First Mr. Potato Head....Now Dr, Seuss......Is Bambi next? Dumbo? Muppets?

oldieguy wrote:

Ok, I agree that "Dr, Seuss books banned" is an overstatement, but if you read the quote below taken from your article, you will see that the implication is clear that Dr. Seuss has been vetted by the woke education system and deemed racist.

"Research in recent years has revealed strong racial undertones in many books written/illustrated by Dr. Seuss. Given this research, and LCPS’ focus on equity and culturally responsive instruction, LCPS has provided guidance to schools in the past couple of years to not connect Read Across America Day with Dr. Seuss’ birthday exclusively."

Let's see: folks have carefully looked at Seuss's work, found in it a paucity of children of diverse backgrounds represented accurately and positively, and determined that a day that celebrates reading should not be tied exclusively to his birthday. Instead, Read Across America Day will, I assume, be used to celebrate a range of work engaging more substantively and authentically--but also creatively and joyfully--with characters, voices, stories, and traditions from beyond the White experience. How you can find this broadening of the canon something to complain about is beyond me.

The addict is also racist.

Man, my judgment must be extremely clouded by white privilege. I'm having a really hard time connecting Dr. Seuss with racism. To me, the links cited by this article seem tenuous at best.

So for, I don't know 80 years, parents of every race and color (pick as many as you like from your intersectional menu) have gleefully read Dr. Seuss books to their children who have loved the characters the poetry and the art. Then suddenly, in the age of woke, someone starts counting colors of characters and re-interprets passages as racially insensitive and suddenly 80 years of enjoyment and learning become inappropriate or require trigger warnings. Spare me the "White Experience" BS. Go try and figure out how to ban the Flintstones..now there's a challenge.

Clearly the cat in the hat is a mystical black man.. The Lorax is definitely a depiction of Hitler ( look at the diminutive stature and mustache). Cindy Lou Who Asserts her white privilege over the historically disenfranchised Grinch. Don’t even get me started on how offensive Yertle the Turtle is to geriatric populations or Foona Lagoona Baboona ...

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oldieguy wrote:

So for, I don't know 80 years, parents of every race and color (pick as many as you like from your intersectional menu) have gleefully read Dr. Seuss books to their children who have loved the characters the poetry and the art. Then suddenly, in the age of woke, someone starts counting colors of characters and re-interprets passages as racially insensitive and suddenly 80 years of enjoyment and learning become inappropriate or require trigger warnings. Spare me the "White Experience" BS. Go try and figure out how to ban the Flintstones..now there's a challenge.

Whoa. You are really--almost frighteningly--passionate about Dr. Seuss. If you're still "gleeful" about "The Cat in the Hat" or "The Foot Book" after reading it for the 43rd time to your kiddos, you deserve a medal. (You're also being fundamentally dishonest--there is nothing about "trigger warnings" in any of the articles around this Dr. Seuss controversy.)

Anyway, I guess this passion is what makes you a conservative. You see a habit of culture and conclude that, because it is habitual, it must be for the good--and beyond critique or {gasp!} improvement. It just is, and that's enough for you. This also means that critics of these habits must be apostates: How dare they have the thought, even, that Dr. Seuss books might evince racial preference, or indulge in racial/racist tropes? But what is so offensive about this line of questioning? Should people (like the cultural critics you resent so much) not have the thoughts they have and raise the questions they have? Should they simply never think or ask anything critical about older literature? When does a work get promoted from popular ephemera to cultural artifact? Who gets to decide when a work of art enters this pantheon of the unimpeachable?

For people who are not conservative like you, culture is dynamic, a matter of continuing assent. No cultural practice, however illustrious its pedigree, must be adopted by successive generations; no inheritance is too prodigious to question the origins of it; no cultural currency or capital, however visionary (like Seuss's best books), is guaranteed to provide meaningful returns in terms of meaning and enjoyment indefinitely. Why not refresh the canon? Why not poke at the "classics"? As others have said, nostalgia ("I read it when I was a kid!") or sheer affection ("But lots of people loved that book!") is not an sufficient defense of the canon.

Finally, please note that what these critics are largely saying is not that Seuss should be, as you might put it, "canceled"--just that his role in this national celebration of reading should be decentered. (Although works with references to "slant-eyed" Asian characters and with depictions of stereotypically "savage" African characters do seem to have been cancelled by the estate.) And if this decentering creates room for the recognition of other worthy books for early readers, this seems like a "win" for everyone.

Don't forget Sesame Street is being censored now because of the Chef.

Don’t think for one second that the left wouldn’t line up all conservatives against the wall and machine gun us if they could. They don’t even deny it anymore.

I am assuming you read this?

intolerant left wrote:

Don’t think for one second that the left wouldn’t line up all conservatives against the wall and machine gun us if they could. They don’t even deny it anymore.

Um...I'll deny it. As stupid as it is to have to say it, neither I, nor anyone I know "on the left", has any interest in seeing conservatives executed, imprisoned, or persecuted for their politics. Does that make you feel safer, or is that just fake news?

