Note that the politically correct activists have a New Cancellation Target, Dr. Seuss.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama welcomed the Cat in the Hat to the White House in 2015. Six years later, Dr. Seuss is increasingly unwelcome at public schools in the nation’s capital.
What changed? Not Dr. Seuss. Blame our present fixation on judging revered historical figures by their worst sins rather than their best contributions.
A report asked “Is the Cat in the Hat Racist?”
The Journal commented that some of Seuss’s early works were indeed racist. Seuss Enterprises admits as such: “These racially stereotypical drawings were hurtful then and are still hurtful today,” it acknowledges in an online essay titled “Dr. Seuss Use of Racist Images.”
The Other Side
Theodor Seuss Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) created thousands of cartoons, illustrations, paintings, sculptures, and stories over the course of his 70-year career. While the vast majority of the works he produced are positive and inspiring, Ted Geisel also drew a handful of early images, which are disturbing.
By contrast, the much-beloved The Sneetches was written in 1961 just as the Civil Rights Movement was well underway. Ted wrote The Sneetches as a parable about equality. By drawing bird-beings, he transcended the boundaries and pitfalls of using humans as characters, and allowed all readers to relate to the characters as best they could. On March 2, 2016, President Obama agreed with Dr. Seuss telling a group of interns: “Pretty much all the stuff you need to know is in Dr. Seuss. It’s like the Star-Belly Sneetches, you know? We’re all the same, so why would we treat somebody differently just because they don’t have a star on their belly?”
Three of Dr. Seuss’s most well-known later works, Horton Hears a Who!, The Lorax, and The Sneetches, “teach about the importance of inclusion and acceptance of others and yourself.”
Throw it All Away?
Rather than throw it all away as if it never existed, wouldn’t it be far better to use the images in a discussion of what’s wrong while praising the overwhelming number of books and images in which Dr. Seuss was brilliant?
Dr. Seuss On The Economy
On June 25, 2009, I referenced a Dr. Seuss book in my post called Dr. Seuss On The Economy.
As amazing as this might seem, inquiring minds are reading Thidwick The Big Hearted Moose to see what advice Dr. Seuss might have for President Obama, Treasury Secretary Geithner, and Congress about the economy.
If you have young kids or grandkids, this book is an excellent read and teaches an important lesson about economic freeloaders.
Thidwick the Moose and Economic Freeloaders
The tale begins at Lake Winna-Bango where Thidwick allowed a bug to nest in his antlers. A spider then joined followed by a Zinn-a-zu bird that plucked Thidwick’s hair, a woodpecker that drilled holes in his antlers, a fox, bobcat, turtles, and other critters.
Thidwick wanted to cross a lake in search of moose-moss to eat but the critters took a vote on it and said no.
The load got too heavy for Thidwick who when attacked by hunters finally shed his antlers to get rid of the freeloaders.
“You wanted my horns; now you’re quite welcome to ’em! Keep ’em! They’re yours! As of ME, I shall take myself to the far distant side of the lake!” said Thidwick.
It was the creatures and the horns who ended up on the hunter’s wall.
“His guests are still on them, all stuffed, as they should be,” concluded the book.
My Image
I thought of re-posting my image but fearing the Seuss lawyers for again praising their book, I will instead tell you who in 2009 that I had nesting in Thidwick’s antlers.
Economic Critters in Thidwick’s Antlers as I Saw Them in 2009
- Fed
- Fractional Reserve Lending
- Unions
- Congress
- Barney Frank
- Tim Geithner
- Obama
- Bank of America
- Citigroup
- Countrywide Financial
- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
- Krugman, Mankiw, Pelosi
Those economic freeloaders and/or freeloader supporters are not stuffed on a wall where they should be, metamorphically speaking.
Mish
As a Chinese American I think the fuss about Dr Seuss’s books is far beyond reason. My children and I have thoroughly enjoyed his books, and a dated depiction of a Chinese person is well within our abilities to look past. If I had known these books were going out of production, I’d have bought a copy of each. I am well aware of racism. I know how hard it is as a Chinese male to get a date in small town America. But I also know how lucky I am. The privileges of living in America despite its slightly odd state far outweigh any small slights. It reminds me of the educators who tried to stop me from entering kindergarten when I refused to learn to skip for them. Thankfully my mother persisted…
Yertel the Turtle is Trump
Myrtle the Turtle is Trump
Unbelievable we have truly lost it.
