Author: brendanmstewart

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The Bonfire Of The Vanities, by Tom Wolfe

Okay, let’s give this one another shot. About a week ago I wrote a lengthy review of The Bonfire Of The Vanities in this very spot. It was brilliant and full of insight, possibly the finest critique of a major novel that anyone has ever read. However, when I clicked the "Post" button to put my words of wisdom on the site, the entire process hiccupped and my review was gone, lost in the cyber ether. This has forced me to write this new, substandard review that pales in comparison to the one I originally wrote which you, Constant Reader (whoever you are) will never see. Pity, really.

I kid, of course, but isn’t that what this is all about? Vanity? Yes, I believe it is.

Tom Wolfe is the acclaimed writer from the New Journalism that came of age in the 1960s (or maybe earlier…not my area of expertise). His books run the subject matter gamut from the beginnings of the space program (probably his most famous book, The Right Stuff) to the LSD-addled nightmare party of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test). But it took him over 20 years of writing before he set pen to paper in the service of fiction. The resulting first novel, originally published serially in Rolling Stone, was The Bonfire Of The Vanities.

I first attempted to read this book back in 1990, but I started grad school when I was only 100 pages into it, and the book was placed on the shelf where it was promptly forgotten. Every once in a while I’d see the spine and think, "I really should read that…but not right now." Well, a few weeks ago I had nothing else to read and there it was.

I’m curious to know what my reaction would have been in 1990, when the events and people so lovingly fictionalized here were still playing out in the newspapers. Bonfire is the quintessential "New York in the 1980s" novel. What’s fascinating to me is that the beginnings of the novel first appeared in 1984 in Rolling Stone, and the full book was not finished and published until 1987. Yet Wolfe seems to have caught the New York of the late 1980s in his crystal ball.

With the exception of the Reverend Bacon, who is clearly modeled after either Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, it doesn’t appear that the characters are supposed to represent actual people. Still, the characters are all familiar to anyone who grew up reading the New York newspapers and watching Live at Five for the local news.

There is Sherman McCoy, bond trader par excellence,who refers to himself without the slightest trace of irony as a Master Of The Universe. This title belongs to him because of his salary, his nice wife and daughter, and his smoking hot, man-eating mistress. By his side in good times and better times is Maria Luskin, the voracious mistress who is so wrapped up in herself that her vision extends only as far as the bridge of her own nose.

Nominally, the plot hinges on what happens when Sherman and Maria, Manhattanites to the core, get lost in that urban jungle that is the Bronx. The road is blocked, Sherman gets out of the Mercedes to move the obstruction and is approached by two young black men; he panics, Maria slides into the driver’s seat and, in the ensuing escape, lightly hits one of the black men who falls and hits his head. Two days later he’s in a coma and the police, at the urging of Reverend Bacon and a political hack Bronx DA,are looking for the driver of the silver Mercedes that ruthlessly slammed into and abandoned the young honor student. What they are really looking for is the Great White Defendant, and by luck they find him.

Wolfe tantalizingly never answers the questions that lie at the heart of the book. Were the two young men attempting to rob Sherman and Maria? Or were they really innocents who were just trying to help? There is plenty of evidence that points in either direction.

The injury to Henry Lamb is the sacrifice needed to light the bonfire. Over the next 500 pages or so, the preening Sherman McCoy is reduced to suicidal thoughts, abandoned by his wife, abandoned by his mistress (the woman who is really responsible), forced out of his job. He has gone from being a Master of The Universe to a shell of a man, someone who no longer knows his own identity.

But Sherman’s vanity is not the only one ready for consummation in the flames. Every bit as bad as Sherman is the Reverend Bacon, a charlatan and race hustler who exploits the Lamb family for his own ends. There is also Larry Kramer, the assistant DA charged with prosecuting McCoy. Kramer is so vain he flexes his neck muscles before attractive female jurors, like a peacock spreading his feathers before a tantalized peahen. There is Peter Fallow, the alcoholic British journalist who makes a name for himself with innuendo-laced articles about the case and who stretches the definition of objectivity well past the breaking point. There is Abe Weiss, the Bronx DA who cares only about re-election and sees McCoy as his ticket.

