too much of a maniac. Thank God we have the distinctly irrational Tea Party to be used as an example.
For example, the early anti-abortion movement never had anything to do with protecting babies. Children and women were still frequently seen as, more or less, the property of the husband who could do with them as he pleased. You can still see this logic in much modern religious thought where the man is the absolute head of the household. The classic anti-abortion movement thus avoided the sticky problems that crusaders today have, such as all of the hilarious ramifications that come from declaring that the "person" is created at the point of insemination.
Back then, stopping abortions was all about stopping women from having control. The crusaders then didn't hide this. They wrote about it. They didn't rail against the immorality of killing babies. They railed against the immorality of women freely having sex without the "punishment" of children.
The anti-abortion movement is, and always has been, about misogyny.
But what about the large, modern anti-abortion movement? Where did it come from, and how did it achieve a position on the national stage?
Politico has an excellent article showing how, much like many social problems we face, the modern anti-abortion movement was rooted in something totally different: racism.
As the author, historian Randall Ballmer, says:
[T]he abortion myth quickly collapses under historical scrutiny. In fact, it wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools. So much for the new abolitionism.
Also of interest is a good example of how fanaticism can propagate and transmogrify, having gravely deleterious effects on society, all the while trying to claim no connection to its past. It also just gives us another reason to hate Reagan.
The Bob Jones University case merits a postscript. When the school’s appeal finally reached the Supreme Court in 1982, the Reagan administration announced that it planned to argue in defense of Bob Jones University and its racial policies. A public outcry forced the administration to reconsider; Reagan backpedaled by saying that the legislature should determine such matters, not the courts. The Supreme Court’s decision in the case, handed down on May 24, 1983, ruled against Bob Jones University in an 8-to-1 decision. Three years later Reagan elevated the sole dissenter, William Rehnquist, to chief justice of the Supreme Court.
Not all cops are bad. Some of them are good. Some of them are great. Some of them are the kinds of people who will rush into dangerous situations to save people.
But many, possibly most, of them are not, and society must treat police monolithically. Because all police can shoot us and suffer few consequences. All police are protected by the court system. All police protect one another, and when the protectors protect themselves, who are people to look to?
It is for that reason that we must always remember that the police are bad guys. We should fear them. It is also important to stress that saying so is not a radical thing. It has never been a radical thing. The police have always been the bad guys. They stood against civil rights workers. They stood against anti-war demonstrators. They stood against Occupy Wall Street. They stood against suffragettes. They stood against union organizers. The police have literally been the wall through which justice and progress must punch.
And that is a sad thing to say. The police should be our knights in shining armor. They should be protectors. They should be many things, and they are not. Instead, they are bad guys.
By the time our boy was an adolescent, big for his age, very grown looking though he was still just a kid, I understood too well what Marilyn’s expression had meant that day in the pizzeria. Of course it wasn’t middle-aged, middle-class white women giving him grief. It was the white security guard at his school, for instance, who found Trey wearing his cap indoors one day in violation of school rules. The guard tried to confiscate it, but Trey resisted—that Yankees cap was a gift from Erick, he was afraid he wouldn’t get it back if the guard took it, and so Trey held on.
The guard grabbed him in a headlock, clamping his arm around my godson’s throat, choking him, and Trey, unable to breathe, grabbed hold of the man’s arm, trying to break free. The guard shoved him against the wall, jerked his hands behind him and handcuffed him. Then he took Trey, not to the principal’s office for wearing a ball cap in school, but downtown to Brooklyn Central Booking, where my godson was charged with assaulting a school security officer. Trey was 14 years old.
Two points: I just finished watching the PBS|Frontline documentary Chasing The Nightmare Bacteria; I also just read about a massive study showing that access to pain killers is poor. You can watch the documentary below.
The takeaway from the documentary is that we are charging headlong into a massive, global, health crisis the likes of which the post-war era has not seen. We are overusing antibiotics in our food supply, and even with that not taken into account, fifty-percent of antibiotics are unnecessary. We should be regulating antibiotics like crazy, and yet we aren't.
What are we regulating? Pain killers. The study to which I linked above says that the regulations applied to pain killers had good intentions, but now they are causing harm.
No. They never had good intentions, and the intentions that we actually had all but guaranteed the negative outcomes that we now face.
