When Disney Meets Osama bin Laden

Two days after an elite US special forces team broke into Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan compound on May 1 and killed the al-Qaeda leader, Media Bistro reports the Walt Disney Company trademarked the term ‘Seal Team 6′, the name of the actual team of operatives who conducted the operation.
Seal Team 6 is regarded as the most highly trained of all Navy Seals; the best of the best.
(As an aside, the book, “SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper”, is being rushed into stores this week ahead of its originally scheduled May 24 publication date.)
According to the US trademark service, Disney’s move covers, and we quote:
“Entertainment and education services, toys, games and play things; gymnastic and sporting articles (except clothing); hand-held units for playing electronic games other than those adapted for use with an external display screen or monitor; Christmas stockings; Christmas tree ornaments and decorations; snow globes, clothing, footwear and headwear.”
It’s perhaps the ultimate indignity for the man who claimed he despised Western Capitalism (though, notably, kept a collection of porn in his compound room), now that his death is feeding that very capitalistic machine.
How Disney plans to leverage the trademark is unknown. Though we expect that a movie about Seal Team 6 could be a possibility, toys and paraphernalia for kids is even more likely in the near future.
As we’ve previously reported, filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow is already hard at work on a movie about the assassination of the al Qaeda leader, Kill Bin Laden.