These people, and many others populating this massive book, are all too familiar to this New York boy who spent his young adulthood reading about the likes of Tawana Brawley, Al Sharpton, Lester Maddox, Ed Koch, Robert Morgenthau,  Michael Griffith, and Bernie Goetz. Yeah, NYC was  a real toddlin’ town back then, as we kept climbing towards over 2000 murders a year.

McCoy is hounded, even after the initial case is dismissed. Nearly everyone else manages to escape.  Peter Fallow wins a Pulitzer,  Maria flees the country and gets off scot-free. Only the judge who did the right thing by dismissing the case is burned in the bonfire. By doing the right thing, he seals his re-election chances: he now has none.

But McCoy strangely manages to find himself through his travails (for which he is, at least partially, responsible). It is implied in a bogus New York Times article that ends the book that McCoy is once again involved with his wife on at least a superficial level, and has gotten in touch with the man he used to be before he became a Master Of The Universe.

On trial yet again (this time because Henry Lamb has, a year later, died) for vehicular manslaughter, the fourth trial for the same incident, McCoy seems to have found something in himself in his new role as the Great White Defendant.

The Bonfire Of The Vanities is a time piece now. It is nearly perfect in its evocation of New York City politics in the mid-80s. Anyone reading it will be able to see the bloody core of racial politics and the small-minded hobgoblins that infest politics like so many tapeworms.  Anyone from the tri-state area who is my age or older will pull a whole different level of appreciation. The characters may or may not be modeled on any particular individuals, but we know who they are. We spent a decade reading about them in the New York Post.

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Slash, by Slash and Anthony Bozza

As a writer, Slash makes for an awesome guitar player. It’s clear from the style of the book that Slash never actually set pen to paper, but told his "co-writer" Anthony Bozza his life story. Said life story was then written in such a way as to make it seem like you were sitting in a living room listening to Slash give his spiel.

Slash is a thoroughly entertaining rock autobiography, full of tales of debauchery: decadent, promiscuous sex, drug abuse, alcoholism, band in-fighting, great rock and roll music. It’s all there, in excess.

The Guns ‘n’ Roses/Velvet Revolver guitarist comes off as a generally nice guy, the kind of guy with whom you’d probably enjoy sitting down and talking about music. He also comes off as a thoroughly reprehensible human being, the kind of guy you would kill if he tried to date your sister.

The book handles some things better than the average rock bio. For example, Slash discusses his musical influences freely. He talks about his great love of Aerosmith, and recounts times when he and various members of Guns ‘n’ Roses would sit around listening to records. Personally, I find this stuff interesting. Too many rock biographies make it seem that the star in question emerged from the earth fully formed. Any successful musician has spent more hours than you can even imagine listening to other people’s music, but this is one of the few rock bios where this passive act of listening to music is described with great fondness. At one point, shortly after hearing Aerosmith’s Rocks for the first time, Slash hooked up with a girl he had been eyeing all night long, but when they got back to her place, he ignored her in order to listen to her copy of Rocks over and over again. She finally kicked him out.

The heart of the book is Slash’s struggles with drugs and drink. He spent most of the last twenty-odd years in a completely altered state. His heroin use was sporadic in the sense that he would be deeply addicted for lengthy periods, and then quit for equally lengthy periods, but his love of alcohol was never very far away. At the end of the book, he proudly speaks of his recovery, but the reader is left to wonder just how long that recovery will last.

In his riveting and harrowing autobiography, Long Time Gone, David Crosby paints the most terrifying picture of drug addiction I’ve ever read. Anyone ever tempted to try cocaine should be forced to read Long Time Gone first. Crosby, too, had made a recovery and it was believable. His regrets over the lost years and broken relationships were apparent on every page. In Slash, the tales of madness and drugs are told in a tone that approaches nostalgia. "Heroin sure is a terrible thing," Slash seems to be saying, "but it sure is fun." Alcohol abuse, too, largely gets a pass from any sort of judgment. You can almost sense that Slash is clean and sober, but feels that he can go back to his former ways at any moment.

Of course, a major plot point for the book is the second leading man. If Slash is the main star of the book, it is Axl Rose who neatly steals the scenes in which he appears. Slash is an addict and a born troublemaker, but Axl is a sociopath. Slash does a good job of portraying Axl in a relatively fair light. Axl’s talent and drive are never questioned, and the early years of the band are portrayed as a friendlier, more respectful, grouping. It is only after fame starts to rear its ugly head that the Axl we all know and loathe starts to come into his own. Concerts delayed for hours, riots started, band members fired, fans abused…now that’s Guns ‘n’ f’in’ Roses!

