In defence of Scrooge McDuck.

[pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no]

Amanda wrote:
> Scrooge McDuck. Considering him with Scotty, I'm amazed you
> guys get any credibility at all.....

To which Amy Z wrote:
> Oh, man, I'd forgotten about him.  The accent aside, he is a
> very nasty stereotype--the cheap, rich Scot.  Someone please
> tell me Disney has retired him.
> 
> Amy Z

Disney retire Scrooge McDuck?!  Sacrilege!  He is, with a possible 
exception for Donald Duck, the coolest character in Disney history.  
Something tells me you people have been getting your Scrooge-
impressions from Duck-Tales or the likes, but that simply cannot be 
considered canon; the creators of the modern Disney-series simply do 
not understand Scrooge McDuck.  For the real Scrooge McDuck, you must 
look to the comics authored and drawn by William van Horn, Carl Barks 
and Hugo Keno Don Rosa.  Reading Don Rosa's stories from "The Life 
and Times of Scrooge McDuck", you will find that he is above all a 
self-made super-billionaire and tycoon (with a money-bin 
containing "three cubic-acres of money").  

Everything he owns, he has built up from the ground, starting with 
his polishing shoes at a young age in Glasgow (1877), later on 
selling firewood, before becoming a river-boat captain on the 
Mississippi and Ohio rivers (1882), and a cowboy on the Chisholm 
trail (later in 1882, after having publicly humiliated Jesse and 
Frank James).  He goes on to digging for copper and gold in the 
Anaconda hills (1884), gold-mining in South-Africa (1887) and opal-
hunting in Australia (1896), before going gold-mining in Alaska, 
where he finally had luck (1897).  

Following a battle with the US Navy, the US Army and the Rough 
Riders, he forms a personal friendship with a president named 
Theodore, and settles in the small township of Duckburg, in the state 
of Calisota, in 1902.  By this time, he has made his first billion

His darkest moment comes in 1909, while attempting to gain some 
mineral-rights from a tribe in the midst of the African jungle, and 
this will haunt him for years to come.  Indeed, it results in 
estrangement from his family until 1947.  

Of family, there is not much, as his father Fergus McDuck's brothers 
Angus and Jacob never settled down and had family.  He has two 
sisters, one of which is named Hortense, and is the mother of Donald 
Duck.  

Scrooge McDuck is not as much a picture of the stereotypical stingy, 
penny-pinching old miser of a Scot, as the hardened American 
immigrant self-made tycoon.  Part of his philosophy is that you 
should work and strive to become something, rather than rely on 
wealthy relatives.  Donald Duck thus gets little respect from 
Scrooge, as he is pleased with being a relatively simple person, but 
at least he does work.  Another thing it is indeed with Donald's 
cousin (the some of Donald's father's sister Daphne Duck), Gladstone 
Gander - a proper dandy who's never had to work for anything in his 
life, relying instead on his supernatural luck for everything.  

Scrooge's greatest hope for the future luck of the Duck-family lies 
with Donald's three nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie (identical 
triplets, except that Huey has a tiny speck in his eye, a cowlick 
under his tail and an extra eyelash, Dewey has an extra wrinkle on 
his thumb and is of a different shade of white, and Louie has a 
crooked freckle, as well as a mosquito-bite behind his ear), who are 
industrious, book-smart and have lots of common sense.  They are also 
Woodchucks (i.e. members of the world-spanning Woodchuck-
organisation, which is reminiscent of the boy-scouts), and as such 
has access to the wood-chuck guide-book, an inexhaustible vault of 
information (it is actually the condensed version of the library of 
Alexandria).

Best regards
Christian Stubø
Possibly just as obsessed with Scrooge McDuck as he is with Harry 
Potter (38%)