Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, It’s to the Clink We Go

Abigail Disney, granddaughter of Walt Disney Corporation co-founder Roy Disney, niece of entertainment industry legend Walt Disney, and heiress to the as-of-late-significantly-diminished Disney fortune, was arrested after she and sounder of climate activists blocked access to East Hampton, New York’s Town of East Hampton Airport (JPX)—a facility favored by well-heeled travelers making for East and West Egg-esque destinations on Long Island’s East End.

Disney was abetted by ne'er-do-well members of activist groups New York Communities for Change, Planet Over Profit, and Sunrise Movement NYC in an action the aforementioned collectively described, in a 14 July press-release, as having been undertaken for purpose of protesting and disrupting the "exclusive vacations of wealthy fossil-fuel investors and polluters driving the climate crisis.”

In a statement of her own, Disney set inarticulately forth: "As a person who has been privileged enough to use private jets, I know it’s hard to give up a luxury that is special. But I also know that the time has passed for spewing greenhouse gasses like this merely for our personal comfort."

The heiress to monies made by Snow White, Cinderella, and Uncle Remus and depleted by Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and Elemental, added: "The events of the past week alone, with Earth’s average temperature hitting an all-time high, drought and fatal heat waves across the country, floods in Vermont and New York, and ocean temperatures around Florida well over 90-degrees, should remove all doubt once and for all.”

Disney prattled on: "The wealthiest one-percent uses as much greenhouse gas as the entire bottom fifty-percent. It is time for real change and this is the most obvious place to start."

Photos and videos of the incident captured Disney and her fellow eco-zealots forming a blockade at JPX’s main entrance.

Parroting Disney’s rhetoric, fellow-protestor and Planet Over Profit member Teddy Ogborn declared: "These same rich people farting into the Hamptons on private jets are often the ones who make their money in industries that hugely accelerate the climate crisis.”

Ogborn continued: "As long as the one-percent continues to needlessly poison our air and heat our Earth, we will continue to escalate our actions against them."

The 14 July protest was the first in a series of tantrums climate activists intend to throw in and around the Hamptons over the coming days.

The actions are part of a growing number of climate protests intended to disrupt the lives of persons deemed by eco-zealots to have left disproportionately-large carbon footprints across an Earth for which the former believe they exclusively speak -- despite the actual stats that fail to support such activities.

Disney and her cohorts would do well to bear in mind that the Florida and Oklahoma state legislatures, in 2021, enacted laws protecting motorists who drive over protestors engaged in blocking traffic or otherwise disruptive behavior. That New York could benefit from the examples set by the Sunshine and Sooner states is self-evident.

For all its officious tenor and heavy-handed self-righteousness Abigail Disney’s declamation played fast and loose with inconvenient facts pertaining to her own family’s fondness of private air-travel.

In 1963, Walt and an entourage of kin and Disney executives took to the central-Florida skies in a Gulfstream demonstration aircraft to explore locations for a proposed development to which they clandestinely referred as Project X. Later that year, Walt Disney acquired a Gulfstream I that came to be known as The Mouse. Registered N234MM, the aircraft boasted a customized cabin instrument panel by which Walt monitored flight conditions, and a telephone handset via which he communicated directly with the pilots in the cockpit.

In early 1964, Walt made a number of trips to Florida aboard The Mouse--trips which resulted, ultimately, in the founding and construction of Disney World.

In preparation for the 1964-65 World’s Fair, The Mouse flew a total of 277,282 miles between Burbank and New York. The fair so impressed Walt that it’s broadly construed the inspiration for Disney’s It’s a Small World attraction. The Mouse also conveyed Walt to San Jaun, Puerto Rico, where his reconnaissance of the El Morro fortress inspired the look of the famed Pirates of the Caribbean attraction and film franchise.

Throughout Disney’s protracted, mid-20th Century heyday, The Mouse transported notable guests the likes of Julie Andrews and Annette Funicello, as well as former U.S. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Over the duration of its 28-years of service to The Walt Disney Corporation, N234MM flew 20,000 hours and transported an estimated 83,000 passengers before it was grounded in 1992 and made part of the Studio Backlot Tour at Disney-MGM Studios (now Disney’s Hollywood Studios) in Florida.

Disney’s heyday, by a multitude of metrics, is well and truly past. In 2022, the company’s market value dropped by a staggering $123-billion. Disney’s Q4 2022 and Q1 2023 losses totaled $2.6-billion. Whatever protests and criminal behavior she yet has planned, Abigail Disney ought get immediately about—while money remains for bail and attorneys’ fees.

FMI: www.disney.com