We regulated pain killing drugs because they are "fun" drugs. Any and all fun drugs are bad, because fun is bad. Semi-legal fun drugs are even worse, because we cannot call those who use them necessarily scum. We regulate it because doctors judge their patients and disregard their pain.
My father has diabetic neuropathy in his legs, a type of pain that is known to be resistant to opioid analgesics. He is also opioid-resistent, making the problem worse.. (I am also opioid-resistant, but I'm not in pain, so it doesn't much matter to me.) This means that very few pain killers work for him. He actually had a doctor tell him "this dose works for me, so it will work for you."
Along with that stunning, stunning, display of arrogance, my dad has had to face judgmental stares, questions, and disapproving tisks from nurses and doctors. It took months of pain before a doctor finally listened to him. Months of pain.
I have felt it, especially now that I have to present an ID to get simple pseudoephedrine: guilt. I have been trained by society to feel bad about using particular drugs. This mindset extends into the medical world, but the coin is flipped. Whereas I feel guilty about using the drugs, the person in a position of power, the doctor, feels judgmental about my using and asking for the drugs.
If I am in pain, then I must suffer nobly, otherwise I am a bad person. No fun drugs for me! Because having fun is bad.As I mentioned, semi-legal fun drugs are the worst for a judgmental society, because we cannot automatically label those who use them as deviant. As such, we must put those who do use them through a rubicon of pain, judgment, scorn, and red tape to ensure they feel correctly bad about using them. You may not be scum, but you are almost scum.
We regulate pain killers for the same reason we regulate marijuana, cocaine, and heroin — for the same reason we imprison huge numbers of people every year for victimless crimes. We do it out of sheer, unmitigated stupidity driven by a history of conservative, Christian judgment and racism. And as I said, the problems we now face of unaddressed pain in patients: almost inevitable.
When we base decisions on blind dogma, the outcomes are always going to be bad. Dogma is almost never right, because if it were right, then it wouldn't be dogma. It would simply be knowledge.
If I smoke marijuana (which I do not do, never have done, and never will do) I hurt no one. I barely hurt myself. But if I take an antibiotic, I could theoretically create the germ that kills us all.
So tell me again, why is marijuana the one that gets me thrown into jail?
How do you put words to this? I mean... no. You don't. There is no reason to put words to this, at least not yet. The mere act of pointing to it is enough. Simply recognizing it is all that really needs to be said.
Judge Antonin Scalia has gone full Fox-News with a recent statement, saying that the Voting Rights Act is an example of racial entitlement. Because, you know how we give blacks everything. They're just too damned lazy to make use of it.
I was reading about SCOTUS cases a few days ago and was blown away to find that as early as 1986, we had a decision that upheld laws against homosexuality, Bowers v. Hardwick. It was fully overturned in 2003, where the court majority opinion was that it was wrong in 1986, and it is wrong now.
Of course, Scalia, along with Thomas and Rehnquist, were the dissenters. I'm glad to see that Scalia's vile bigotry and hate remains unchanged.
I do not think that I can effectively communicate through the typed word, at least not in the format of a simple blog post, the anger that causes my hands to shake even now. I want to swear like a ship full of sailors. I want to just smash by keyboard for ten minutes and then post it. The fact that this troglodyte of a human is a member of what is likely the most powerful judicial entity on Earth makes blood come from my ears.
Also in this is yet another example of the racism that is almost undoubtedly endemic in the tea party movement that defenders of the movement try to claim doesn't exist. Really? How many "isolated incidents" like this need to happen before everyone accepts that the current conservative movement is as much predicated on hatred of non-whites as it is paranoid hatred of government? A hundred? A thousand?
I will not mince words. He is scum. He is the highest representation of the infection of block-headed conservatism to which Fox News panders. Old men, clogging up the functioning of society. All that gives me hope is that they will all be dead sooner or later. Based on the fact that these men don't seem to much believe in doctors and good diet (hippy conspiracies and all that), I would assume that it will be sooner rather than later.
The world will be a better place when they are gone.
Hooked: Illegal Drugs And How They Got That Way was a documentary that aired on the History Channel some years back--around the same time that the History Channel was still primarily the World War II Channel.
