PhotoDave219
Well-Known Member
Drone strike.
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A Spirited Perfect Ten
- Thread starter WDW1974
- Start date
Drone strike.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Cesar R M
Well-Known Member
wouldnt creating a new thread make things WORSE? since they will be indexed exactly as is in google and other search engines.
I dont think Jim would have loved to see his jail info on the first line of Google when searching "wdw jim hill".
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Google can and does index the content of threads.
the.dreamfinder
Well-Known Member
JJ would be proud.
I've been up north spending the holiday with family and have just now caught up on this thread.
In the interest of full disclosure, I've never been invited to a Disney press event or been comped by Disney for my work on the Unofficial Guides or Touring Plans. I do get invited to press events at Universal for my coverage in Orlando Weekly (which I disclose) but I still pay for my annual pass & hotel stays there.
Jim Hill helped me get started in my career, and I respect him personally and professionally. He contributes material to my Universal and Disneyland books, and I hope he will continue to do so for many years to come.
In the interest of full disclosure, I've never been invited to a Disney press event or been comped by Disney for my work on the Unofficial Guides or Touring Plans. I do get invited to press events at Universal for my coverage in Orlando Weekly (which I disclose) but I still pay for my annual pass & hotel stays there.
Jim Hill helped me get started in my career, and I respect him personally and professionally. He contributes material to my Universal and Disneyland books, and I hope he will continue to do so for many years to come.
What a surprise. You head for the exit when directly confronted by the person you've been trying to publicly shame & humiliate for the past four days.
You do understand that -- because you handled this thing so poorly, were so nakedly giddy about the fact that you were going to be the one to tell the world that Jim Hill went to jail -- that this thing has entirely backfired on you. I mean, the only reason that this thread is as long as it is now is because you've had to repeatedly come back and defend yourself. Try and justify what you did. Meanwhile, I keep getting messages of support from all of the people I've worked with & covered at Disney for the past 30 years. They're just flat-out shocked that someone on a well-respected website like WDWMagic would ever do something like this. Dig up a 20 year-old charge in an effort to publicly shame and humiliate me.
Know this, Lee. If you wanted to embarrass me, you succeeded. Temporarily. But you seem to forget that I've been through this before, what with getting bounced out of Disneyland back in 2003 for doing my unauthorized tour. And let me clue you in on something I learned from that painfully embarrassing episode: There really is no such thing as bad publicity.
Given that we now live in a post-Kardashian culture, being publicly shamed actually makes you sympathetic. It makes people want to be in your corner. For the past four days, it's been like I'm George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life." I've had friends that I haven't heard from in months, if not years, reaching out to offer their support.
So -- in short -- your clumsy, ham-handed attempt at smearing me / tearing me down didn't work. But I suppose that you won't want to accept responsibility for that either.
brb1006
Well-Known Member
Is that really you Jim Hill, if so I love your podcasts and a huge fan.
Last edited:
Who else would it be? Given that Lee has been so eager to talk about my past, I thought that I'd join the conversation here in the present. But judging by his behavior, I'm guessing that direct confrontation isn't really Lee's thing
the.dreamfinder
Well-Known Member
Jim, do you consider yourself a journalist?
brb1006
Well-Known Member
I hope in a future podcast you could do one about WDW's Spectromagic parade which ran from 1991 - 1998 and from 2001 - 2010. I would love to know the history and origin of the parade including some backstory to the Spectromen from the start of the parade and the animatronic Jiminy Cricket and Sebastian. But the Spectromen always felt mysterious to me. The Spectromen used to have robotlike voices in the early years of the parade until 1996 or 1997. I also had a hard time understanding what they were saying most of the time.
PhotoDave219
Well-Known Member
Yup, we've hit five-year-old in fantasyland level of childishness.
I got a message from a friend today remarking about this latest conversation - apparently it's amusing the hell out of Celebration Place.
