The Walt Disney Co., which has a long tradition of bowing to pressure groups (it has never re-released its 1946 animated and live-action Song of the South — which featured the hit tune “Zip a Dee Doo Dah” — because civil rights groups charged that the Uncle Remus tales it incorporated perpetuated racial stereotypes), has quietly disarmed the operators of the Jungle Ride at Disneyland, who no longer fire blanks at anamatronic hippos, according to the Los Angeles Times. The move was applauded by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), whose spokeswoman, Debbie Leahy, told the Times, “If it was a fantasy baby or fantasy toddler, I don’t think somebody would find it funny. Clearly we should not be accepting it for a hippo.”
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