Watch the movie, “Mother!” and think of Thidwick. It’s a revelation. Leftists wanted people to think that movie was about Climate Change…..but…..
I understand that while Theodore Seuss “re-drew” a number of images from his books because he too felt these were inappropriate. BTW I suspect that Biden had nothing to do with the cancellation…contrary to what Ted Cancun Cruz wrote!
He lived a long time and was sensitive to the complaints he got about racial stereotypes in his later years. I expect he would have tried to deal with the current complaints in a reasonable way, were he still alive.
Geisel drew many cartoons that aren’t in children’s books…and a fair number of them contain racial stereotypes of his day……he didn’t start out Woke by any means.
I’d say that those cartoons are at the heart of the criticism today, and that the resentment around some of those is what really gets the Critical Race Theory re-indoctrination police stirred up. Not Cat In The Hat.
Blame Biden? Bullshit. It isn’t Biden pushing this agenda, even if his party is an umbrella over all these identity politics political operatives masquerading as social scientists.
Amazon quietly “canceled” a book last week that questions the current ideology around gender…by dropping it from their catalog. One of the disadvantages of an Amazon is that if they won’t sell a book, it basically doesn’t sell much. They have no problem with selling Mein Kampf….or Mao’s Little Red Book….but a fairly straightforward book that just happens to question the current narrative on LBGTQ (using science)…just goes poof when the pressure gets applied.
“LGBTQ”. I need more coffee…and an edit function.
That’s where the “private company” argument ends up every time. They can’t win the scientific debate so they pressure companies to eliminate the diffusion of competing ideas. Companies are about profit above all and give in to the pressure. It’s standard fascist and communist tactics.
What is concerning is not specific books, but rather, the lack of outcry for freedom of speech. It would seem that people these days don’t value freedom of speech at all, or freedom of religion for that matter.
Of course it matters what books are being pulled from the “shelves” of the world’s monopoly bookseller.
It shows who THEY are…..the ones who would do the banning…..and it happens to be the same PC police who brought us identity politics and the associated gender and race social justice movements that are in ascendancy at the moment.
It’s the Critical Race Theory crowd and their gender-fluid affiliates who are pushing the same kind of questionable arguments around LGBTQ “rights”.
The attack on Dr. Seuss should be seen as the Woko Haram — a term not of my invention — on the march.
I bet you meant metaphorically rather than metamorphically.
Dr. Seuss books are products of another age. That they have stood the test of time and are still popular is testament to their inherent value as literary works. However, times change, reflected in our values and beliefs. New ideas replace old ideas–that said, I think the quality of Dr. Seuss books is such that they will be with us 1,000 years from now. ‘Woke’ replacements are presently fashionable, yet doomed to the trash pile of poor writing. In the long term, excellence survives. Crap will go where it belongs; in the toilet.
Take your culture war BS and stuff it in your posterior orifice. This is relevant only to the private company that took the decision to stop publishing some of its intellectual property, exercising the same first amendment rights that let you spout your nonsense to distract from the real conversation: The GOP going down in flames because it embraced The Stupid.
At least the torrents will keep them alive.
So, teaching critical race theory to elementary school kids is OK, but a few Dr Seuss books are over the line. Makes perfect sense,
Speaking of gold, and comedy gold, the golden calf, and fools gold, how many layers of irony can you find in this story via Politico….
…ABOUT THAT TRUMP STATUE — Over the weekend we told you that one of the stars of CPAC — that enormous statue of Trump — was made in Mexico. Well, it turns out there’s more to the story. Artist TOMMY ZEGAN had told Playbook he hand-crafted the 200-pound, chrome-painted fiberglass statue with the help of three men in Rosarito, Mexico, where he lives as an American expat. He said he then shipped it to Florida and transported it to CPAC in a U-Haul.
