On Tuesday, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the group that controls the Dr. Seuss legacy, announced it would no longer republish six of the more than 60 children’s books by the late author. They were doing this because the titles And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat’s Quizzer had racist imagery in them. Because the Republican Party has zero policies, is bereft of productive ideas, refuses to discuss and is unwilling to engage in public policy that might help our country weather the current global pandemic and economic crisis, they’ve decided to spend most of their time talking about the phantom cancel culture that has led to the mythological end of Dr. Seuss. Of course, Dr. Seuss is not canceled. He has lots of children’s stories that will continue to be published and read in perpetuity, or until the Republican Party decides only billionaires’ children are allowed to read in their hypothetical perfect oligarchical world of haves and have nots.
Dr. Seuss’s work has faced increasing scrutiny over the years, but not because anyone is trying to cancel the cartoonist’s work. It’s received more scrutiny because Dr. Seuss drew some racist shit sometimes, and a lot of that stuff doesn’t fly anymore. More importantly, major organizations that use his work as part of inclusive early childhood educational fare constantly update what they believe is the best work for all kids to experience as they grow up. Having racist caricatures in your children’s story isn’t particularly productive if you are trying to teach children about the joy of reading. Listen, there’s literally one black person in the entirety of the original Star Wars trilogy, and he’s a conman. Star Wars isn’t disappearing, and neither is Seuss, but the universe we live in is a lot larger now than it was when the gatekeepers were only white men.
But right on queue, the conservative internetsphere got to work feeling persecuted and melting like snowflakes, and worked on frothing up their fearful white base.
Liberals were ‘canceling’ Dr. Seuss and are calling you racist for reading Dr. Seuss to your children! That isn’t what is happening, but spending more than two seconds reading isn’t big on the right-wing agenda these days. Everyone from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to Donald Trump Jr. had what passes for—on the right—a clever thing to say about the matter. While McCarthy chose to decry losing a few racist books while he was supposed to be helping the hundreds of millions of Americans struggling because of COVID, Junior chose to fail spectacularly because he’s so goddamn dumb and racist.
First: To failure!
A ... mazing. And here’s Rep. McCarthy showing you what useless leadership looks like.
The New York Post created this piece of hypocrisy to call liberals hypocrites. It’s classic as it pretends that history and things and facts and stuff don’t exist.
President Obama was also a big fan of the musical Hamilton—you can juggle two things in your mind at the same time if you just let that tiny little mind of yours open up a teeny weeny bit. Hamilton and a lot of the founding fathers weren’t particularly great when it came to race or women or anybody that wasn’t white and owned land. Nobody is canceling them, just adding some perspective on them, their strengths and failures, and the times they existed in. Many of the founding fathers would be happy to see that so many Americans have indeed decided to view them as human beings and not infallible gods.
Watch out:
That’s it! Here’s one of the many fake intellectuals that libertarians enjoy giving their money to:
You see what he did there? He’s promoting his crap book by pretending to care about cancel culture. It’s not smart, it’s just morally bankrupt. And a reminder: