Tag Archives: ethics

The Walt Disney Conundrum

16 Mar

March 16, 2011

The New York Post (Their motto: We call ourselves a newspaper no matter what you say.) ran the following story without attribution. Is it true? Is it made up? I don’t know. Please read the “story” while I go back to the dictionary and look up the definition of journalism.

Here’s a story of the blind leading the blind.

A sightless Briton was devastated when his beloved seeing-eye dog also went blind from cataracts.

But his despair was short-lived, because a social-services agency gave the guide dog his own seeing-eye pooch, so the trio of companions can walk through life together in love.

Picture it. A blind man is walking down the street. He is holding the harness of a seeing eye dog, which in turn is holding the harness of another seeing eye dog in his mouth and is leading both the blind dog and blind man safely to their destination.

Far more likely is that the blind man, being attached to his seeing eye dog, kept him and walks with him but also holds the leash of the new seeing eye dog. I seriously doubt the first dog walks the second.

However, this brings up a very troubling issue. It brings up The Walt Disney Conundrum.

Goofy and Pluto are both dogs, right? There are plenty of cartoons where Mickey Mouse walks Pluto around on a leash. He wears a collar, chews on bones, walks on all fours. He is a dog.

But Goofy is also a dog. He is a typical cartoon anthropomorphic dog. (I spelled that right the first time and didn’t even need the spell check, pat on back.) He talks, he walks upright, he wears clothes, he pals around with Mickey and Donald. He is an idiot, granted, but if I hold that against him I’d also have to hold it against 95% of everyone I meet when I walk out my door and I simply don’t have the energy.

So if Goofy and Pluto are both dogs, what happens if Mickey asks Goofy to walk Pluto for him? It brings up a whole host of ethical, moral, and genetic questions.

Is Goofy a superior dog? Is Pluto an inferior dog? Do they relate to each other in any way as fellow dogs? Do they communicate? Can Goofy bark and be understood by Pluto? Can they procreate? And what would the offspring be? Human-ish like Goofy or canine like Pluto? Or somewhere in between?

If Goofy were to walk Pluto on a leash, or worse, train him to obey commands, is that an issue of slavery? Is it morally right for an intelligent dog to treat a canine dog like a, well, dog? Is it akin to human mistreatment of the mentally disabled?

Can Goofy disobey “no dogs allowed” signs? Why is he allowed out without a leash? Could Goofy legally take a dump in the park if he cleans it up? Does he eat dog food?

If it is simply a matter of intelligence should Goofy and Pluto be considered the same genus? And what about Goofy’s intelligence? Should his stupidity make him legally inferior to Mickey? Could Donald Duck file a discrimination lawsuit on Pluto’s behalf? If Goofy is a dumb “person” but Pluto is a smart dog, does that actually make Pluto a better dog? If Goofy got a jog as a security guard and Pluto a job as a guard dog would they be equals?

And then there is the clothes issue, which is endemic to Disney. Goofy wears clothes. Pluto does not. Do intelligent dogs have to wear clothes or does Goofy have an evolved sense of modesty that is beyond Pluto? Mickey Mouse wears shorts and shoes but no shirt. How does he get into a restaurant with a policy of “no shoes no shirt no service”? And then there is Donald. Why doesn’t he have to wear pants? And that suit- who really believes he was ever a sailor?

This is all very troubling.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior week 6: A Thorny Legal Issue?

26 Sep

September 26, 2010

A Quinn Martin Production

Act One: A Matter of Law

I am in no way an expert on business matters or the workings of foundations and donations, but something struck me wrong this week. Paul Sr. and OCC were involved in building a bike for the FBI. About halfway through, Senior was informed that the underwriters for the FBI bike had pulled out. I take this to assume that the FBI was not paying for the bike themselves, and rightly so, as I can’t see any justification for a government agency to be spending my tax money on a vanity bike. I am just speculating, but I guess the bike was going to be paid for by the FBI equivalent of the Policeman’s Benevolent Association, or some other charitable organization. All fair and good.

At any rate, the money disappeared. Paul Sr. decided that his OCC foundation would donate the bike to the FBI. OCC would fulfill it’s obligation and the FBI would get the bike. Again, fair and good. But here is where I got lost. Perhaps someone could explain this to me.

Once built, OCC would donate the bike to the OCC foundation (because legally they are separate entities despite being all Paul Sr.) and OCC would get a nice big tax write off for the donation. So far, so good. The problem is, the bike was still in the building stage and parts needed to be bought and expenses paid for, all of which now would come out of Sr.’s pocket.

To make up the out of pocket expenses, Sr. planned to auction off one of the OCC regular production bikes. So not only will Sr. make back his expenses from the auction, and likely make a profit too (which is fine- he is running a business, and he was not doing the FBI job for free) but with the foundation, he will also get a large tax write off. So in effect, he is donating a bike he is not paying for to himself (via his foundation) and reaping another payoff down the road, a second payoff for the bike which cost him nothing to build. The OCC foundation would donate the bike and get whatever credit they normally get for a donation, yet this asset was really only theirs through the dint of some paperwork and they wouldn’t actually be spending any of their charitable assets.

Something sounds wrong, especially when you consider that he could build the bike, recoup his expenses and a profit via the production bike auction, and them give it to the FBI right from OCC- no foundation needed.

I may be wrong, but this really sounds like the same strange transfer of assets that made a court-appointed appraiser determine that the value of OCC stock was zero. That the whole business of bike building, which Paul Sr. spent twenty years building, was valueless. I don’t know what, but something sounds fishy to me.

Act Two- A Matter of Ethics.

So how hard is Paulie really working?

Since he began the new web bike, Paulie has said over and over how they have little time to get it done, how many long days they have to put in, how late they have to work. But this is the third show since they started the bike and Vinny said “this is the first time we’ve put in really long hours.” It is? But what about all the times Paulie said they had to work really hard and stay late? Then I remembered all the times in the last few weeks that we’ve heard Paulie say  “that’s good work, let’s call it a day” and closed up while the sun was still shining.

Sr. claimed that he’s heard that Paulie doesn’t show up at his shop until 10am and leaves early, and while I am inclined to take anything he says with a grain of salt, I think the evidence shows that he may be right.

Paulie hired a guy to come in and help them out, a person who had been fired from OCC. According to Sr. (again, grain of salt) he quit after only two days because he couldn’t work in such a lazy environment. I know Sr. was trying to tamper with him and hire him away, but the fact is he never went to work for Sr., was never lured away, so I am again inclined to believe Sr.’s description of the events.

Neither Paulie not Vinny are fabricators and they need help. They had problems getting started with equipment and personnel. I get that. but now that they have two bikes to build and a very short deadline, why haven’t they put in the hours?

Paulie hasn’t changed.

Epilogue: Senior is a jerk

Trying to hire away Paulie’s workers, riding up and down past the shop, killing a replica of his son- Senior says it is all a part of the game. What game? No one else is playing a game. Paulie, to his credit, is staying above that kind of nonsense. If Senior wants to play his mindless mind games on his sons, then there is a serious problem with him. In the last few weeks since Paulie and Mikey didn’t respond to his half-hearted attempts at reconciliation, Paul Senior really seems to have snapped. He’s stooped to badmouthing his kids to strangers. Speaking on the phone to a wife of a man he fired, Senior said that “all three of my sons are bums.”

Stay classy, Senior.

And to the rest of us, stay tuned.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →