>>Mind you, I'm now five years out of physical touch with the country.
Well, then. ;-)
>>I grew up on Mickey and Donald and the rest - in printed form. A short daily strip, two weekly pages, and an occasional movie. When I was about age 8 the first TV sets appeared, and we watched Disneyland around sunday noon... and by the age of 12 I had enough. The humor is shallow, the characters never get out of character and the plots were predictable even at that age and with only a couple of years of viewer experience (not redmondese this time). Later it only got worse the more I sampled.
I know what you mean, but those were different days and those programmes were intended for an audience of children that only ever existed in the US and is no more.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
