May the 4th be Askew

It's May the 4th, which means unless you live under a rock you know it's Star Wars Day. With Disney's acquisition of the franchise and impending release this Christmas, fans are more excited than normal this May 4th. Today's events on SportsCenter, however, should give us all pause.

Disney owns both ESPN as well as the Star Wars franchise (and a million other things). To see a mention of Star Wars today is simply good business. But that's not at all what happened. The entire hour was Star Wars themed, with mentions in every segment. R2D2 was an in house guest for the duration. There was a panel trying to discover which baseball players were most like characters from Star Wars. The highlight, in my mind, was when one of the SportsCenter personalities openly complained that the new movies wouldn't have Darth Vader (sure, lets forget he's dead and just drop him in there -it'll be great!).

George Lucas' incessent need to develop marketable characters and ideas is what killed Star Wars to begin with. I was already leery when Disney acquired the franchise, as they have no concept of the line between marketing and exploitation. It appears to be the case that nothing in Star Wars will be sacred for Disney. Well, except maybe things like this: