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Britney Spears was one of Disney's wonderful mousketeers, and has probably corrupted more youth than anyone else.

But Disney themselves have left a trail of corrupted young lives as they churned out more "wonderful" show business products.

* The voice of Peter Pan, an actor named Bobby Driscoll, grew up to be a heroin addict, according to the book "Hollywood Babylon." Discroll's dead body was eventually discovered by some children in a New Jersey tenement, and was ultimately buried in an unmarked grave. He was 31.

* The voice of Bambi described his success as "too much, too fast." The money five-year-old Don Dunagan had earned was mis-managed, and by time he was a teenager, he'd left his family to live alone in a boarding house, working at a machine shop. Dunagan never worked on another movie again, and the Disney studios assumed he was dead, though he'd spent his career in the Marines. Disney didn't realize their mistake until Dunagan was 70.

* On the Mickey Mouse Club, Mouseketeer Darlene Gillespie sang "When I Grow Up Someday, I Don't Know What I'll Be." The answer was "criminal," since she was convicted in 1988 of illegally buying stocks with her third husband using bad checks. Her two-year prison sentence was reduced
to three months served, but in 2005 she was sued again for allegedly filing a fake $317,000 claim in a class action lawsuit.

* But Disney's real crime involves all children, across several generations. Disney stole from them the joy of discovering great works of children's literature. Instead, Winnie the Pooh, Pinocchio, Peter Pan, and Alice in Wonderland are movies to children - with different plots and different characters. Disney trashes the author's carefully-crafted messages about wonder and hope for simpler, cheerful, Hollywood fare, augmented with some stupid songs.

* Not content to stealing stories, Disney moved on to commercializing adult literature (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) and even history itself (Pocahontas). Disney ultimately wanted to take over land by a Civil War battlefield, then convert it into another amusement park. They were stopped when Americans finally protested. Our history is sacred, their argument went, and it should not be corrupted or "Disney-fied."

There's no question that Disney has corrupted our youth. The truth is, they're corrupting us all.

It's a small world after all.

Learn more about this author, Moe Zilla.
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