One thing that can be said of The History Channel, now simply called History, is that they are an incredibly timid, conservative channel. They want to insult no one, and worse still, have recently started catering to the lower common denominator in their show selection. While the LCD programming is a relatively new characteristic, they have always been conservative. That said, the fact that they were willing to air a series of shows that all but directly call our drug laws stupid is amazing. It should tell you how truly idiotic the laws actually are.
IMMIGRATION IS GOOD! If it wasn't for immigration, the United States wouldn't be the United States. We wouldn't have Chinese food, or Italian food. We wouldn't have Wall Street, or modern philosophy. There is no aspect of our life that hasn't been touched by immigrants! From our diets, houses, and technology, to the way that we dress and talk. The US is the greatest nation on Earth precisely because we've been filled by the globe's best and brightest for the past two-hundred years.
Myopic, racist, bigoted, xenophobic pricks have attacked every major immigrant group in history! The Irish and Italians were literally beaten to death in the streets. Our reactions to outside groups has been one of the worst manifestations of our worst characteristics.
It's ironic that those who are most likely to hate immigrants are also those most likely to get angry at the idea that their "daddy was a monkey," all the while they act like a bunch of angry, shit-throwing, violent, horrible, animalistic chimpanzees.
Just go fuck yourselves, you pieces of shit. I mean this in every way possible; The world will be better off when you are dead, and your house is inhabited by an immigrant who has actual skills.
Where is Ai Weiwei, and why is the United States pathetically silent on his disappearance? How can armies for the past 2,000 years all have been retarded? And are video games from 15 years ago better than those today?
Huffington Post has a short article about a bunch of high school girls rallying against a website that apparently rates the girls of that school in rather nasty terms. Sexist words are as one would expect, but racist words also permeate the website.
It got me thinking about men and our psychology. For example, I don't think that rape evolved, I suspect that it's a side-effect of males being prone to violence and being frustrated by something that they want, as such, they lash out in the form of rape. With this, we're talking about high-school boys. They can't be much older than seventeen, with the youngest clocking in at thirteen. Why on God's green Earth would they, at an age where they can barely poop correctly, feel the need to create a website to not only objectify girls, but to positively degrade them.
I suspect it's, again, because they want them, and they're too much a bunch of pussies to do anything about it, so they lash out. They want them, but they fear them. Mature, guys. Real mature.
Nicholas D. Kristof opens an article with great snark, saying that if we request Muslim moderates to reject the extremism in their religion, us moderates should also not be bigoted against Muslims. I'm not sure if I've ever read anything by Mr. Kristof before, but if I have, I'm sure I thought he was an idiot then, too.
Mr. Kristof's simpering, simplistic, "can't we all just get along" piece of fluff made me a little bit angry. First, he asks me to be tolerant of a group who has shown no tolerance of its own, and as a great Robot Chicken sketch shows, turning the other cheek to those who don't care just gets you two bruised cheeks.
I refuse to tolerate people who have never shown toleration themselves. No leaders, or politicians, or even people in the Muslim world have rejected actions and violence taken against the Western world. There are moderates, to be sure, there have to be, but we don't hear about them. They never say anything, and silence is damnation with this. These extremists fly the same flag as you and you must explain yourselves. Because as it stands, Islam on the whole, not simply the extremists, seems as atrocious as we think. Some people blow themselves up, others simply approve. Both are bad places to be.
Mr. Kristof then pays due attention to the reasons behind our hatred of Islam. He also compares our hatred of Muslims to hatred directed at Jews, Catholics, Asians, and Mormons. Someone provided a rejoinder, saying that “Catholics and Jews did not come here and kill thousands of people.” His response to this is so intellectual corrupt that it boggles the mind.
"That’s true, but Japanese did attack Pearl Harbor and in the end killed far more Americans than Al Qaeda ever did. Consumed by our fears, we lumped together anyone of Japanese ancestry and rounded them up in internment camps. The threat was real, but so were the hysteria and the overreaction."
First off, comparing a religion to a race is ridiculous. Our hysteria with Japanese-Americans was stupid because they were simply people who looked alike. Looking alike is not a unifying characteristic of behavior, which is what we are fearful of. If being Japanese was highly correlated with a particular type of behavior, our fear would have been warranted. But it doesn't, so it wasn't. Believing certain things IS highly correlated with behavior. So our fear of Muslims is entirely, completely, 100% warranted. As Sam Harris put it so eloquently in his book The End of Faith, "belief is a fount of action in potentia."