NYT Reader wrote:

I am assuming you read this?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/magazine/classics-greece-rome-whiteness.html

Nope. Also, based on the title, this article doesn't seem to be about Dr. Seuss, so you're going to have to a lot clearer about why you're bringing it up in this thread.

You mentioned the Classics. You may have been referring to the Classics in a more general sense. I am not attacking you; I was genuinely asking if you'd read the piece because some of your points align with the professor's. He makes some very solid arguments and I do believe that we need to bring more works into the Canon.

Again, not attacking. You put thought into your response and I wanted to see if you'd read the piece or just happened to have similar thoughts.

NYT Reader wrote:

You mentioned the Classics. You may have been referring to the Classics in a more general sense. I am not attacking you; I was genuinely asking if you'd read the piece because some of your points align with the professor's. He makes some very solid arguments and I do believe that we need to bring more works into the Canon.

Again, not attacking. You put thought into your response and I wanted to see if you'd read the piece or just happened to have similar thoughts.

Ah. Sorry for knee-jerk reaction. I have not read it, but I certainly will. I was, as you suggested, referring to "classics" in the colloquial, popular sense, but I am interested in the broader effort to destabilize/desegregate the Classical canon as well--as long as it's generally an act of broadening and not merely eliminating. (Part of what I consider to be the absurdity of the OP's grievance is that Seuss's books are 60-70 years old--hardly the age of true classics. To say that a work that's only as old as my parents should be enshrined--that is, to confuse or conflate "The Cat in the Hat," an exemplar of a genre that may be at most 100 years old, with a classic of the Western canon that has inspired hundreds of generations around the word--is ludicrous.)

TKTKTK wrote:

Ah. Sorry for knee-jerk reaction. I have not read it, but I certainly will. I was, as you suggested, referring to "classics" in the colloquial, popular sense, but I am interested in the broader effort to destabilize/desegregate the Classical canon as well--as long as it's generally an act of broadening and not merely eliminating. (Part of what I consider to be the absurdity of the OP's grievance is that Seuss's books are 60-70 years old--hardly the age of true classics. To say that a work that's only as old as my parents should be enshrined--that is, to confuse or conflate "The Cat in the Hat," an exemplar of a genre that may be at most 100 years old, with a classic of the Western canon that has inspired hundreds of generations around the word--is ludicrous.)

No worries at all. It was my fault. I looked back and I see how my initial post was kind of cryptic in its intention. I was being sincere. Also, I didn't even read the headline. It is clickbait that doesn't do the article justice.

Your initial post has some intriguing points in the middle, and that was what made me suggest the link. I haven't even really been paying much attention to the Dr. Seuss argument past what I read yesterday. Your post seemed to rise above the political bickering and I thought it made sense to respond.

In short, I think the article is worth a read. I am not in agreement with totally dismantling the Classics, but I really do agree that they need to be expanded.

Happy running (and reading)!

oldieguy wrote:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/feb/26/loudoun-county-schools-cancel-dr-seuss-racial-unde/

They say that Liberals/Progressives eventually eat their young (Cuomo)...If they continue to go down this road they will end up on a small island arranged by "identity", building levees to prepare for the rising ocean levels, wearing 3 masks, 6 feet apart, trying to decide which gender to be today. Can't come soon enough.

For supposed non-snowflakes you tw@ts tend to over react to almost everything.

Take a deep breathe and re-watch the Orange Turd's CPAC/Nazi party of American speech again.

oldieguy wrote:

So for, I don't know 80 years, parents of every race and color (pick as many as you like from your intersectional menu) have gleefully read Dr. Seuss books to their children who have loved the characters the poetry and the art. Then suddenly, in the age of woke, someone starts counting colors of characters and re-interprets passages as racially insensitive and suddenly 80 years of enjoyment and learning become inappropriate or require trigger warnings. Spare me the "White Experience" BS. Go try and figure out how to ban the Flintstones..now there's a challenge.

Unfortunately this is not a new phenomenon, this is is what post-modern philosophers call "deconstruction" which is a has been used to derive racist/sexist/bigoted meanings out of all sorts of texts.

comedyre1i3f wrote:

Clearly the cat in the hat is a mystical black man.. The Lorax is definitely a depiction of Hitler ( look at the diminutive stature and mustache). Cindy Lou Who Asserts her white privilege over the historically disenfranchised Grinch. Don’t even get me started on how offensive Yertle the Turtle is to geriatric populations or Foona Lagoona Baboona ...

I also find it very problematic that the title "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" isn't inclusive of Black or Trans fish.

They found no less that 6 books were racist. Not just 1, but 6 books. Obviously Seuss was a racist. I can't understand why all his books are not being boycotted or "canceled" as Trumpers call it. We can't find someone who isn't a racist to draw cartoons for kids? Get rid of this creep.

Actually, a number of fish species, coral, etc. are gender fluid, so he was being inclusive there. Pesticides and estrogen from birth control pills in sewage treatment plant effluents can also cause frogs and fish to change genders.