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Ode to Dr. Seuss

Posted on Tuesday, March 16, 2021
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by AMAC, Robert B. Charles
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5 Comments
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Dr. SeussTheodor Seuss Geisel, author of some 60 children’s books, objectively helped animate, educate, and entertain hundreds of millions of children. His playful, rhyming verse, whimsical intentionally nonsense and comic characters kept attention, part of building literacy. His books appear in 20 languages, have sold 600 million copies, and are now – six of them – banned. 

Bottom line: If the runaway trend of banning books for offense can take down Dr. Seuss, it can take down every book, picture, collection of verse, everything from Shakespeare and Mark Twain to Pippy Longstocking and Peanuts, historical novels, fairytales, ballads to probing poetry and the Bible.  There is no limit if mere offense is the standard for exclusion.    

As the Wall Street Journal noted “in the end, the only literature allowed will be literature that adheres to the values of our postmodern world – a world in which we are not expected to conform to societal rules” but subjective norms. Lost is free thinking, publishing, and reading. 

Put differently, banning Dr. Seuss signals an awful turn in the road, a U-turn against classical, tolerant, mind-expanding liberal education – exposure to newness, difference, contrary, creative random, offensive, serendipitous, the comic, caustic, and absurd. 

As the Wall Street Journal adds, this is an epic error.  It “means goodbye to cultural icons, large and small – goodbye to all vestiges of the past, replete with their ‘bigoted’ value systems.” It means cancelling not just people, but history.  “It means that the purges have only just begun.”

Perhaps sharing an alma mater with Dr. Seuss, is what irks me on his behalf.  Perhaps knowing that if good-humored art, with proven utility to society, can be blithely banned – nothing is sacred.  Perhaps childhood attachments to Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Seuss’s Zoo and Mulberry Street still rattle within me.  But if books are banned, some of us are drawn to the fight.

In book-banning societies, only parody survives the censor – even then, not always. But let us give it a try, while we can. Let me try to put on my best “Dr. Seuss,” festoon with jest, lampoon the left, and see where parody leads.  Okay?

Dr. Seuss drew a moose, whose rack was rather big. The left contested the awful truth, censored him, banned the book, wagged and shook. Then he drew, in feathered form, simple timeless themes. What un-woke audacity, poking fun and stoking fear, before the birth of memes!

Worse yet, Seuss did not conform to a future norm, PETA sanctifying cats. How could he be so bold and blind, thinking children’s books benign, disrespecting things feline.  And speak of things, he named them One and Two, what a sham! He tossed tofu, wham, kazaam, for eggs and ham! At least he got the color right, green I mean, for eggs – how sad, little green chicks un-had.

If only everything from Yertle and unactuated turtles could be defended by the state, then even one-finned fish would rate! And what about those undefended Mulberries – a thousand streets by name if one – and all those “whos” Horton did not hear, underrepresented in name of fun?

And what if that fellow who says he is Sam, who says it is he, does not know his identity? What a repressive, regressive thing humor is, full of offense, cause to rue, not like that spotted fellow in the zoo.

No, that awful Seuss must go, kicked hard by swinging Democrat toe.  Can you imagine one turtle being on top of all that anti-Socialist slop? Who has the right to ride the pile and ban the past? Only a socialist iconoclast! Seuss be gone, and now … Who is next? Surely the elephant, whose words beseech readers to value old free speech.

Now mind your manners, and dare a deed, write about some flying steed, give him feathers and some speed, but make sure you know the Socialist creed.  Be safe like me, practice parody. We must be quick to laugh, read, and think – or will cry, knowing once we did, and no more try. A simple Ode to Dr. Seuss, who loved his colors, words, and Flying Turtle birds!

 

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Kim
Kim
3 years ago

“I’m Yertle the Turtle, O marvelous me, for I am the ruler of all that I see!” Don’t forget to do the voices!

Sure, you can read into the lines whatever social injustice you want, but for the kids, it’s nothing but an enjoyable escape into fantasy. Do we really want to remove the joy of reading these stories to our children and grandchildren? To rob them of those delightful hours not spent in front of the TV?

There is no tiny facet of our lives that the liberals plan to leave untouched. They won’t be satisfied until everyone in this country behaves, thinks, and acts as they want us to. And then some usurper will come along and turn everything on its head. Now, there’s a story!

PaulE
PaulE
3 years ago

I view all of this as nothing more than digital book burning. In the old Soviet Union, Hitler’s Germany and communist China, they all used to have public book burnings to destroy knowledge the leaders deemed offensive or not aligned with current thought. All part of shaping public perceptions to be aligned with the leadership’s view of what is proper and correct. All just part of the mental indoctrination process all socialists and communists rely on to bend the public’s will to their way of thinking. It was a public means to intimidate the public and create a sense of conformity to the new order.

Today’s cancel culture is pretty much the same thing, but more “green”. Pun intended. Physically burning books would enrage the greenies, who have been conditioned to think burning anything will lead to the end the world via man-made climate change. So this digital version of both public shaming and censorship is the 21st century version of the old bonfires in the town square. Different means to achieve the same result of re-shaping the public’s mindset to accept the political orthodoxy being pushed.

Dan W.
Dan W.
3 years ago

Hey Bob, you forgot to mention who pulled the plug on the six Dr. Suess’ books.

(And yes, I still have my copy of “And to Think That I Saw It on MULBERRY STREET” which was my favorite Dr. Suess book.)

Barbara j Larue
Barbara j Larue
3 years ago

hello, fareheit 451! soon books will be burnt because they don’t conform to the new world order view….and that is scary…. an author wrote about this approx.30-70 years ago!

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