Kristof continues with a line that seems ripped straight from a peace-loving flower child's notebook, "Radicals tend to empower radicals, creating a gulf of mutual misunderstanding and anger." There is no misunderstanding, here. I am completely aware of my bigotry and hatred. The difference here is that I do not think it the slightest bit unfounded.
He continues, again comparing this sort of fear with racism,
Many Americans honestly believe that Muslims are prone to violence, but humans are too complicated and diverse to lump into groups that we form invidious conclusions about. We’ve mostly learned that about blacks, Jews and other groups that suffered historic discrimination, but it’s still O.K. to make sweeping statements about “Muslims” as an undifferentiated mass.
I said it before and feel that it bears saying again, this is a ridiculous comparison. The two examples he chooses were both of racist origin. I don't care about race. White, black, Asian, green, Plutonian, it doesn't matter. What matters is their beliefs. His argument up to this point could be equally applied to white supremacists. We are talking about beliefs, not race!
Kristoff continues to smear on the simpering, liberal, P-C platitudes. He expresses how bad he feels that those good Muslims who help rape victims in Pakistan, or feed children in Afghanistan, are having the faith that they hold oh-so-sacred excoriated in public. Well, first off, what is he not telling us about these so-called good Muslims. What backwater, racist, sexist beliefs do these peaceful men of Allah hold? I'd wager quite a lot.
And if they don't hold these beliefs, the question I pose to them is, why be a member of a religion that embodies the opposite of all you do? Islam is a terrible religion, and all of the terrible actions enacted by those who follow it is entirely defensible by scripture. If you are not terrible, you are not Muslim. Perhaps you should try Buddhism. It seems pretty cool.
I've been thinking about popular black culture and the negative ideal that it has spawned. There seems to be no need to go into the particulars of it, Bill Cosby has that covered, so instead I'll jump right into my thoughts.
I'm beginning to change my mind about popular black culture. One time, not that long ago, I was positive that black culture in the US was a terrible phenomenon that disregarded its heritage and history of the struggle for equality in a violently antagonistic society. Many historians have written about it, and I even had Bill Cosby on my side. And did you ever see the Cosby Show? That guy was right about everything!
But I have come to the realization that a lambasting of pop-black culture is contempocentric. Yes, it seems terrible, now, but what about in the grand scheme of things? Gangsta' culture has been around for barely twenty years! Even in human terms, that's nothing. If a person is a troublemaker for a few days, we don't then generalize that into her entire psyche. We frequently use the word "stage" or "phase." Sociologists will also describe society going through the same sorts of things, just over longer periods of time.
I have begun to think that popular black culture is an important and positive step in the development of "black" America. Basically, for the first time in history, blacks were allowed to act badly. Before this, if you were a black man acting badly, you were either killed or immediately thrown in jail. The incredibly intelligent, upstanding people who were the vanguard of civil rights movement had to be that way. If they were anything but irreproachably dignified they would have been ignored or branded as just some upstart nigger. If anything, we should be happy that our society has finally gotten to the point where blacks can act badly.
Is there racism in this process? Of course. We end up with police profiling, and white kids wanting to be black, and, well, you get the picture. We still have a label that we're using to describe blacks, as opposed to them just being people who are black. Black people breaking the law, as opposed to just people breaking the law. Black college graduates, as opposed to simply college grads. That's somewhat disheartening, but when racism is so deeply ingrained in our culture, our society, even our very population distribution, we're going to have to go through many phases before it's entirely expelled. As for now, I think that Cosby shouldn't be upset. His generation and the generations before him fought for the right for blacks to be fully actualized people in society, and that means being complete assholes, just like the rest of us.
I'm assuming that this connection has already been made, but I'm going to lend my voice to the din. Does anyone in Arizona, who recently passed a law so stupid that it would be hilarious if it wasn't so infuriating, realize how hypocritical they are?
Yes, hypocritical. They are vehemently against Obama and his health care, yet they have just passed a law that is closer to 1984 than anything Obama has ever done, talked about, or even thought about.
Well, that of course assumes that their resistance to Obama was logical and not rooted in racism, political fear-mongering, and dogma.