I got a message from a friend today remarking about this latest conversation - apparently it's amusing the hell out of Celebration Place.
TalkingHead
Well-Known Member
Hey Jim, do you really believe that the animated shorts DVD/Blu-ray, the one with your endorsement, is something that all -- what was it? -- "all serious film fans" should buy? Because that sounds like marketing hyperbole and damages your credibility as an independent journalist.
So exactly when did you go from being the rebellious guy giving unlicensed tours of DL to being a de facto mouthpiece for the Mouse?
Lee
Adventurer
Ok, final one for today..
A). It's midnight and I'm tired.
And
B). I'm on vacation with my Mrs. who is giving me more side-eye than I'm comfortable with for posting right now.
As I said earlier, if your name had faded out of it two posts in it would have been fine by me. You were just the jumping-off point for what should have been a very interesting discussion.
I haven't been defending myself, I've been defending the topic.
I don't feel I've done anything that needs defending.
My posts have all been in an attempt to correct misinformation and to try to steer the conversation back to where I wanted it to go. But, posts like yours tonight make that hard to do. Posts that repeatedly make it about Jim Hill the dude in New Hampshire rather than about "Jim Hill, Disney expert and blogger."
The former I have no desire/need to post about or try to harm. The latter, due to his public status, is fair game as part of a discussion about Disney's relationship with bloggers/lifestylers.
Again, I have no need to embarrass you, do I? Can you think of one?
I didn't dig this information up. Someone else had it and felt the need to drop it in my lap. (Remember one of my previous posts where I dropped in some words from that source? Words that made it clear that they had a problem with you?).
I just ran the story, like a journalist would. You should understand that. It's not personal.
Smearing/tearing you down wasn't part of the equation. I would have handled the information the same way if it had been about Mongello or Brigante or whoever.
My hands are clean.
Now, I've gotta put this iPad down before the wife hurls it, frisbee-style, out the hotel window.
I'm signing off because:
A). It's midnight and I'm tired.
And
B). I'm on vacation with my Mrs. who is giving me more side-eye than I'm comfortable with for posting right now.
The only backfire is the fact that this whole discussion has become about you.
As I said earlier, if your name had faded out of it two posts in it would have been fine by me. You were just the jumping-off point for what should have been a very interesting discussion.
I haven't been defending myself, I've been defending the topic.
I don't feel I've done anything that needs defending.
My posts have all been in an attempt to correct misinformation and to try to steer the conversation back to where I wanted it to go. But, posts like yours tonight make that hard to do. Posts that repeatedly make it about Jim Hill the dude in New Hampshire rather than about "Jim Hill, Disney expert and blogger."
The former I have no desire/need to post about or try to harm. The latter, due to his public status, is fair game as part of a discussion about Disney's relationship with bloggers/lifestylers.
*sigh*
Again, I have no need to embarrass you, do I? Can you think of one?
I didn't dig this information up. Someone else had it and felt the need to drop it in my lap. (Remember one of my previous posts where I dropped in some words from that source? Words that made it clear that they had a problem with you?).
I just ran the story, like a journalist would. You should understand that. It's not personal.
I accept full responsibility for "running the story" that I was given.
Smearing/tearing you down wasn't part of the equation. I would have handled the information the same way if it had been about Mongello or Brigante or whoever.
My hands are clean.
Now, I've gotta put this iPad down before the wife hurls it, frisbee-style, out the hotel window.
BlueSkyDriveBy
Well-Known Member
The DVD comment was the breaking point for me. I used to be a big fan of Hill's earlier work. I loved the edgy criticisms of an entertainment legacy heading down the wrong path under penny pinching management. But those days are long gone. At some point in the past, Jim sold out. He's no better than those darned mommy bloggers who are just as addicted to the comped pixie dust as he's become.
Disney's labor practices continue to slide down the rabbit hole of ethics, with their social media brothel being just one aspect of the larger problem, and Jim but one part of the social media brothel. But it's a significant part, and clearly represents everything about the Mouse that's gone south since Disney morphed into Buy-N-Large.
