For those who want to believe that America is a land of apple pie and baseball and Fourth of July parades, The Walt Disney Co, has always stood as an ideal symbol.
And so the story of the fight for control of the company stands as a bitterly ironic refutation of Walt Disney's America.
In Walt Disney's America, Donald Duck might try to turn a quick buck through some nefarious scheme, but he'd quickly get his comeuppance. In The Walt Disney Co.'s America, a large cast of greedy cynics try to turn a quick buck—and wind up turning a quick million bucks.
Indeed, the crassness of the fight for the company is neatly captured by a quote used in John Taylor's book, ‘Storming The Magic Kingdom." Mr. Taylor recalls how Saul Steinberg, the master of ‘"‘greenmail,"" reacted when asked why he was starting a proxy fight for control of Disney stock: "I have always had a fondness for children," Mr. Steinberg replied.
Mr. Steinberg's fondness, of course, was for money. Nothing especially shocking about that. The profit motive is supposedly one of the wonderful ways of ensuring that a corporation satisfies the demands of the marketplace.
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