MUSSOLINI'S (SECOND) LETTER TO WALT DISNEY
[excerpt from Pinocchio's Dream}

 

Dear King Disney,

 

It is with great personal sorrow, and fear for what I had hoped would be our brilliant mutual future, that I write you today in regard to your empire’s hostile moving painting Pinocchio. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that one man has betrayed his personal promise to another, it is indeed a sad day for Italy when a fellow regime, poised to do such good in the world, opts to pursue cheap jokes and national self-interest at the cruel expense of the Italian first son. It is due entirely to my own indomitable optimism—not the consensus of my inconsolable staff, I assure you, who have recommended no less than the imposition of complete diplomatic quarantine upon your misguided, if not by now totally corrupt, government—it is to the sunny entrenchment of my own generous soul, as I say, that the present letter owes its existence, and I trust you will decode it carefully so that, whatever the ultimate fallout of your treachery, at the very least we may proceed with maximal understanding of our respective positions.

            For the purposes of reinstating dialogue between our nations, in a timely manner while the event in question is still fresh in all our minds, I have decided to confine my comments here to the first five minutes of your aggressive animation. Therefore you will be able to consider with care your response to these few initial points while I prepare a more comprehensive and detailed inventory of my position:

 

  1. “Walt Disney Presents” should be“Il Duce Presents.” Did you forget the Agreement forged in my office? Whose idea was it to enlist Pinocchio for our mutual (or so I believed) cause? Whose gift was it, when a certain puppet was given by one man to another?

 

  1. Clocks on the interior wall of Gepetto’s cottage should be better synchronized.

 

  1. When the cricket accidentally rests his hand on the buttock of the figurine with the parasol, she does not react; she should either strike him with the parasol or demand payment.

 

  1. There are so many things wrong with the figure of Pinocchio that I am forced to assume you never once consulted the wooden prototype with which I so graciously presented you. Problems here include, but are not limited to: a) blue eyes (a grotesquity); b) Tyrolean hat (I am an ally of Germany, not his butler); a nose like a cocktail sausage. I realize that the prototype you were given was missing its nose, but I thought I was clear enough on this important point during our negotiations. When I introduced you to the David in my office, my meaning was to contrast the old, parochial Italian membership with the empirical new; David is the old—Florentine, over-ornamented, of petite and fixed dimensions; Pinocchio is the new—Roman, columnal, expansive. I do appreciate that the nasal curvature is concave in relation to the sky, not Semitically arched—but without substantial girth and longevity, it protrudes like the posterior of a fat worm half buried in the puppet’s head, which is to say parasitical, ingrown, minuscule, mealy. What we want is a scepter, a bowsprit! It is possible that I may be of further assistance on this matter, having launched an investigative operation to locate the original nose, which, when found, I shall convey to your kingdom after you have demonstrated your eagerness to cooperate.

 

That should be enough to get you started. I look forward to your response with sincere esperation that we will find common ground in which we may plant the flag of our sympathy. Needless to say, the Mickey Mouse project will remain on hold in Rome until that time.

 

Your would-be brother in the global war against mediocrity,

 

Benito Mussolini

 

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