Starbellied Grinches (and other diversions)
To no one’s surprise, Fox News has spent more time in the past week manufacturing outrage over a decision by Dr. Seuss Enterprises to suspend publication of six of its books than on congressional hearings about the siege on Capitol Hill.
That’s because programmers at Fox understand their audience. Viewers already inclined to lap up the network’s phony “culture war” coverage will be too busy applauding prime-time denunciations of “cancel culture” to pay attention to COVID-19, the $1.9 trillion stimulus and minimum wage debates or the domestic terror threat at the heart of the proTrump restoration movement.
And while it may be maddening to see folks who go on cyclical jihads against Big Bird, the Teletubbies, SpongeBob SquarePants and Neera Tanden’s tweets baying loudly about Dr. Seuss’ estate’s plans to forgo profiting from “hurtful” portrayals of minorities, it helps to remember that empathy is in much shorter supply than outrage.
For a little historical context, there were howls on the right when “Little Black Sambo,” biglipped lawn jockeys and Aunt Jemima came under fire, too. There’s a lot of nostalgia for demeaning images of minorities that is coupled with appeals to “legacy” and sentimental history when a beloved prejudice faces cultural exile.
The six Dr. Seuss books that will be phased out aren’t childhood classics by a long shot: “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” “If I Ran the Zoo,” McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!,” “The Cat’s Quizzer” and “Scrambled Eggs Super!”
While insensitive in isolated passages, none of these books would ever turn up as a supplement to Klan recruiting material, but news that they will be discontinued has resulted in an explosion of sales on Amazon. That’s the perverse logic of American capitalism at work — sometimes a charge of racism will cause thousands of Americans to reach for their credit cards to make a blow against “cancel culture.”
An example of this happened to country singer Morgan Wallen after he was caught on video calling a friend the n-word after a night of carousing in Nashville. Mr. Wallen saw a 300% jump in sales of his latest album after he got dropped by his label.
Folks who couldn’t care less about country music were eager to “own the libs” by supporting an artist who generated reams of “liberal tears.” Never mind that Mr. Wallen was deeply repentant and apologetic about using the epithet. He was suddenly a rightwing “hero.”
Because Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, also cranked out racist political cartoons featuring Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II, people have a right to be wary when images from that era seemed to carry over to some of his early children’s books.
The beloved author expressed regret later in life for his racist depictions of minorities. In my opinion, he went a long way toward redeeming himself with “The Sneetches,” a far from perfect children’s book about tolerance and the value of multiculturalism.
There’s a fear among those most hostile to Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ decision to shelve six archaic children’s books out of dozens that a heightened sensitivity to anti-Asian imagery and racist stereotyping will lead to more artifacts of American culture being scrutinized for the casual racism our society took for granted before justice and diversity became democratic values.
It’s a variation of the same old stupid question: Why can’t someone who grew up watching “integrated” shows like “The Little Rascals” be able to call a former president “Buckwheat Obama” if Buckwheat was, indeed, his favorite TV scamp?
What’s wrong with indoctrinating another generation of children with “proven classics” featuring Tar-Baby if you grew up reading the Br’er Rabbit stories with no malice in your heart? After all, you absorbed all of those demeaning images in the last century and it didn’t make you even the least bit racist, did it?
You even had a Black friend you affectionately nicknamed Little Black Sambo on the schoolyard and he didn’t seem to mind. And you never used the “n-word” even once — except in anger that one time …
We all know that the “concern trolling,” hypocrisy, opportunism and attempts to rebrand racist artifacts as worthy of protection from “cancel culture” is just another distraction by a spiritually exhausted and morally bankrupt political movement — but they don’t know that.
Millions believe that the QAnon nonsense is real and that the 2020 election was stolen, so we’re already talking about a sizable chunk of Americans operating on diminished moral and intellectual capacity.
In order to reach these folks at all, it may require resorting to Dr. Seussian ways of persuasion. Because Republicans want to rescue “If I Ran the Zoo” from literature’s P.C. dustbin, maybe we should repackage news about the pressing issues not heard on Fox in the form of the rhyme schemes Dr. Seuss favored. Though it’s nearly impossible to find any word that rhymes with “orange,” rhyming about the siege of Capitol Hill in an informative way wouldn’t be difficult at all:
“We Want to Enter the Capitol (With You)”
“Oh, how the doors are shut tight / with Congress safe out of sight / for our threatened return to the Capitol / But soldiers remain / with their bayonets aimed / at folks a bit too dogmatical. / What brings us all here / in this season of fear / is promise of a guaranteed spectacle / The return of our boss / from an impossible loss / that turned out to be theoretical.
“Our predilection is to forgo / introspection we’re told / when it comes to believing our leader. / Even before the election / he spread disaffection / so we wouldn’t be fooled by the media. / After reflection, but before insurrection / he swore he wouldn’t throw us under a bus / Now several weeks late / of his inauguration date / we’re wondering who we can trust.
“There was proper rejection / of a crooked election / and a riot, and mayhem and stuff / but we love insurrection / and we’re better than you / and no one is better than us. / There was some dejection at no resurrection / for a presidency ordained from on high / But he will be back, we’re certain of that / and he won’t need no stinkin’ election.
“So please let us all into the Capitol / y’all / we promise to act more compatible. / This time we won’t riot or do naughty things / like pretend we’re deplorable radicals. / We’re not the Great Hannibal nor Genghis Khan / nor inclined toward anything irrational / We’re here to install another president (that’s all) / and he promises to not be tyrannical.”