I'm confused, that cartoon seems to be implying that the US was at one point complicit in a certain German leaders conquests.

Well written op-ed piece. I was unaware the issue had been percolating for a few years. As far as confronting the past, this one is going to hurt; Geisel's books are part of my childhood and then my kids'. As much as I'd prefer the world moved past this issue, apparently that's just not going to happen.

The Grinch that cancelled Dr. Suess.

Why does Hitler need to be brought into every conversation? /pink

I take it to mean the America First movement shares some similarities with the Nazi movement and some of the mightiest minds have a hard time figuring it out because they may be entrenched, presumably knowingly if they are “mighty” or possibly that was more satire.

Here’s a different take from an NPR article.

I havnt read on the subject in a while. But dr suess was supposedly an all around horrible person (I think he drove his wife to suicide) and cheated on her when she was terminally ill.

All of this was around 10 years ago. And you can still find his books. Making it known that someone is a shitty person and then letting the public decide is fair game. What the alternative? Not letting people know?

If I remember correctly The America First movement was the major isolationist group fighting against the US entering WWII against the Germans. Pearl Harbor put an end to that.

It's Seuss [remember this clue: it's E before U]

And we've been pronouncing it wrong all along

"You’re wrong as the deuce
And you shouldn’t rejoice
If you’re calling him Seuss.
He pronounces it Soice (or Zoice)."

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/...euss_n_12560154.html

---

"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

It appears that Dr Seuss is canceling himself
https://apnews.com/article/dr-seuss-books-racist-images-d8ed18335c03319d72f443594c174513

Disney did it too, with some of the more odious early Mickey Mouse and Looney Tunes

I havnt read on the subject in a while. But dr suess was supposedly an all around horrible person (I think he drove his wife to suicide) and cheated on her when she was terminally ill.


All of this was around 10 years ago.








Seeing that he died in 1991, unlikely.

---

Once, I was fast. But I got over it.

I think he meant he read about it 10 years ago?

Yeah. This news has been out a while add suess is still in stores.

quote kiki]Disney did it too, with some of the more odious early Mickey Mouse and Looney Tunes[/quote]
Looney Tunes [Bugs Bunny & Co] are Warner Bros., but yes, they've even taken Elmer Fudd's guns away

---

"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I mean, have you heard of the MS St. Louis?

Looney Tunes [Bugs Bunny & Co] are Warner Bros., but yes, they've even taken Elmer Fudd's guns away

[/quote]
Well, long before that they figured out that Song of the South had all kinds of problems and stopped showing and selling it.

'Cancelled" is being misused as much as fake news. The question isn't whether or not Seuss should be "a victim of our cancel culture" as the column's title reads (interestingly the tone of the title has nothing in common with the tone of the column). We know there was a lot of racism there. We know MJ had a long history of predatory behavior with young kids. We know Jefferson kept his wife's biological half sister as a sex slave. These people aren't "victims" of anything.

The question is can we enjoy the works and appreciate the accomplishments of people with pretty horrible flaws? It's a lot easier to do that after they are dead. They aren't seeing the fruits of it and we don't have to pretend they are good people. If the bad part aren't inextricably entangled with the good we do it all the time.

And for all those people who think this is new, they cancelled suspected communists in Hollywood 70'ish years ago and look what happened to his career when Jerry Lee Lewis married his way underage cousin. We have done this all the time, we just used to call it blacklisting.

---

I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

Well, long before that they figured out that Song of the South had all kinds of problems and stopped showing and selling it.

'Cancelled" is being misused as much as fake news. The question isn't whether or not Seuss should be "a victim of our cancel culture" as the column's title reads (interestingly the tone of the title has nothing in common with the tone of the column). We know there was a lot of racism there. We know MJ had a long history of predatory behavior with young kids. We know Jefferson kept his wife's biological half sister as a sex slave. These people aren't "victims" of anything.

The question is can we enjoy the works and appreciate the accomplishments of people with pretty horrible flaws? It's a lot easier to do that after they are dead. They aren't seeing the fruits of it and we don't have to pretend they are good people. If the bad part aren't inextricably entangled with the good we do it all the time.

And for all those people who think this is new, they cancelled suspected communists in Hollywood 70'ish years ago and look what happened to his career when Jerry Lee Lewis married his way underage cousin. We have done this all the time, we just used to call it blacklisting.[/quote]
My favourite example: Akhenaten canceled polytheism and worshiped Aten. After his son's death they went back to polytheism. They canceled him so hard, they wiped him from history! Statues were destroyed, they moved the capital back to Thebes from Amarna, destroyed temples in Amarna, and exhumed and moved his body. That was 3500 years ago (1350s BCE)

"So it shall be written; so it shall be done!"

---

"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I think we have to be really careful with cleansing literature.

My litmus test is Mark Twain. Mark Twain was straight racist in his early literature. But he changed. A lot. And ended up writing some of the best anti-racist satire there is. (though even that used some terminology that wouldn't fly today).

But I don't think we should mess with Twain one little bit. Rather we should equip readers with the tools to process it.

I'm willing to accept that maybe the readers of Dr. Seuss (or the children's cartoons mentioned) can't be reasonably expected to have developed those tools yet. And also that Dr. Seuss maybe never progressed or engaged in satire (I'm not familiar enough with his work - it never appealed to me in the slightest at any age).

I recently purchased a collection of the works of Mark Twain because I fear they might one day be unavailable. I'm in no rush to read them, having done so as a child, but I want to have the option.

Mark Twain's work is in the public domain now, so not really publisher-dependent. At least digitally-speaking (I have the entire works of Twain on my Kindle).

I don't think we'll ever get to the point where it goes from publishers choosing not to sell/distribute any more to outright Fahrenheit-451-grade scrubbing of the works from the planet. Or if we do, it'll have gone way beyond wokeness-gone-wild.

Damn!!! I just went 451 on the OTHER thread

---

"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

This, exactly.

If works of literature or childrens cartoons or whatever presented racist concepts or beliefs in the past, that's part of history that should be preserved and understood. People were overtly racist back then, it makes sense that art and culture reflected that mindset. But to wipe it from existence is to ignore that it was a major societal issue at the time, what does the future look like if you don't really understand history?

I think it's fine to judge individuals within the context of their time period, there certainly were people with great contributions to this country and art and society who were shitty humans, that should contribute to our image of that person. But any works they produced should certainly be maintained and available if people want to dive into them.

Yup, this had me hanging my head. I am a little disappointed in myself that I didn't pick up on the messaging ... I'm not as woke as I thought, clearly. I'm fine admitting that.

A lot of artists who create amazing things are absolutely horrible trainwrecks of humanity and I don't always disregard their creations based on their awfulness. I keep them separate.

But I used Suess books as examples for my kids of being a good person type stuff. Sneeches, Yertle the Turtle, The Lorax ... that seems incongruous now.