c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. He lives in Durham, N.C.)

UNDATED _ This should be entertaining.

Fast-food king McDonald’s Corp. and entertainment king Walt Disney Co. are planning a worldwide search for”Millennium Dreamers,”young people who are contributing to their communities.

The top 2,000 will be invited to a three-day symposium next May at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, along with leaders, celebrities and representatives of the United Nations.

While George W., Al, Bill et al. pencil in the date on their campaign calendars, I am trying to imagine what McDisney will say to these 8- to 15-year-old stars of the new millennium. Could it possibly go like this?

Message 1: Study hard and stay in school _ or else you will end up working for us, flipping burgers for minimum wage, in assembly-line conditions, several notches below the poverty line.

Message 2: Stay healthy and respect your body _ a Big Mac and fries aren’t an adequate diet, and lounging in front of the tube is a waste of youthful energy.

Message 3: Treasure your uniqueness _ unless, of course, your uniqueness takes you outside the heterosexual, happy-family confines of our target audience.

Message 4: Adopt a global consciousness _ just ignore the contest rule specifying that half of you come from one country, the United States, and the rest from all 100 or so other countries.

Message 5: Get ready to dig into the nitty-gritty of community and world problems _ pay no attention to our theme song about”wishing on a star”or our consistent assertion that all problems get solved in time for closing ads.

Message 6: Respect the dignity of every human being _ don’t take your cue from our movies and cartoons, which patronize Native Americans, Arabs and persons of color and hold up images of beauty, thinness, bravery and success that are impossible to attain.

Message 7: Get ready to be leaders in a world where wars are being fought for potable water, clean soil and shrinking oil reserves _ and bring your families to our theme parks, where we sanitize the sufferings of warfare and our employees are required to smile.

Message 8: Learn to use computers _ and if you’re clever, we’ll show you how to mine data from kids who visit Disney.com and are led, by promises of”ultimate fun and adventure,”to give us personal information; how we sell”club member”data to advertisers; how we use cookies to track what our Web visitors do so we can fine-tune our promotions to them; and how, if kids stay on our site long enough, they’ll be”selected”to give us a lot of additional personal information. If you’re really clever, we’ll show you how to write the legal disclaimer hidden in small print at the bottom of the screen in a shade of blue only slightly different from the Web page’s background, which gives us permission to engage in data-mining for whatever purposes we define as important and absolves us of any responsibility for misuse of your personal information by the less scrupulous.

Message 9: Respect your parents _ or, as our Web site advises, watch television and home videos together.

Message 10: Listen to your religious traditions, which tell you life is about love, self-sacrifice, justice and an abundance not defined by material plenty _ pay no attention to what we actually do, which is to insert twice as many product promotions on our home videos as other filmmakers do; which is to portray life and its ultimate questions as an occasion for shopping; which is to portray fun, happiness, friendship and self-esteem as things one can buy; which is to define”belonging”as watching.

Will any of this be said? I doubt it. McDonald’s didn’t get to be king of burgers by posting the fat content of its food. Disney didn’t emerge from the entertainment pack by promoting the arts of reading, conversation or interactive play.

In the hyperactive world of kid-promos, ultimate truth is product tie-ins. Movies sell burgers; Big Macs sell movies. Seize the millennium. Convince another generation that Mickey is a real friend. Convince nations where obesity isn’t a problem that rice and fish don’t cut it, not when the Golden Arches are in town.

DEA END EHRICH