No, the following is not one of my wisecracks on my Twitter account, it is not from the wonderful Borowitz Report and it is not from The Onion. It’s true. Disney has trademarked Seal Team Six:
In a perfect example of a big media company looking to capitalize on current events, The Walt Disney Company has trademarked “Seal Team 6,” which also happens to be the name of the elite special forces team that killed Osama Bin Laden.
The trademark applications came on May 3rd, two days after the operation that killed Bin Laden… and two days after “Seal Team 6? was included in thousands of news articles and TV programs focusing on the operation.
Disney’s trademark applications for “Seal Team 6? cover clothing, footwear, headwear, toys, games and “entertainment and education services,” among other things.
I’m a huge lifelong fan of Disney, its cartoons and how it has operated at its parks in Anaheim and Florida (they have perfected the idea that visitors to parks are “guests” and each person employed at part is kind of a cast member). And Disney made it clear in World War II that Mickey fully supported the war effort. So there could be some kind of explanation that’ll emerge later.
If not, it could start a trend.
Perhaps Mike Hubackee’s new video company will trade mark “the war on terror.”
Perhaps Donald Trump would trademark the word “comb-over” or “bad-comb over” or trademark his use of THIS.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.