The Popcorn Stand: What’s in a name and Dr. Seuss

Admittedly when looking for ideas for this Popcorn Stand I fall back on looking up the sort of pseudo holidays we come up with for pretty much every day of the year.

Friday, April 2 was peanut butter and jelly day, which led to one quite messy column which went off onto all kinds of tangents.

I found out today, Friday, April 9 as I’m writing this column is National Name Yourself Day. It’s a day that encourages people to try a new name.

I find a lot of people’s names to be awesome. Like Chris Moneymaker. Don’t know the guy, never met him. Don’t know much about him other than he has been the World Poker Champion. Now I just think that’s awesome that a guy named Chris Moneymaker has been the World Poker Champion.

It led me to think about changing my name to Charles Sportswriter when I was working as a sports editor at the time.

Actually like virtually all of us, I’m proud of my name Whisnand. I’m proud to be a Whisnand. I think it’s a pretty cool name.

And there’s only one Charles Whisnand. Of course it’s Dr. Seuss who said “Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!”

I don’t think there’s ever been a more truer statement uttered than that one.

Of course now that I’ve brought Dr. Seuss into this, I’ve given myself an excuse to weigh in on the whole Dr. Seuss cancel culture-woke whatever thing you want to call it that of course has become one of the many issues we completely lose our perspective over in this country.

In 2021 we’re finding out virtually all of our heroes have complex legacies and Dr. Seuss is no different.

And there’s a wide disparity in his legacy. And the interpretations of Seuss’ writings are all over the place.

There’s no question many of Seuss’ works include negative racial stereotypes. But during World War II, Seuss was a political cartoonist and historically has been considered somebody who actually pleaded for racial tolerance at that time.

There are those who say Seuss denounced anti-semitism and racism. And there are those who go as far as saying Seuss was a racist. Talk about all over the place. Talk about complex.

So as far as I’m concerned when it comes to how much I should celebrate Dr. Seuss, the jury is still out. But I still take a lot of his sayings to heart.

So as I write this on National Name Yourself Day if you want to change your name, go ahead. But if you take pride in your name and thought of ever changing it would be unthinkable, that’s OK, too.

Come to think of it, Dr. Seuss changed his name. Even though there was no one as him as him. Complex, indeed.