At times, I feel like Obama isn't wrong simply because those who are vocally against him are so dumb that they can't be right.
Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed. -G.K. Chesterton
I just watched Mickey Mouse Monopoly and have found much to disagree with. The gist of the documentary is that Disney is too large and perpetuates its biases and stereotypes through a massive, global corporation, thus poisoning our children's minds.
Using the word poisoning sounds like I'm exaggerating their thesis, and they never use that word directly, but it's accurate as far as I understand. The thoughts Disney perpetuates are negative, children lap it up, and as such it can be considered poison.
Right off the bat, one of the interviewees refers to Disney as dangerous because what she obviously sees as highly negative concepts are communicated as innocent entertainment. I can already tell that I'm not going to agree with most of what she says, since the paranoia required to see danger in innocence is not something I possess. I did for a time. In tenth grade I was convinced the government was covering up shit in Roswell.
They next have two college students that are interviewed for another part of the documentary where they both argue that Disney is mere entertainment, adults read too much into it, and that it doesn't harm children at all. These few seconds of film are the only dissenting voices in the film.
It doesn't take long before the anti-corporate bias of the film begins to shine through. I'm not specifically pro-corporate. In fact, I detest most corporations, their influence, and the people who run them. This hatred has only be intensified with the recent financial bailouts. But corporate power is not one that is forced upon us. We willingly hand over that power because we like what the company is doing. I get the impression that they are likening the corporations to government entities and I think that the comparison is not only inaccurate, but fundamentally and wholesale incorrect. A company loses the instant we stop giving it money, a government can go on regardless.
Moreover, with the advent of the internet, the supposed censorial power exercised by these large companies has dwindled. A single, scathing blog entry can be enough to rip an entire corporation down. Whole websites exist for no other reason than to air grievances against these companies. Consumerist.com, anyone? Corporations work because people like them. Corporations trying to further their existence beyond this generally requires anti-competitive practices and that is against the law. So, the only issue that is really an issue already has laws against it.
One interviewee who gets used quite a few times is Henry Giroux, author of The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence. He attacks Disney for suing people who try and use Disney's images, be it Mickey or even photos of Disneyland. I agree with him that this is shitty, but it's not just Disney; it's all companies. The website TechDirt.com spends it's entire time arguing why trademark and copyright law is bad and is abused by many corporations. Why focus on Disney when they are simply one element in a large network of legal and social issues? I see no reason. We should be concentrating on copyright law, not Disney.
The documentary moves from corporate issues to sexism, where it's discussed how Disney's portral of females has not changed much over the decades. Again, I agree with this to a degree, but they seek out and focus on the elements of Disney production that conforms to their argument, instead of formulating an argument based on the data. Yes, Belle, Aurora, and Snow White are all thematically similar. They're damsels distressing, and they need help. Females are usually very sexual, with fabulous bodies. But, again, isn't this an issue in all of media? And what about females in Disney cartoons like Gummy Bears? Or what about Eilonwy in The Black Cauldron? Peg in Goof Troop, Gosalyn in Darkwing Duck, Perdita in 101 Dalmations, Bianca in The Rescuers Down Under, Lilo and her sister from Lilo and Stitch, Gadget in Rescue Rangers, Elisa in Gargoyles, Recess, Pepper Ann, Teacher's Pet, Kim Possible, or Dave the Barbarian? What about them?
(Oh, and a note about the female rabbit from Bambi, she has a beard! I can't stop seeing it. She looks like a cartoon rabbit version of Earnest Hemmingway with makeup on.) It's seems that Disney will produce ANYTHING that they think will sell. Sexist undertones be damned. I think that the comparative failure of their non-traditional films, like The Black Cauldron or Mulan, show that people actively desire these stereotypes. They want to get lost in these worlds that are obviously unrealistic and predicated on stereotypes, and it is not within Disney's power to force upon them something they don't want. The Princess and the Frog is non-traditional (to a degree, at least), and it's under-performing. It hasn't even broken $100 million in the American box office. Compare this to Snow White, the number ten movie of ALL TIME. 101 Dalmations? Number eleven. Fantasia? Twenty. In the top one hundred, you will also find The Lion King, Jungle Book, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, Bambi, Lady and the Tramp, and Aladdin.
