Eisner’s Brilliant Flanking Maneuver : A few years from now, they want to point to a fit Michael Eisner and a struggling Disney. They want to say that Emperor Eisner has no clothes.

Michael Eisner

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Walt Disney Co.

500 South Buena Vista St.

Burbank, CA 91521-7320

Dear Mr. Eisner:

My compliments, sir, on another smart move.

I am speaking, of course, of your prudent decision to shelve plans for building “Disney’s America” a few miles from the Manassas battlefields. I must admit that your previous insistence on the original site in such a historic area had us worried. Frankly, it was not hard to imagine the headlines that might have been written in the year 2001: “ ‘Disney’s America’ Defeats ‘Stonewall’ Eisner.”

After all, the press, those scumsuckers, love rise-and-fall stories. Their Disney files are fat with the downside of 1994--the death of Frank Wells, your quadruple bypass surgery, the departure of Jeffrey Katzenberg, the red ink at Euro Disney. It’s been a hell of a year, all right--and for you, a pivotal year. Whatever happens from here on out--whether Disney falters or zooms onward and upward--will decide whether you will be remembered as a true titan of business or just one lucky son-of-a-gun. (This is, I realize, extremely unfair, given your 1993 earnings. Isn’t $203.1 million ample proof of genius?)

So be careful. Those hacks at Variety and Vanity Fair and the Wall Street Journal are itching to see you fail. We are talking about an insensitive breed here. I’m sure many have extended sincere wishes for your full and complete recovery. But they have ulterior motives. A few years from now, they want to point to a fit Michael Eisner and a struggling Disney. Then they’ll look back on ’94 and say, “See, Frank Wells was the Aladdin of Disney! Jeffrey Katzenberg was The Profit King!” They want to say that Emperor Eisner has no clothes.

Make no mistake: This reporter is in your corner. Your decision to find another location for “Disney’s America” has reaffirmed my faith that you’ll rise to the challenge. True, the press plays up the battlefield metaphors, saying you raised a “white flag” of surrender. Hah! This was a brilliant flanking maneuver that will win new allies and protects the valuable Disney image as you stake out an acceptable location. Gen. Lee would be impressed!

I’m sure of this because my Aunt Jack was certainly impressed. She lives on a road called Gen. Longstreet’s Line, just outside the Manassas battlefield. When I visited her this summer, she was mighty upset with you. You see, she’s 79 years old--old enough to still remember a childhood conversation with veterans of the Civil--oops! I mean the War Between the States. One of my great-great-uncles lost a few fingers fighting the Yankees at Manassas.

As soon as I heard the good news about Disney’s America, I called Aunt Jack. Aunt Izetta, up from Birmingham for a spell, answered the phone and explained Aunt Jack was busy collecting signatures to have a new elementary school named after her neighbor, Mr. B. Oswald Robinson.

Mr. Robinson, I must say, helped me appreciate our heritage more than any theme park could. When I met him this summer, he told me what it was like growing up on the old family farm on the battlefield--how the plow blade would turn up the bones of Union soldiers who were buried where they fell. Mr. Robinson is a regular pillar of the community, a man who traces his roots to a relationship between a plantation owner and a slave woman. He’s 84 and he’s the only African American who lives in Aunt Jack’s neighborhood. Lincoln may have freed the slaves, but it wasn’t until 1965, a full century after Lee’s surrender, that integration came to the schools of Fairfax County, Va. Mr. Robinson was the principal of the only all-black school to be integrated with white children; several other schools were in such disrepair they were used for storage.

Anyway, when Aunt Jack finally came to the phone, she said she was “ecstatic” about your decision. She’d been all over the neighborhood with her petition and “everybody I talked to except one person--well, two--are really excited about Disney not being there.”

I’m sure the Virginia experience has been taxing for you, but don’t forget there are many places that would welcome Disney and Mr. Michael Eisner.

We missed our chance with Gorman. The little truck stop up I-5, on the way to Bakersfield, has been taken off the market.

So now we’ll have to find a new site for the dream I call “Ei$nerland.”

Obviously, you’ve been very busy these last few months. There’s no need to apologize for your failure to respond to my letter last spring proposing the construction of an adult-oriented theme park. Now, by “adult-oriented” I certainly don’t mean to suggest it would be X-rated--not entirely, anyway. Rather, Ei$nerland would be a playground with limos, Lear jets and celebrity look-alikes--vicarious ya-yas for people who can only wish to make $203.1 million in a lifetime. Or twenty lifetimes, for that matter.

I’m still authorized to commit the Harris Family fortune toward this dream. I’m sure it will take only a fraction of your 1993 income to make the down payment on a suitable location--perhaps the old General Motors plant in Van Nuys. Rest assured that historians won’t get in a lather talking about “the hallowed ground” around that spot. (Again, since I’m assuming the greater financial risk, it follows that I should control 51% of the company.)

Think about it. We’re talking high concept. We’re talking about a new company and a new monument that will give Mr. Michael Eisner his due, free from the legends of Walt Disney, Frank Wells and Jeffrey Katzenberg. And maybe the media slime will swallow their cynicism.

Sincerely,

Scott Harris

P.S.--It occurs to me that “Ei$nerland” may sound a tad gauche. What do think of “Eisner’s America”?