Fans of real, gritty, dirty rock music owe a great deal of debt to Slash. As a guitar player, he almost single-handedly killed off that Eddie Van Halen hammer-on school of guitar wanking that every blow-dried pretty boy with pouty lips, bedroom eyes, and a closet full of hair spray was riding to the top of the MTV playlists. In a particularly telling anecdote, Slash recounts the first time he heard Eddie Van Halen play. Like every other guitar slinger on the planet, he was dutifully and justifiably blown away. However, he continues, while all the other guitar players in L.A. started practicing their hammer-ons, Slash was listening to the band Van Halen, and trying to pick out the subtleties in Eddie’s playing…the stuff that all the pretty boys missed. Slash loved Van Halen’s playing, but considered himself more from the Chuck Berry school. It shows. Slash can certainly go on a little too long in some of his solos, but generally speaking he is one of the most tasteful heavy rock guitar players to ever play the instrument.  Nobody, except for Eddie Van Halen and some of the leftover wankers from that era of heavy metal (helloooooo Yngwie!), plays in that style anymore, and that’s in no small part due to the fact that Guns ‘n’ Roses became so huge with a guitar player that didn’t play in that style. So thanks for that, Slash.

Slash gives you a very good look at the inner workings of one of the biggest bands of the last 25 years, but in the end it’s not necessarily the most reliable look. By his own admission, Slash was out of his skull for almost all of the incidents described in the book. He apparently kept a diary of sorts in day planners that he used as sources for the book, but who knows how reliable those are? Alcohol and drugs not only destroy your memory of things that happened twenty years ago, they also taint your perception of things that are happening in the here and now. A perfect example is Slash’s story of how Axl refused to go onstage one night until all the band members signed away their rights to the name Guns ‘n’ Roses. Slash recounts that they didn’t know whether or not Axl would go onstage, so they signed the contract. Is the story true? Sorry, but it doesn’t pass the sniff test. Axl rightly points out that such a contract would have been thrown out of court since it was signed under duress. Score one for the sociopath…he may be bonkers, but he’s more believable on this point.

At some point in the not-too-distant future, I plan on reading the Stephen Davis Guns ‘n’ Roses bio, Watch You Bleed. Davis has his own issues, not the least of which is a taste for the sensational, but it will hopefully provide a more reliable presentation of what really happened in the G ‘n’ R camp.

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Gods And Generals, by Jeff Shaara

In The Killer Angels, author Michael Shaara wrote what many consider to be the greatest novel of the Civil War ever written. When you consider that this company includes both Gone With The Wind and The Red Badge Of Courage, you realize you’re talking about some pretty heady company.

After Shaara died, his son Jeff picked up the mantle and began writing books in the same format and style as his father. Jeff Shaara doesn’t get a lot of points for originality since his style is virtually indistinguishable from that of his father, but he does score with his novels nonetheless.

Gods And Generals is Jeff Shaara’s prequel to his father’s The Killer Angels. The latter book focused entirely on three days in July 1863…the three bloodiest days in American history, at a tiny town in Pennsylvania that has become synonymous with all that is horrific in, and all that is honorable about, war: Gettysburg.

Gods And Generals starts just as the Civil War is about to begin. Fort Sumter has not been shelled, but war is in the air and seems inevitable. The book ends as the Southern commander, Robert E. Lee, begins his march north towards Pennsylvania and the turning point of the war. In between are battles at Harper’s Ferry, two battles at Bull Run (Manassas), Antietam and, acting as the centerpiece of the book, the horrible carnage of Fredericksburg and the confusion and incompetence that turned Chancellorsville into a humiliating Union defeat.

The battles are described with an historian’s eye for accuracy, and a storyteller’s eye for narrative. The problem with this book, and almost any book that attempts to describe the mass confusion generated by hundreds of thousands of men hurtling themselves at each other, is that there is so much going on at any given time the narrative can become confusing. The Killer Angels was remarkably coherent, which may explain its reputation. Stephen Pressfield’s Gates Of Fire was also an amazingly detailed, yet easy-to-follow, view of the battle of Thermopylae. Ditto Stephen Harrigan’s brilliant novel of the titular battle in The Gates Of The Alamo. In Gods And Generals, the overall narrative is sometimes lost in the thirst for accuracy and the seeming need to cover all bases.