But one of Zegan’s business partners, JOSE MAURICIO MENDOZA, contacted us Tuesday to say that Zegan omitted a major part of the supply chain. While Zegan is based in Mexico, the piece was manufactured at the Shijiazhuang D & Z Sculpture Co. factory in China. “Everything is made in China,” Mendoza told Playbook. “I want to be straight, because if I’m going to sell these statues, they have to be true.” Mendoza dismissed Zegan’s claims that he’s the creative mind behind the sculpture, showing us two Trump bobbleheads that were the inspiration for the statue. “I was the architect of this,” Mendoza said. Zegan’s name was used, Mendoza added, because “no one is going to buy ‘Jose’ stuff, at least not a Donald Trump statue.” As for Zegan, he admitted to Playbook that he left out the true origin of the statue’s journey.
OT re gold:
The dollar is spiking this morning and gold broke below the 1720 support level at the NY open. This might be the final capitulation into a real bottom for gold. I expect to see the 1700 level get tested though.
Get ready the imaginary war on Christmas will return come November. Of course both Democrats and Republicans love the boost to the economy that is Americans getting their credit cards out and going deeper in debt to give presents that will soon find themselves covered in crowded closets. They never consider these truths when it comes to this war on Christmas.
The only war on Christmas is the material greed that both parties promote in hopes of getting stellar economic numbers. Hardly symbolic of Christ’s teachings.
My thoughts on this are as a parent, I have the responsibility to keep traditions from Christmas to Dr. Seuss alive in my home for my children–not my government or political party.
Since Dr. Seuss was influenced by Gertrude Stein, will they go as far as cancelling Gertrude, whose “A Wife Has a Cow” is about her lesbian lover’s bowel movement written in Seussian fashion?
Nobody even remembers who Gertrude Stein was, much less Alice B. Toklas.
I think the problem comes also from the copyright laws. In the US I think that copyright can last up to 120 years. In most western countries it is 70 years, 50 in the rest of the world. I think this last duration is the good one. In this case to “cancel” some work would be much more difficult.
Why should the right to one’s intellectual property ever have a time limit, if the ownership of physical property does not have a time limit?
Cancel culture has nothing to do with copyright. It has everything to do with people believing that only their opinions are right, and any other opinions are wrong. It denies freedom of expression/speech.
If you had used the institution name instead of the name of the person holding the post, your list of economic freeloaders of 2009 literally remains unchanged in 2021.
If you own one of the 6 books that will no longer be published I would be shocked. (Nothing is being banned – that’s a lie. Stop spreading it.)
Also, I’d be interested in understanding why you think you should be allowed to dictate to a private company what they do?
Presumbly your concern with “cancel culture” is one person telling another what they can or can’t think or say. Yet, here you are telling a private company what they can or can’t think is the best thing for their company. Weird.
strawman
….of course, just like you, private companies have the right to hypocritically abide by neo socialist, totalitarian policies with politically correct Newspeak being pushed down their throats or shoved up their asses …..just like you….
Great economic analysis post !
It used to be even worse:
In 1978, Geisel agreed to a slight rewording, renaming the character who appears near the end of the story a “Chinese man” instead of a “Chinaman”. He also agreed to remove the character’s pigtail and the yellow coloring from the character’s skin.
Defend what you want. There’s a place and time for contextual discussion but that time is not teaching a 5 year old to read. The book is close to a 100 years old. There are better books to use to teach reading skills to preschoolers. This is not cancel culture
Sure it is, if you are mixing obligatory pre-school reading with not publishing when there is no relationship . The Qing ruled China for two hundred and fifty years and as a larger territory than today’s which is less than a hundred years old. They opposed western influence, they wore pigtails as did their subjects the Han who were not wholly opposed to the Qing as some like to write. That ended via western imperialism (following Juye for example), the CPC then later CCP, with the US eventually abandoning Taiwan in favour of mainland at the UN etc. Chinese now have to look western ! What colour should Chinese be depicted as ? What shape their eyes ? Depicting a traditional Chinaman, like you often find traditional Englishmen drawn (and sometimes caricatured…and you’re going to complain they are white not beige or some other invention no doubt ) for example is a crime of some sort ? So again, sure it is, it is erasure of culture (including culture of US perceptions) as well as propaganda, and using five year olds as justification is plain wrong.
Time for new books anyway. Let some new authors make some money, instead of the megacorp that owns Geisel’s work. I don’t think the kids care one way or the other.
