When I married my wife in 1986 at the church across the street from my high school graduation ceremony, we were two empty souls — me, the 18 year old vice president of the school’s Young Republicans chapter, she a 14 year old raised in a bizarre and domineering religious sect. All we wanted in life was to get married. But once we said our vows and engaged in the mandatory bout of flesh tag, the rapturous void of a meaningless life descended on us fast.

Was this all life was? Is there nothing more than coming home from my 9-to-5 job to greet my 9-and-5 month pregnant wife and talk about our zero shared interests before retiring to bed? 

Luckily, one night, in the space between attending my brother’s timeshare presentation and her sister’s tupperware sales pitch, we realized we did share common ground on one topic: we’d both been children once, and as such, we’d both been exposed to the wonderful world of Disney. What we’d set aside as minor pieces of our personalities, we reasoned, could now be so much more, and eventually grow to encompass all that we were.

Our lives changed overnight. All of our home decor was thrown from our windows as we scoured the hundred-mile area around the house we could not afford in search of Donald Duck merchandise. I purchased a gun to intimidate anyone who dared mislabel him “Daffy”.

Money that had previously been sitting idle in our retirement account was diverted and liquified in the form of plane tickets to Orlando, two for us, four for our children whose hippocampi have not yet developed enough to forge lasting memories of the happiest place on earth.

Every year, we spend at least a month and a half at Walt Disney World. I make sure to pack some cash to pay passersby to hold my unruly tykes as my wife dutifully takes pictures of me with Snow White (480 and counting! Hot!)

When she’s at home breastfeeding to the aural pleasures of Fantasia, I’m out on the prowl in Celebration Village, in search of homes to squat in. It’s hard to find families here who spend their vacations outside of the Orlando metro area, but when they do, oh god. I’m shivering.

When my mother was dying, we put off plans to visit her until we could get there via Disney Cruise. 

You get the point: our lives are Disney. You can imagine our unending dissatisfaction, then, with this new age of “wokeness” at Walt Disney World and Disney resorts.

Maybe you’re lucky enough to not know what I’m talking about, so let me fill you in: for the uninitiated, Disney vacations are all about immersion. For the week or two that you inhabit the park, you leave your troubled marriage and unfulfilling life behind and fully immerse yourself in the magic.

But recently, Disney’s liberalized administration has been taking steps to destroy that immersion. I won’t blame it on the increased presence of women and people of color — I’ll just imply it real hard.

What are they doing, you ask? Imagine this: you’re on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, kids on your lap, PDA with your wife, when you roll up on a scene of piratical debauchery: Jack Sparrow and the gang are pillaging Port Royal. You see two buxom young women. “Those girls are going to be taken as sex slaves”, you explain to your mucus-faced youngest; the elder five understand already. Imagine your fury, then, when by the end of the ride, these sexy wenches are left clothed and unchained. The cartoony music ends, and the ride stops, but your immersion was broken long before. They’re pirates; why wouldn’t they want to fuck the women? You would fuck the women. Nothing wrong with that — in that world, of course. And back in my day, they did. Then the woke police got in the way. Now my children’s favorite ride is void of sex trafficking. Immersion destroyed.

But that’s not the only example. Take the jungle ride where a local native enthusiastically sells the shrunken heads of his countrymen to white colonizers. Classic, right? Arguably the crux of the experience. Without it, fucking boring. What if I told you it’s gone, just like the pirate-themed sexual assault? Sorry, pal, this is no fantasy. That’s exactly what happened. 

The liberal elites will tell you this is an unrealistic depiction that hurts people. How stupid! You know who really bears the brunt of unfair media depictions? White dads. TV and film constantly have us bumbling around like buffoons — I’d argue that’s worse than suggesting that in our natural element, we hunt, skin, and sell the body parts of our friends to the first civilized white man willing to part with a Chili’s gift card.

It’s not just on the rides, either. Cast members inhabiting the resorts are now allowed to have tattoos (sin jsyk) and brandish inclusive haircuts. I’ll let you figure out what that means. If I don’t admit it’s racist, you can’t claim it is.

Either way, you don’t need me to explain that I like my human interpretation of Snow White to look exactly like the original two dimensional cartoon. Any deviation and I go flaccid instantly.

If you’re a godless liberal, it’s possible you think I’m rallying against free expression: not so. I think people should be able to do whatever they want in the comfort of their own homes. Once you leave, you play by my rules. You want to choose your own haircut and body appearance? Too bad. I have a shitty job that doesn’t let me do that, so you’re gonna have to follow suit. Misery loves company, and I’m feeling lonely as hell.

Let me be clear about something: I’m a Christian. It might sound weird that I’m bringing this up this late in the game, but I already typed out a lot of words and convinced myself this would be a really effective piece, and an accidental pang of self-awareness has me worried I look like a real piece of shit. So let me bring it all home with this:

I’m a Christian. I’m a father. When I was growing up, the world was one way and that was good. Every subsequent change has been bad. Disney is my one way of pretending my manufactured view of the world is the accurate one. I’ve been able to ignore films like Mulan, The Princess and the Frog, and Moana (because of the liberal values), but it’s getting harder and harder to spend 90% of my income on one company without acknowledging that they choose to cater to a growingly diverse audience. That makes me really uncomfortable. But don’t take it from me — take it from my kids, who never knew casual racism in the way I did, but who miss it as much as I do.

Disney, if you ever decide to go back to the real, honest moral path forged by the guy who made the slave movie, you know where to find me. I’ll accept my apology in the form of a private visit from your most Christian Snow White.

Tagged Disney, White People, Wokeness