Sunday, February 09, 2003

"Have a magical day..."

Whew…

Got back to Seattle late last night after a week at a convention hotel in Orlando.  While the meeting was typical for its genre—we contractors express our frustration with the Feds for their silly rules and/or lack of specificity in describing our required activities, and they shrug their collective shoulders—the setting was so pervasive, so stutifying, so Disney that it’ll take me a little while to settle back into reality-basis.  Fighting against that programming is tough!

Thankfully, there were no Disney characters at our hotel.  At other Walt Disney World hotels, it seems, you might be confronted by Snow White or Pluto while trying to keep your breakfast down.  I’m not sure that even the bar is sufficient refuge at some of them, though the idea of Goofy or Donald bellying up and throwing back a couple of shots of Black Jack does have a certain small appeal.  Even without the characters, though, the mind-control and activity-control was ever-present.  It was clear that they’ll do everything possible to get you out of your hotel room so that you’ll spend money.  The rooms were small and (to be charitable) spartan; all lighting was dim, there were no movies (HBO, Showtime, and such) on the TV, only a few room service items.  Even the TV remote was designed to frustrate you, as it had no number pad so that it was constantly necessary to page through all the intervening channels between the ones you wanted. 

In addition to the half-dozen channels touting pieces of Disney magic, the TV did have every variation of ESPN under the sun—ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, ESPNews, and maybe more.  Lessee now, ESPN is owned by ABC, which is owned by Capital Cities, which is owned by ... Disney, of course. 

Two Disney features stand out as particularly odious.  One of them is the title of this entry.  It’s the constant refrain from the staff—the doorman, the check-in clerk, the restaurant cashier, the telephone operator.  The second is the little sign posted next to particular doors, the ones that would say “Employees Only” or “Private” at any other hotel.  At a Disney hotel, it reads “Cast Members Only”!  Whether they’re waiters or janitors, computer operators or security guards, they’re all mere actors on the Disney stage.

After catching up with the 600 or so email messages that were in my in-box when I returned, I’ll get back into the blog swing.  In the meantime, a couple of thoughts on the political mood among the several hundred people at this nationwide meeting:

a) Granted that this is a group consisting largely of do-gooder types (we’re concerned with the quality of care within Medicare), I ran across very few supporters of GWB’s policies and actions.

b) That most definitely includes the federal employees, several of whom are just below the “political appointment” level in their agency.  Even those wearing the uniform of the Commissioned Corps of the Public Health Service were extremely distraught at what the government they participate in has been doing to us and to them.

c) Even the one unabashed Dubya supporter I ran into—he said he was an old buddy, and admirer, of Karl Rove—expressed strong reservations about the anti-Constitutional efforts of John Ashcroft.

Back to the email…