Tea at Trianon: Disney’s Nightmare in Reedy Creek

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, March 11, 2024

Disney’s Nightmare in Reedy Creek

From Upstream Reviews:

The Magic Kingdom has been making a lot of news lately, all of it bad. In December of 2023 the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District published an investigation of the Walt Disney Company’s management of the district once known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District. The Reedy Creek Improvement District was a public government run under the auspices of the Disney Company since 1967 — a power which Florida Governor Ron DeSantis threatened to take from the House of Mouse’s control after he dueled with Disney in a highly publicized political fight over parental rights legislation. The company attempted to use its influence to stop passage of that bill; after this, DeSantis and the Florida Legislature finally ended the company’s hold over Reedy Creek in 2023. They installed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District in the Reedy Creek government’s place. Yahoo! news stated that the “38.5-square-mile Reedy Creek Improvement District gave Disney significant control of its property surrounding its Walt Disney World complex in Orange and Osceola counties.”
According to The Orlando Sentinel, the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District (hereinafter referred to as the CFTOD), stated in its report that, “[Disney] had established an extra-constitutional governing authority— ‘an experimental absolute monarchy’ — within the borders of the State of Florida, and, accordingly, [sic] the United States —one that strikingly resembled, without exaggeration, a kingdom of yore.” (Read more.)