Sorry, PhotoDave219. I know that I shouldn't respond to this stuff. What's that old George Bernard Shaw saying? "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it." But to my way of thinking, Lee rally crossed a line earlier this evening. And then when he refused to accept responsibility for posting all of this stuff, when he attempted to shift blame to whoever it was who told him how to access my Orange County files, that just made my blood boil. And then to go through this charade of saying that "I'm-not-posting-all-of-this-stuff-because-I'm-looking-to-publicly-shame-and-humiliate-Jim-Hill.-I'm-just-trying-to-start-an-honest-conversation-about-how-Disney-interacts-with-bloggers" ... I just couldn't sit by tonight and let Lee do that. I had to directly confront him. And you saw what happened right after that. Bang! Zoom! He scampered for the exits.
Which -- given that it's almost 1 a.m. here now on the East Coast -- is what I should probably doing as well. Thanks to all of you WDWMagic posters who have challenged Lee / pushed back against how he's handled the release of all that extremely embarrassing information from two decades ago.
I mean, I'm a big boy. I actually did all of that incredibly stupid and self-destructive stuff that you folks have read in those files. So I'm perfectly willing to take responsibility for that behavior. But the way Lee was handling the release of this information, he wasn't just looking to run some salt in my wounds. He wanted to shove the entire Great Salt Lake in there. And at some point, you just have to push back when someone's behaving as badly like that.
Oh, I'm sorry. Does reminding you that there's an actual flesh-and-blood person at this end, someone who you've spent the past four days trying to publicly shame and humiliate make things a wee bit uncomfortable for you, Lee? I am so sorry. Let me graciously step aside now so that you can then continue with your ongoing attempt to destroy my reputation with your "This-isn't-really-about-Jim-Hill.-We're-just-talking-about-how-Disney-interacts-with-bloggers" discussion.
TalkingHead
Well-Known Member
If Lee "scampered for the exits," then what did you do? Dodged every question that was posed to you...
The teacups aren't the only things that spin, spin, spin.
That's the key difference between you and I, Lee. Over the past 30 years of covering The Walt Disney Company specifically and the entertainment industry in general, I have -- from time to time -- been handed incredibly juicy information. Stuff that could have ruined marriages, ended careers and -- yes -- sent people to jail. But in my case, my first thought was (and still is) "Would this story actually worth that? Will the kudos that I'd receive for sharing this salacious bit of news actually be worth the collateral damage that'll occur once this info gets out in the world?"
That's the difference between a reporter and a gossip, Lee. What you've been doing here over the past four days -- especially in response to the WDWMagic readers who've pushed back. Who were really put off by the tone of your initial posts in this thread. Which showed how giddy and eager you were to share this extremely embarrassing piece of news -- is just above scribbling nasty stuff about me on a public bathroom wall.
Okay. So it was true nasty stuff. But since you now feel the need to repeatedly defend yourself in this forum because of all that push-back you've gotten, you've now shared to the point that you've over-shared. The information that you've added to this discussion thread over the past 12 hours hasn't helped your argument / defense at all. If anything, it's undermined it.
Look, Lee. Take a little advice. You can't ever build yourself up by tearing someone else down. You've successfully shamed & publicly humiliated me. Anything that you say or do from this point forward will be seen as overkill. I mean, I know about all of the PMs that are flying back & forth behind-the-scenes at this site that are 90% in support of me and 10% in your favor. At this point, if you continue to pursue this matter, you won't be ruining my reputation. You'll just be doing further damage to your own.
So in the immortal words of Elsa, "Let It Go ... " Just accept that you're not good at playing the crusading journalist. Because if that's what you were shooting for here, the impression you've left a lot of people at WDWMagic with is that you're a nasty gossip. So please go back to just talking about the Disney Parks, okay? Because that's something that you're actually good at.