It’s difficult to criticize the book, however, because in general it is so well done. Shaara may be copying his father’s style, but he does so flawlessly. If the descriptions of troop movements are a little confusing, there are maps to help out. If it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference between many of the supporting characters, you can take solace in how well the main characters are drawn. I don’t know if there’s a finer portrayal of George Washington in fiction than in Jeff Shaara’s The Glorious Cause. In Gods And Generals, he applies the same fine brush to paint convincing portraits of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson especially, but also Joshua Chamberlain and Winfield Hancock on the Union side.

With Lee and Jackson, we feel the astonishment as one inept Union general after another blows one opportunity after another. What should have been a decisive Union victory at Chancellorsville, one that may even have ended the war two years and hundreds of thousands of lives earlier, instead becomes a panicked retreat from a vastly outnumbered Confederate force. What could have been a Union victory at Fredericksburg instead is handed to Lee’s forces on a silver platter: Lee’s forces sweep in and occupy the high ground while the Union forces are prevented by their leadership from crossing a shallow river because they don’t yet have pontoon bridges in place. Poor leadership on the Union side was so rife; it’s no surprise that Lee and Jackson genuinely believed that God was on the side of the South. One can only wonder what history would be like if Lincoln had not brought in Ulysses Grant to take over the Union forces.

There is talk early in the book about the why of the Civil War. As a college professor, Joshua Chamberlain pontificates about slavery as he makes his decision to enlist in the Army. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are both opposed to slavery, but view the encroaching war as an attack on the sovereignty of Virginia. For them, the issue is not slavery, but the right of individual states to make their own laws. These arguments largely disappear once the battles begin. I suppose that there is honesty in that. Contrary to what you’ll find in B-movies galore, my guess is that the average soldier rarely spends too much time debating the geopolitical events that landed him in a trench at Fredericksburg, or the Somme, or Bastogne, or Baghdad. But as a reader of a historical novel, it would have been good for Shaara to have the horrific battles of the Civil War placed in some context. Slavery was unquestionably the catalyst for the war and the main evil that the war was fought to address, but it was not the only issue. Without the exploration of these other issues, Lee’s and Jackson’s decision to take arms up in support of an institution they both abhorred seems odd.

As the war begins, many characters struggle with the idea of what to do. Many of the Southern military leaders were in the U.S. Army when hostilities erupted, and had to make a choice whether to stay loyal to the country, or their home state. Nowadays that seems like an odd thing about which to be conflicted, but at the time people considered themselves first off as citizens of their state, and secondly as citizens of the United States. In many ways, the Civil War was the bloody culmination of the debate between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists. The Federalists won the debate in 1787, but Anti-Federalism was a way of life for many Americans outside of the immediate orbit of Washington, D.C., especially down South. The snake in the cotton fields of the South, of course, was slavery. While it was understandable that slavery was not outlawed by the Constitution when it was first crafted in 1787, the price of this compromise would be long and brutal.

A little more…not too much, lest it become tendentious…of the why of the war would have placed these combatants in the middle of a cause where they were fighting for what they believed was right, rather than subjecting them to the hail of musket fire and the end of the bayonet blade for reasons that many modern readers might find murky.

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Mitch Mitchell, RIP

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine and I went to see The Who play at the Izod Center (formerly Continental Arena, formerly Brendan Byrne Arena). It was almost 26 years to the day since we had last seen The Who at the same venue on their farewell tour.

In 1982, Keith Moon was dead and Kenney Jones was gamely filling in on the drums. Jones was a fine drummer, but no Keith. This time around, John Entwistle was also gone, replaced by Pino Palladino, also a fine bass player (no Entwistle, but who is?).

The fact that it was “Half The Who” was on our minds as we sat in the parking lot, drinking a cold beer (or two…or three). We started talking about how many of the old bands were nearly gone now. Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops had died not too long beforehand, leaving only one remaining original member of that great vocal group alive. I asked the question, “Are any of the old bands gone?” We couldn’t come up with any. The Ramones have one surviving member, the Beatles and Who have two, Badfinger has one, the Mamas and Papas have one. Stunningly, the Stones have lost only one original member, and it isn’t Keith Richards. Sooner or later, we reckoned, one of these bands would be entirely gone.

