Hey, hold the phone a minute, here-- whatever happened to all that Disney-Pixar-Eisner-Jobs melodrama? Because that used to be the kickin'est plot thread going, and it all came to a head when Eisner received un unprecedented 43% vote of no confidence from investors at last month's shareholders meeting, and was subsequently yoinked from the big chair at the boardroom table. The thing is, though, Disney's board was too muleheaded to boot Eisner completely, so while he's no longer chairman of the board, the guy's still running things as CEO. In other words, all that craziness ended not with a bang, but with a sort of hissing, air-leaking-from-the-beach-ball-type fizzle. Think of it this way: Steve didn't wind up racking up his third concurrent CEOship. So just how exciting an ending could it have been?

But while the whole anti-Eisner movement has largely sunk beneath the media's radar, the same old dynamics keep right on chugging along-- in particular, the personality tussle between Eisner and Steve Jobs and Steve's apparent unrelenting campaign to get Eisner fired. Remember the theory that Steve only ended the Pixar-Disney contract talks in order to foment shareholder unrest in the weeks leading up to the big vote? After all, what better way to make the investors hate him than by making Eisner look responsible for the loss of literally billions of dollars in future earnings? Practically the only thing that could have had even more investors calling for Eisner's head on a stick would be getting them to believe that he'd greenlit an animated remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Goofy as Leatherface. Or worse, Treasure Planet 2.

Conspiracy theorists always figured that Steve fully planned to bring Pixar back to Disney after the split got Eisner fired-- but since Eisner's still drawing a paycheck even after that catastrophic shareholder vote, whereas the alleged plan used to be at least a little bit subtle, now Steve has apparently thrown any trace of discretion out the window. The New York Post, in its typical blunt fashion, claims that "Steve Jobs wants to return to the Disney fold if Michael Eisner is ousted as CEO," information it says comes straight from "sources close to Jobs." So doesn't it sound an awful lot like Steve just grabbed a nearby lackey, dictated what he should say, and then put him on the phone with the Post? Because "subtle" sure didn't work with Disney's board, so maybe Steve just figured it was time to spell it all out for them in big, bold letters-- which the Post did nicely, of course: "'IT'S MIKE OR ME.'"

Poor Steve; he really must have been expecting Disney's board to clue in a lot sooner than this. How can he possibly be expected to take over the planet by 2008 if the rest of the world won't stick to the script? Tsk. Those guys are so unprofessional.