"Mickey Mouse"

[ANNE V. GILBERT]

Gerald and all:
>
>     It's not so much from the Mickey Mouse character itself as from
> TV's Mickey Mouse club, with its pre-adolescent members wearing the
> silly-looking Mickey-Mouse ears and earnestly singing the Mickey
> Mouse anthem. To sophisticates, this no doubt represented the height
> of silliness. Then by extension: silly (nit-picking) rules or
> directives.
>
>     Also, in the jazz era a Mickey Mouse band was one regarded as fit
> only to play for an animated cartoon. (See Robert Gold's _Jazz
> Talk_). But the present derogatory use of Mickey Mouse does not seem
> to derive from this jazz use.

About 30 years ago or so, if a college course was thought to be absurdly
easy to pass, it was called a "Mickey Mouse" course.
Anne G