Unfortunately it happened sooner, rather than later. Last week the news came through that the sole survivor of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, drummer Mitch Mitchell, had been found dead in his hotel room, after playing on a tour called Experience Hendrix with guys like Johnny Lang and Kenny Wayne Shepard filling in for Jimi.

Jimi, of course, was the first to go, in 1970 at the age of 27. Bassist Noel Redding made it to 2003 before dying. On November 12, 2008 it was Mitchell’s turn. In the grand scheme of events, I’m well aware how unimportant a rock drummer is but for music geeks, like myself, this was like watching a part of history die. The days when these musical colossi roamed the Earth used to seem so recent. Now it suddenly seems like just another bygone era, somewhere between the Victrola and the iPod. It’s one thing when a towering solo superstar dies. Death can come at any time and claim an Elvis, an Otis, a Buddy. This was an entire band, though. They once stood on top of the world as a collective unit and now they are nothing but memory.

In this spirit, allow me to express a word or two of appreciation for Mitchell. His name is not as well known as Keith Moon or John Bonham, but Mitchell was nearly as fiery a drummer. A jazz freak, he brought a distinctly Elvin Jones-ish feel to rock drumming. Prior to guys like Moon and Mitchell, rock drummers kept the beat and threw in a few fills here and there. Moon exploded the concept by playing lead drums, arms pinwheeling, drumsticks twirling, his kit laced with explosives. Keith was a show unto himself, and he placed the drummer at the front, equal in every way to the guitarist and the singer.

Mitchell (who auditioned for The Who but lost out to Moon) took a more traditional role. There was no way to share the stage equally with Jimi Hendrix, and Mitchell knew it. While he contented himself to remain a supporting player, he brought that jazz style to Jimi’s Martian blues and psychedelic excursions. Rolling around the toms, Mitchell sounded like a rumbling deep inside the earth. While Jimi kissed the sky, Mitchell shook the ground. You may have been so busy reaching for the clouds with Jimi that you didn’t notice what else was happening, but a large portion of the sensory overload that was the Experience came from the back.

Mitchell was technically a better drummer than Moon, though not as influential or as much fun to watch, but he served the same purpose in the Experience that Moon served in the Who. If you watch old footage of The Who you’ll notice something strange. During guitar solos, instead of stepping forward and taking the spotlight like a good lead guitarist, Pete Townshend would frequently step back until he was next to Moon. He’d put his head down, sometimes even put his foot on the drum riser…and Moon would spur Townshend on, and Townshend would inspire Keith to new heights, like two parasites feeding off each other.

Mitch Mitchell did the same thing for his lead guitarist. Jimi Hendrix never shunned the spotlight but, like Pete and Keith, Hendrix would lock in with Mitchell and the two of them would become an unstoppable force, a blinding blizzard of technical proficiency and deep soul. Mitchell was the perfect drummer for Hendrix, which explains why Hendrix went back to Mitchell after the Band of Gypsys experiment. As Hendrix played the role of alchemist, turning noise and distortion into cosmic beauty, Mitchell kept it all rooted with those endless rolls across the kit, as relentless and as powerful as the ocean. Mitchell’s skill made Hendrix better; Hendrix’s genius spurred Mitchell on to ever greater heights. Together they spiraled up into the stratosphere, like a rocket kept on course subtly and capably by Noel Redding’s bass, I frequently wondered what Stevie Ray Vaughan would have sounded like if he had a Mitch Mitchell behind him rather than the lead weight of Chris Layton. It would have been amazing. Compare Hendrix’s version of Earl King’s “Come On” with Stevie’s version of the same song to hear the difference a drummer can make to a guitar player.

So there it is. The first (as far as I can tell) of the great Sixties bands to become extinct. The next ten to twenty years will see many more. Mitch Mitchell, dead at 62. RIP.

Update: As if you needed another reason to appreciate that The Raconteurs are the coolest band on the planet right now, they have replaced their usual website home page with a great picture of Mitch Mitchell, which I have ruthlessly appropriated below. Gotta love this band…they know their history.

