Finance

Big Issues On The Right: Dr. Seuss Books, Imaginary Gender Of Fake Potato, Other Inane Nonsense

If you don’t like the 'Potato Head' brand anymore, use the free market you used to pretend to care about to buy your toddler a Heteronormative Man action figure or whatever.

By  
on

(Photo by Vince Bucci/Getty Images)

Theodor Seuss Geisel was born in 1904. He wrote and illustrated more than five dozen children’s books under the pen name Dr. Seuss before he passed away in 1991.

A lot of his work is rightfully beloved, and a lot of it was self-evidently progressive for its time. But Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the company founded by Geisel’s family to preserve and protect his legacy, recently announced its decision to stop publishing six of his titles (not any of the ones you’d likely be able to name off the top of your head) because those particular books feature what we now recognize as racially insensitive imagery.

Nobody was actively calling for these books to be pulled from publication (though many literary professionals have long recognized some Dr. Seuss illustrations as racially problematic by today’s standards). Ceasing publication of these six titles was just a good move, initiated internally by a company tasked with protecting the Dr. Seuss legacy. And hey, maybe it will help stop a few kids from feeling caricatured. It was a kind gesture.

So of course conservatives went into a days-long fit. Apparently Dr. Seuss has been canceled. Never mind that Geisel’s own family members, while stressing that the man wasn’t a racist, support the decision. Never mind that you can still get dozens and dozens of Dr. Seuss titles, and you can even get the ones they’re no longer going to publish if you want them, as there are millions of copies already in print. Never mind that liberals weren’t actually saying there was anything wrong with liking Dr. Seuss. I mean, wouldn’t it be more surprising if there wasn’t some racist stuff in the catalogue of a person who worked producing WWII propaganda before he went into children’s literature?

Dr. Seuss was not a bad person. His books brought joy to millions of people. But Dr. Seuss was a product of his times, like we all are. There are things we’re all doing today that, in 70 or 80 years, will be viewed as problematic in one way or another. And you know what? That’s fine. I hope and expect that later generations of human beings will be better than us, kinder than us, smarter than us. Our great-grandchildren don’t have to go on doing everything our way, because that’s not how history works.

At least it’s slightly less dumb than the Mr. Potato Head “controversy.” Hasbro announced they’re going to just start calling the toy brand “Potato Head,” which very nearly caused Fox News to supernova like a dying star. Undulating waves of faux outrage spread outward through conservative social media from there. Leaving aside the fact that a plastic potato made to amuse toddlers does not actually have, or need, a gender, they’re still going to be making “Mr.” and “Mrs.” versions of the toy — it’s only the brand name that’s dropping the “Mr.” And, you know, all of this shit is companies making internal decisions of their own volition. The government isn’t sending tattooed armies of genderfluid pansexual Antifa members into people’s homes to force them to change their pronouns. So how about this: if you don’t like the “Potato Head” brand anymore, use the free market you used to pretend to care about to buy your toddler a Heteronormative Man action figure or whatever, then move on with your f*cking life.

Sponsored

The Republican Party used to stand for things. They weren’t good things, but one could at least recognize a guiding principle behind most of them. While a party loosely organized around the idea of minimizing taxes for rich people was hardly admirable, it was better than an open spigot of fake outrage over noncontroversies. Now, though, nothing seems likely to dislodge the new Republican priority of focusing on things like defending Neanderthals (who really could have used the help about 40,000 years ago), and saving Pepé Le Pew, the horny animated skunk.

It’s hard to see why these sorts of manufactured culture war controversies are so appealing to a substantial minority of Americans. But I guess if they want to keep tilting at windmills, fine. In the meantime, the grownups have a $1.9 trillion stimulus to see to.

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

Sponsored

Topics

, , ,