GOODBYE, TOPOLINO
It always seems as though heartbreak targets the holiday season. When the news broke last Wednesday, from Naples, Italy no less, that certain Disney characters had been ordered to testify in court. My mind raced with the possibilities the next few paragraphs would offer. I remembered the porn-movie scandal from last summer, when Goofy and Minnie were caught in compromising positions, apparently boot-legging some Disney movies you're not going to see at Loewe's. With the story coming from Italy I prayed that it wasn't an organized-crime connection. Please, God, don't let it be Tweety Bird busted in a numbers racket. Don't tell me Daffy Duck has been the king-pin of the heroin trade in Rome, trafficking kilos back and forth on the Disney Company jets, his plump duck-torso stuffed with enough Horse to bring millions on the street.
I breathed an audible sigh of relief when I finally summonsed the courage to read further. Apparently, a Chinese man is on the cusp of a criminal trial for counterfeiting Disney and Warner Bros. products. This compelled the Naples court to subpoena Tweety Bird, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and his girlfriend, Daisy to take the witness stand as damaged parties in the case. I wish I was making this up, folks. Since it is Italy, after all, the court used the characters' Italian names...Titti, Paperino, Paperina and Topolino. Don't ask me to assign those names, your guess is as good as mine.
Fiorenza Sorotto, Vice President of Disney Company Italia said, "unfortunately, they will not be able to show up, as they are residents of Disneyland."
Nice try. We know why they won't be showing up, because being a labeled a "witness-about-to-testify" in Italy is akin to painting a target on the back of your head. As brutal and unforgiving as la Cosa Nostra is, the Chinese mafia makes them look tame. One has to assume, that since the counterfeiting was based in Naples and had stretched to China, that both mafias were involved. Suddenly, the relief I had just enjoyed turned back to terror. I imagined Daffy Duck being plucked off the street, hustled into a black Lincoln and driven to a seedy section of Naples. Tied to a chair in an abandoned Olive Oil warehouse. Repeated whacks on his beak, feathers pulled slowly, one by one in an effort to get him to "talk". Poor Walt Disney must be spinning in his grave.
The options afforded humans are not available to Disney characters. There is no "witness-protection" program for Daisy Duck. What neighborhood is she going to blend into? What, are you going to do, send her to Phoenix? These poor innocent little icons of our collective youth, all tangled up in a counterfeiting operation gone awry. I can only hope that when they are "whacked", it is done in the old Italian tradition that allows an open-casket service, not the brutal Sicilian-style of one through the eye and one behind the ear. Of course, Tweety has no ears, so that's a leg-up for her, or him.
Sadder still, that the only remaining option for them to save themselves from the inevitable, will be to "take-the-oath" themselves. Yes, the pinprick, the sharing of blood, the burning of the Saint card, to become "made" members themselves. Indeed, if they survive, we will all know that they are no longer to be trifled with when visiting Disney. No more sardonic remarks from parents as they make the rounds through the dinner buffet. No more pulling on Daffy's tail or "big-beak" remarks. Not unless you want to be the next one found in Hefty bags in a Disney Dumpster.