“Dr. Seuss Enterprises Will Shelve 6 Books, Citing ‘Hurtful’ Portrayals” (NPR):
First published in 1937, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street is the book that propelled Theodor Seuss Geisel’s career to new heights, as he pivoted from working in advertising to writing children’s books as Dr. Seuss.
Where can one find this work? Not in the local public library or eBay, but maybe on Amazon for $125+. The PDF is available from libgen. The page that NPR characterized as “racist”:
“a character described as Chinese has two lines for eyes, carries chopsticks and a bowl of rice, and wears traditional Japanese-style shoes.”
Related:
@Philg: It’s a little bit difficult for anyone who has lived in our time, in this country, to comprehend, because prior to this, we only saw it from a distance or in association with remote and esoteric literary and artistic debates. Piss Christ. The Satanic Verses and Salman Rushdie. Larry Flynt and his cartoons of Jerry Falwell.
This is different, Philip and it’s much larger in scope. The New York Times has issued, on behalf of its benefactors and through its proxies, a RETROACTIVE FATWA against expressions of any kind – in any medium literary, artistic, academic, or otherwise – that violate its ideological standards. It is about WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW and HOW YOU SHOULD THINK, which as far as I can tell are now the most important editorial prerogatives of the New York Times and many, many other organizations like it who influence public discourse and thought.
There is no escape from this once it has taken hold.
Where are the people who defended Salman Rushdie when the Ayatollah issued the fatwa against him for the Satanic Verses? Where are the people who defended Norman Mailer from the feminists who denounced him as a male-chauvinist pig and sought to eradicate him from literature? Where are the handful of intrepid schmucks who defended Allan Bloom? Where is Camille Paglia, who was recently threatened with banishment from the academy by her own students at an *Art School* for her heresies of criticizing some transgendered and those who falsely claimed sexual assault after being coached and indoctrinated to do so?
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/17/university-arts-rejects-calls-fire-camille-paglia
“And the letter added, with reference to the mission of the University of the Arts, “I believe this resolve holds even greater importance at an art school. Artists over the centuries have suffered censorship, and even persecution, for the expression of their beliefs through their work. My answer is simple: not now, not at UArts.”
The answer is, they are largely silent. And what will happen, when the excesses become so egregious that even the simplest analysis shows them to be ridiculous, dangerous and damaging to any principle of freedom of thought? The liberals like Bill Maher will stand up and call a halt to it, and “save everyone.” Someone at Harvard will finally move to call a halt to it – but only once it has gone as far as they want it to go, and only if they can take the credit for doing so.
The only people who can correct the Party are those who are already loyal members of the Party. After all the dead are buried and forgotten, and after the transformation is irreversible.
That’s how it works.
And from my personal perspective, it’s always a good time to recall, with as much contemporaneous context as one can gather, all of the furor that descended on Allan Bloom after the publication of “The Closing of the American Mind” and “Giants and Dwarfs.”
There are a lot of good videos on YouTube (!!). Most of them have fewer than 5,000 views.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO6rW7LEMzo
If Dr. Seuss was still alive, he might well regret some of his cartoons. But I would dearly love to see him do a cartoon treatment of Closing of the American Mind, etc. He is no longer around to defend his own legacy against the woke mob though control mendacity. His works and estate are firmly in the hands of his heirs and their lawyers. And they don’t want to stop it! They’re SuperWoke.
And if reincarnation or resurrection actually was a thing, I would LOVE to see George Orwell risen from his grave to tour the country and put these people back in their hole.
@Alex,
“Where are the people who defended Salman Rushdie when the Ayatollah issued …”
Those are “hard targets” to address, no American from their comfortable living room or streets dares to address such issues. So, they go after “soft targets” like martials from Dr. Seuss, to make themselves feel good that they are fixing what’s broken, that they care, that they are making a difference. But anyone who cares about today’s issues, such as racism, equality, hateful speech / writing, past wrongs, et. al. should be far more concerned about our falling education system, government free handouts, workers quality / production / qualification deterioration to name some. Those issues are defining today’s generation for years to come. Failure to address them means we will certainly lose our place in the world when this generation takes over.
We are not longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. We are becoming the land of the cave-in and the home of the cowards.
Alex, a free press is still alive and well. Take one archive.org link and call me in the morning.
https://archive.org/details/armchaircommando/
If symptoms persist, take library genesis and sci hub liberally.
Outside of RedditGoogleFacebookAmazonTwitterAmazon there are still lots of people speaking their own mind off of the internet. Big tech is overplaying their hand, mostly because Big Tech is run by foreign indentured servants.
Throughout history, true free thinkers have been few snd far between.
So… Communism (in its Maoist flavor) came to America, and is out in force for everyone to see.
The only effective response to this cult is extreme intolerance – the acolytes of tbe cult will go all the way to building concentation camps and Cultral Revolution-style purges. It is extremely naive to think that they will stop at censorship and witch hunts. They certainly didn’t in Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba, etc, etc.
Make no mistake: it’s us or them There is no compromise to be reached with these people, as they have shown, again ana again, rhat they consider every concession as a sign of weakness and always come back to demand more.
And, if history of 20th century is of any guide, this cult needs to be exterminated, by any means. It’s better now, than years and millions lives too late.
The Chinaman is not the issue here!
The image above is apparently from an early printing. “Dr. Seuss eventually edited the image from ‘Mulberry Street’ in 1978, more than 40 years after it was first published, by removing the yellow pigment from the Asian man’s skin as well as the pigtail, and changing ‘Chinaman’ to ‘Chinese man.’ But the character’s slanted eyes remained.” [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/dr-seuss-got-away-anti-asian-racism-long-rcna381]