As much as I hate reading his books to my kids — they’re a pain in the ass… the books, not my kids, well, maybe both — they’re way better than nearly anything written for kids in the last couple decades.
The guy put lots of thought into his work (words, rhythm, stories) and nearly everything I found that’s been written recently just doesn’t compare (and my kids are 5, 3 and 1 — I’m constantly looking for new kids books).
Reminds me of the Sesame St. effect. They created the show expressly to improve the academics of urban black children. After a few years, they were able to measure, with double-blind studies, that it had worked. And then they started dumbing down the show (and making it woke). Between the Elmo-worship and wokeism, they’ve destroyed the show. My kids only get the DVDs of 1960s and 1970s Sesame Street shows. Each one starts off with a warning that “these episodes are not intended for children.” wtf…
Sorry, but I think this is pretty clearly tied to pressure from the anti-racist thought police, who decide what should be published based on Critical Race Theory….
Ohhh, the humanity…..
“And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” (1937)
“McElligot’s Pool” (1947)
“If I Ran the Zoo” (1950)
“Scrambled Eggs Super!”(1953)
“On Beyond Zebra!”(1955)
“The Cat’s Quizzer”(1973)
Literary treasures, all.
Almost like burning books….
There was no racism when America was Great Before, right?
The IP owners are entitled to make this decision. I also don’t think the books make sense to use in public schools at this point. Parents are still free to teach what they will to their own kids. Times change.
I think that in the future, “Wokism” will come to be regarded as a form of bullying.
The future is now.
i think you are right that wokism is going to be our new levels of communication taking power to cause the will of the majority to become what is the law
From what I’ve read they are only going to stop publishing 6 books out of his entire catalog. I don’t think I’ve read any of the 6 although Mulberry Street rings a bell.
It’s not quite canceling Dr Seuss.
My daughter loved reading his books when she was learning to read (as I did when I was a kid) and I read her favorites to her over and over again.
Agree 100% on not banning literary works. And if we’re talking Huck Finn yes a discussion is far superior but Dr Seuss is targeted at children learning how to read. They’re not ready for such discussions. The books weren’t banned, the publisher made a business decision. And as much as I love Dr. Seuss now that I’m aware of the issue probably not the best choice for a young child. Maybe the illustrations can be redone. I’m not sure.
Bottom line it’s silly to place Huck Finn on the same plane as Dr. Seuss.
What about Pudd’nhead Wilson? Is that literature?
It was banned by many libraries in Twain’s own lifetime. It was meant to be humorous…..the plot involves a very light-skinned slave boy who is switched as a infant with the son of a slave owner. Twain was, in his way, trying to poke fun at racism…and show that nurture matters as much or more than nature in how people turn out.
White people thought it was quite scandalous when it was published in 1894….and I’m sure the anti-racism police would find much to criticize in it now…as they do with Huckleberry Finn.
The point is….who gets to decide? And on what basis should books that have existed for a long time be dropped? I don’t care if Ted Geisel’s estate decides to not publish these books, but it does bother me that many libraries will rush to take them off the shelves.
Some of them are period pieces…..the one that paints the Japanese guy in a bad light is certainly of that post WWII era in which it was absolutely normal for Japanese to be portrayed as cunning, devious and evil. It was even worse with regards to Germans…..when I was a kid there were a zillion comic books and many very popular TV shows dedicated to showing brave Americans mowing down Nazis by the dozen.
I don’t recommend banning books. I recommend teaching your kids to think critically for themselves, and teaching them how to make their own moral and ethical judgments. The current crop of misguided social justice warriors using social media to put pressure on publishers is a travesty, and it won’t end well. Just you wait and see.
Publisher owns the material. It’s their right. There is no 1st amendment issue
I agree that the publisher can take them out of publication if he chooses. Those are certainly not among his best books, in any case. If I ran the circus, i saw it on Mulberry Street, and if I ran the zoo were mostly just silliness, without the strong moral messages of some of his other works.
From what I know of his past actions I believe Geisel would have supported redrawing the few illustrations
I agree that he would have supported redrawing the illustrations, and so I wonder why the publisher didn’t go that route? There were really only a few offensive illustrations.
