Eisner as Third World despot

Michael Hiltzik, in today's LAT Business section:

Speaking as someone who lived and worked for years in a string of petty Third World dictatorships, I believe I'm well qualified to predict the behavior of the regime of the recently declared Republic of Eisneria.

Like other dynasties that rule by fiat and deception (self- and otherwise), Walt Disney Co. management is likely to engage in the reinterpretation of reality, the misrepresentation of electoral results, the lionization of dupes and the execration of dissidents. Disasters will be rationalized away and victories exaggerated. Truth will no longer be an objective thing, but will emanate by diktat from members of a small, insular circle devoted to the glorification of the Big Man, to whose reputation and authority their own will be inextricably tied.

Some of these phenomena are already evident at Disney, where Chief Executive and ex-Chairman Michael Eisner continues to hold on to his chair with what George Orwell would have called a "prehensile bottom."

In the NYT, Bill Carter sizes up how ABC is doing under Disney's ownership (hint: not great).