Mitch Mitchell

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The Happiest Place On Earth

Walt Disney World likes to bill itself as “The Happiest Place on Earth”, and it may just live up to the title.

I’ve just returned from spending a week trolling the grounds at the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, and the Disney Studios. I’ve been to Disney before as a kid, but this was my first time as an adult, with my better half by my side.

There are many reasons that Disney is a fun place to go on vacation. There are thrilling rides (Tower of Terror, Big Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Expedition Everest, Mission to Mars, Test Track), fun shows, quick blasts of international culture and cuisine at Epcot, water parks, fireworks, concerts (yes! Los Lobos at Epcot!), daily parades, great shopping, and slower-paced experiences for when your feet get tired (many of the Fantasyland rides, the African safari at Animal Kingdom).

All of these things might get Disney a reputation as the funnest place on Earth, but not the happiest. In fact, there are things that weigh heavily against that “happy” part: stifling heat (even in November…I can’t imagine what it’s like in July), crowds, long lines, overtired children crying, closed attractions (my wife was denied the experience of the Hall of Presidents for the fourth time in her life). Worst of all, there’s the monstrosity of the It’s A Small World ride, an attraction that would be made considerably better if you were allowed to throw baseballs at the marionettes singing that wretched song.

What allows Disney World to effortlessly overcome the unavoidable annoyances that can cast a damper on a vacation is simple: customer service. The overwhelming hospitality that greets people everywhere they turn can not help but make you feel good. Our plane was delayed by several hours and we arrived at the Animal Kingdom Lodge a little after two o’clock in the morning. We were tired, hungry, and cranky. The lobby was an immediate pick-me-up: huge, decorated in an African motif, with artwork, a fireplace, comfortable seating. It was immediately apparent that a considerable amount of thought and care had been put into this. It helped that we were the only people in the lobby at that hour, which gave us a good opportunity to appreciate the size and scope without a lot of hustle and bustle. Within seconds of our arrival we were greeted with a huge smile by the woman behind the registration desk. She asked about our travels, sympathized with our delays, and took a bit of time to talk to us. As bedraggled and cranky as we were, this little dollop of hospitality made us feel like we’d been welcomed home. As someone who’s stayed in hotels all across the country, I’ve rarely been greeted with anything other than monosyllables and perfunctory acknowledgements. It was the difference between “Hello! Let me help you!” and “Hey, you want to check in?”

And of course, it didn’t stop there. For the next week we were greeted with warmth and smiles by everyone from hotel maids to ticket takers to waiters to shop keepers to bus drivers. Not just a few people. They all did it. Whatever their personal feelings and emotions may have been, when they interacted with us the Disney staff was never less than happy and helpful. They took the time to make small talk, to answer questions, to walk with us if we didn’t know where we were going. They were happy, and the feeling was contagious.

My wife knew people who worked at Disney and we took them out to dinner one night. From talking to them I realized that the smiles and warmth that Disney employees show their guests is not artificial. It is far more than being told that their jobs depend on keeping a smile plastered on their faces no matter what happens. Disney invests in their employees. They don’t simply hand out the Kool-Aid and tell their workers to drink it. No, the happiness is real because the company does their best to train their employees and keep them happy. Disney has figured out that happy employees mean happy customers.

This is called “customer service” and it is, I fear, a dying art in modern America. Too many retail stores are staffed with people who seemingly could not care less whether you can find what you’re looking for. Too many hotels think their obligation to you begins with the reservation and ends with cleaning the room. Too many bus drivers take your ticket or your money, grunt, and avoid eye contact at all cost. Too many waiters and waitresses make no effort to make your dining experience a little more enjoyable just by talking and asking you how your day is going.

There’s a bar near where I live that has a slogan: “Where the customer is always an inconvenience.” It’s a funny slogan, and in a long tradition of self-deprecating bar slogans (another bar near me had the tag “Purveyors of warm beer and lousy food”). But I’m seeing this becoming more of a reality all the time. We all know what happens if we have to call customer service for our cable company or cell phone provider.

Disney World stands in stark contrast to this. It is the triumph of customer care. Disney World is the Happiest Place on Earth precisely because it is the most hospitable place on Earth. By treating every guest like friends and family, they give a respite from a world filled with bad news, overbearing bosses, messy commutes, rude people, and poor customer service. It’s a lesson that needs to be learned by a lot of other business out there.