It's obvious that audiences enjoy something non-traditional, now and then. Both Shrek and Shrek 2 are on that list, as is Finding Nemo, but that's it. Perhaps it's because people expect a certain thing from Disney and don't want anything else? Shrek's success is a sauce that the movie companies have been trying to recreate for years. Every damned CGI film that comes out is loaded with pop-culture references, snarky characters, both male and female, and bright, colorful, over-the-top action. But, again, that's it. It's very derivative, with all the movies shooting for the same general personality. Even fairy tales are subject to this hip-ification. Happily N'Ever After and Hoodwinked both took fairy tale raw materials and applied a healthy dose of Shrek to them.
Disney takes the same raw material and applies the Disney juice to it. Just as derivative, but in a different way. They use those stories and fairy tales, which are almost universally racist and sexist, because those are the psychosocial constructs that give us cultural touchstones. Universals with which we all relate since they've been a part of our lives. Shrek lampoons, and it works because we all know them, while Disney worships, and it works because we all know them.
One thing that annoyed the ever-loving crap out of it is the myopia of those interviewed. They only attack those aspects of the films as negative that fit with their preexisting interests. The professors of race talk about racism. The professors of women's history concentrate on sexism. Well, what about all the other elements of fairy tales that can be construed as highly, highly negative.
What about "love at first sight." Forget the sexism and racism for a second and concentrate on the other cultural touchstones used. Isn't it damaging to think that I'll meet someone, love them immediately, have some wacky adventure but live happily ever after? Isn't the very concept of Happily Ever After essentially harmful because it's so hilariously unrealistic? What about Scrooge McDuck being a stingy Scot? Or the stereotypical French chef? Or, for the love of all that's holy, what about Lampwick? Irish stereotype, much?
But that's just it. It's a stereotype. It's not realistic. It's a story. A flight of fancy. If it was realistic and only discussed subjects carefully to make sure that no cliches, biases, or stereotypes were used, the whole endeavor would be tearfully boring. The women are all attractive and the men are all manly! So? That's the point. It's fantasy. If the real world made a habit of invading my fantasy, I'd commit suicide pretty quickly.
We restrict movies about real stuff to adults because children don't like those movies. They attack Pocahontas as being an unrealistic portrayal of Native American relations. Well duh! Would they rather have an animated The New World? If I was a kid, I'd leave the room lickety-split.
They close the documentary with more anti-corporate discussion, using both a quote from Michael Eisner and an interview with what I assume is some random mother, first implying and then directly stating that Disney has a moral obligation to teach our children about the real world and to not fill their heads with stereotypes.
No. No they do not. I find the very idea of that absurd. It is the parents job to do that. It's Disney's job to entertain and to make money in the process, which is exactly what Eisner said. To say otherwise is to belittle the impact of parents and to ascribe moral judgments to something that doesn't need them and, truly, would suffocate under them.
The Siamese cats were racist. Pocahontas was inaccurate. And, someday, your prince is not going to come. It's not hard to tell children these things. Let them enjoy, and then correct their misconceptions as they arise, because you will have to do that regardless of the movies they watch.
When I was younger, I liked Disney. Disney creations affected my fantasies, and that's alright. Complaining about Disney coloring a child's perception is pointless since children live in a fantasy world. The real world and the fantasy world are tightly connected. As such, saying that someone's perceptions at age eight, like the children interviewed, are guaranteed problems in later life is highly inaccurate. Problems arise as they get older and their fantasies become expectations. This is where parenting comes in. Sexism is nearly impossible if your parents aren't sexist. Like all the arguments against cigarette advertising, even though the only variable strongly correlated with starting was whether the parents also smoked.
By my early teens, I was keenly aware that those fantasies were not reality. Both of my parents were raging alcoholics by this time, so I had little parenting, but I managed to figure it all out. Actually, I became intensely anti-Disney and would regale anyone who would listen with how The Hunchback of Notre Dame was nothing like the book.
The point is that fanciful ideas about life are not harmful to a child. Their perceptual construct is wildly inaccurate and that's not Disney's fault. Incorrect ideas about life, society, and who we are in the grand scheme of things are, usually, the fault of the parents. My parents were not racist bigots, and no crows or apes in a Disney film will change that. Disney is not harmful.
