Horton Hears A Who Gives A Fuck

For those ready to jump off of a cliff over six books they never read

Here I am, writing from San Diego just 15 minutes south of the former home of Dr. Seuss, reflecting on my choice to abstain from any children’s literature courses while I was in college. It seemed like a waste of time for a fully grown adult to study children’s literature especially when I had no desire to go into publishing. If I had my druthers about discussing San Diego writers I would be discussing Lester Bangs instead of Dr. Seuss, but in a world overflowing with phony grievances, here we are. 

The Seuss estate made a decision to no longer publish six books and in doing so, lit the dry tinder box that is the ever raging culture war in America. In order to have an honest discussion about what is happening, there have to be certain facts that are agreed upon first. The Seuss estate did not make this decision because of some sort of pressure campaign. They made it on their own. Dr. Seuss is not “cancelled” and all his other books, especially the most popular ones will continue to live on. More importantly, this wasn’t some government or school board decision. This was a private publishing company’s decision. They made a decision which they believed was best for the Seuss brand. 

I have a hard time taking seriously the culture warriors who constantly rail against universities and intellectuals having any sort of opinion when it comes to the liberal arts because the only time they ever seem to have any sort of thought or opinion on the matter is in the context of culture wars. In response to the Seuss estate decision, the GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy decided to read Green Eggs and Ham in protest of their decision.

In a healthy democracy, you don’t have politicians partaking in these culture wars in this manner, but that ship sailed a long time ago. The strangest part about the reading of Green Eggs and Ham is that they are still printing that book. Nobody has suggested they stop printing it. If he really wanted to make a point about the books that were actually cancelled, he should be reading and showing the images from the actual books that are no longer being printed. There’s a good reason he, and others who make this argument, keep arguing about the books that aren’t on that list as opposed to the ones that are. It’s really hard to defend some obviously racist imagery.

Now, when it comes to racist or misogynistic imagery in literature, my argument is to keep them since they are relics of their time and it is incumbent on professors and teachers to put them into context, but a children’s book is different because the target audience is too young to understand the context of these images. 

When it comes to acknowledging the racist imagery and deciding not to print the books with those images, it’s important to understand that even Dr. Seuss outgrew his racist past.  He even changed one of the drawings in “And To Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street”. In the original printing, the Chinese man is depicted with yellow skin and a long pigtail. In the post 1978 version, the yellow skin is removed and the pigtail is also removed, but by today’s standard it obviously wasn’t enough. It is strange to have a bunch of people feign concern over depictions the author himself acknowledged needing change.  

Culture warriors love to take decisions like the one to stop printing the six Dr. Seuss books and tie them to their political enemies in strange ways. They tried to tie the decision to Biden, even though he never said anything about any of the books and has mostly stayed out of any of the culture war nonsense.

They also try to compare it to the fact songs like WAP are accepted. I saw this comment from friends and in the comments on IG as well as my inbox. It’s strange how people who consume a certain type of media latch onto a non sequitur like this and think they are making a good argument. I personally think it would be really fucking weird if someone was reading the lyrics to WAP to a young child before going to bed and it would be even more strange if this was being done by school teachers. The existence of adult content, consumed by adults and teenagers has nothing to do with what a young child consumes. 

These books won’t disappear forever. They will exist and they should be released into the public domain. I had access to the rare books section of a library and spent a lot of time there reading from far more rare books printed in the 1800’s, books like a white supremacist manifesto written by a former confederate soldier, so if your concern is that they will cease to exist entirely, stop worrying. If your concern is that you will no longer be able to buy such books because stores and websites will ban the sales of them as well, I wouldn’t worry about that either. If there is a market for rare books, you will be able to find them. I highly doubt anyone concerned about this is in the business of buying rare books. Ebay stopped the sale of the six books but that wasn’t specifically about the books. It was consistent with their existing policy about racist content.

You can disagree with their policy and I think most content moderation policy on websites is bad, but that is their policy and they didn’t change anything because of the news, they just became aware of the imagery and applied their policy. Also, claiming an author is cancelled and boasting about how well they are selling on Amazon kind of disproves your argument. The cynical side of me would totally believe you if you told me this whole thing was a marketing ploy to win brownie points with leftists and cause right wing culture warriors to protest and panic buy other Dr. Seuss books. 

Most of the concern is just concern trolling when it comes to which books are taught anyway. It’s like the scene in American History X where the dad is making a big fuss about black authors being taught in school as if they aren’t deserving and only being taught because they are black. The list of authors and books that are worthy of being taught in school is far greater than the time one has to spend in school learning about them. Pick any collection of books to teach in one class, you will inevitably be leaving out a much larger number of books worth teaching. There are countless problematic authors who are still taught today. Hemingway is a great example and the reason he is still taught today is because he changed American literature forever. His use of the Iceberg theory, to move readers with emotion through subtext instead of telling them how to feel, as well as his experimenting with POV in short stories such as “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”. Important works of literature live on and despite the panic about political correctness in universities, they continue to teach problematic works. Dr. Seuss isn’t going anywhere. He isn’t being cancelled from academia or the digital bookshelves on children’s literature. Even if the six books they discontinued become rare, you will still be able to find them in both digital and physical form in many places. It may even make your physical copy incredibly valuable.