The whole story goes a bit deeper imo. Just examples…
Or
Or being relegated at read across america etc.
I haven’t read much, or any even, of his work, simply outside of own culture.
However I did encounter Freak Bros at one point…
Haven’t seen them in a while.
Gilbert Shelton, who was one of my boyhood heroes, lives in France, and has for a long long time. He’s best know for the Freak Brothers, but he also created wonderful literary characters like Speed Queen, whose famous line “eat fork, fuckface” was clearly a harbinger of the modern women’s movement.
Cop-out.
I never said it was a first amendment issue. Or that the publisher didn’t have a right not to put “To Think That It Happened On Mulberry Street”into its 10 billionth edition, or whatever it is now.
My beef is with letting stupid anti-racist activist people bully publishers using social media. And my position is that I don’t like now, I never liked it, and I never will like it. Because it’s a bad idea, that will only feed on itself and get worse over time.
1. What evidence do you have that this publisher was bullied?
2. Slippery slope arguments are lazy and don’t prove anything.
Wrong, moron.
This “movement: is a direct result of Critical Race Theory junk science being published in “peer reviewed” journals and parroted by stupid people just like you.
Apparently idiots do have peers.
“Dr Seuss is targeted at children learning how to read. They’re not ready for such discussions.”
Crazy talk.
‘that parents must instill “antiracist attitudes and actions” beginning at birth, in order for their children to not “absorb bias from the world around them.” ‘
Link was stripped… that’s from Arizona Dept of Education. Came with a chart about when to start the indoctrination.
The “targeting” includes teaching kids how silly it is to discriminate based on physical characteristics. Oh, the horror.
Exactly what are you wailing against and what are you protecting?
I love Dr. Seuss. But I looked at the drawings in question and put myself in the place of a chinese or African viewing them and had to answer they were. I loved Dr Seuss but I’m capable of introspection. Hopefully others are as well.
I’m hispanic and am not offended in any way by Speedy Gonzalez cartoons. Didn’t affect my self-esteem nor prevent me from going to college, buying a house, having professional success. People are looking to exercise their power in the culture by attacking things we all shared. Seuss, Uncle Ben’s, statues of Jefferson and Lincoln (Grant? abolitionists??). It appears to be kind of a mob blood-lust to attack anything associated with national culture and replacing it with ethnic/sexual identity. I don’t think fractioning the country is going to work out well. And this movement is most certainly not about tolerance and inclusion, as it pretends to be.
Then the publisher should just changed the illustrations.
Problems solved — the literature is saved and the Millennials have successfully put an end to racism.
My kids are now in the 30 to 40 year age range, and although they grew up reading Dr. Seuss (as did I, btw) they seem to be remarkably tolerant….I don’t think anyone would call any of them racist.
In fact, my son is married to a young lady from Manila, who was born in Hong Kong…so we’re officially an ethnically mixed family now…and I live in hope of having several mixed-raced grandchildren.
My youngest is a Karen, but she was a Karen before it wasn’t cool to be one…..and it seems a bit late at 30 to change her name just to avoid the taint of racism…..but since she lives in NYC, perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea, just to be safe.
(#sarc)
The entire Woke narrative is built on some very questionable premises if you ask me….but then I’m a rich, privileged old white man, which makes me part of the problem, not part of the solution.
But you enlightened younger parents might ask yourself the question of exactly where this all ends. It probably won’t be where you think.
The whole “cancel culture” whining from the political right is imaginary.
Cancel culture amounts to someone you disagree with using their freedom of speech to criticize something.
And if it goes beyond that… whoop dee doo… they’re using the free market to express themselves.
Weird that you want to limit people’s freedom to send their money how they choose and you want them to stop criticizing things (aka expressing themselves).
“Cancel culture” is phrase frustrated people use to try and end a conversation they don’t want to have. No more. No less.
Does freedom of expression include being able to get people fired because twitter mobs misinterpreted their speech or actions? Would you like a list of people made to suffer because they said things there were true, or their perfectly reasonable opinions were attacked as unacceptable, or agreed with prevailing orthodoxies in the wrong way? If even many on the left are criticizing cancel culture, you might want to rethink your opinion.
You’re not too bright are you.