Seuss Cancelled

March 2nd marked Dr Seuss’ birthday.

Beginning in 1998, on that day, the National Education Association partnered with Dr Seuss Enterprises to create Read Across America Day. This was an initiative designed to encourage reading and study amongst children. Since August 2019, the partnership has dissolved.

It’s been commonly known that the NEA publicly supports Democrats and lobbies for funding and influence. Coincidentally, three years after its partnership dissolves, Dr Seuss is rendered racist and omitted from digital shelves. His name was also omitted from Joe Biden’s list of authors for Read Across America Day. Mainstream media outlets covering the story are doing so insofar as the message is in support of both Seuss Enterprises and NEA’s decisions to cancel him and the context surrounding it.

Seuss and his books have been under scrutiny for years now. In one study titled “The Cat is Out of the Bag: Orientalism, Anti-Blackness, and White Supremacy in Dr. Seuss’ Children’s Books”, authors immediately make their intent clear:

“Our study sought to evaluate the claims that his children’s books are anti-racist, and was shaped by the research question: How and to what extent are non-White characters depicted in Dr. Seuss’ children’s books? We designed our study to provide important insights into the manner and extent to which White characters and characters of color are portrayed, and assess their implications to the development and reinforcement of racial bias in young children.”

It was only a matter of time before the left caught up with him. It begs the question, who’s next?

The six books that have been marked as racist by Seuss Enterprises that have already been removed from Amazon include: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street; If I Ran the Zoo; McElligot’s Pool; On Beyond Zebra!; Scrambled Eggs Super!; and The Cat’s Quizzer.

Do not fret, the collectibles are still available for sale, at astronomical prices.

Other popular Seuss books that have not yet been targeted are still available, but are currently out of stock. Since the cancellation, Dr Seuss’ books have been on Amazon’s top 50 bestseller list. According to The Hill, “At least 30 Dr. Seuss titles made up the top 50 books on the list, including “If I Ran the Zoo,” which came in at number 49.”

Leftists Attack

The Hill article proceeds to explain, as do many other sources like NBC, how the cancellation is a result of offensive and racist images.

Taking control of the narrative is what leftist media publications are experts at. That narrative wouldn’t be controlled if it didn’t undermine or invalidate anyones concern over cancel culture with claims about conservatives. Another NBC article headlined: “The escalating rhetoric on so-called “cancel culture” is conservatives’ way of saying they are losing power in society…”

This author of that article continues to say that “The GOP is trying to use the heavy hand of government to pick and choose who can be a consumer rather than responding to their will” and then cites statements made by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senator Marco Rubio criticizing the decision and calls around cancelling Dr Seuss.

The author, Robert Schlesinger, points out that Seuss Enterprises made the decision to remove six of its books it finds offensive, but suggested that Republicans or conservatives are calling for government overreach in order to “pick and choose who can be a consumer”. This is unfounded in the evidence he provided. He continues with, “Surely if Seuss Enterprises is erring and catering to a political correctness that nobody wants, market forces will correct it.”

Although the opinion of this article is echoing loudly inside of Schlesinger’s own feedback chamber, it’s a telling sign of his ignorance surrounding the Adam Smith, classical liberal economics that he erroneously uses when he talks about the “Invisible Hand”, “market forces” and “will”, in order to justify his own points.

If only Schlesinger made it passed the few passages of “The Wealth of Nations” prescribed to him in college. Reading Smith’s other work “Theory of Moral Sentiments”, one can begin to see the roots of conservatism taking place. Then, one could properly understand how to use terms like “Invisible Hand” and “culture” in the same piece of work, without making judgments that make him sound like an overconfident dilettante whose only education occurred in reading his professors summaries.

Smith believed in an Invisible Hand that guided individuals in their transactions with one another. The market economy presupposes these relationships, upon an honest society, from which individuals engage in shared sympathies. The “Invisible Hand” is not an economic fundamentalism, but a metaphor for the societal culture that shapes market forces.

Stopping at this point, as one conveniently should if they celebrate a culture of cancellation as ‘progress’, is what Schlesinger did. We could deduce from that that if this decision is an error, market forces will correct it. Fortunately, not all writers are blind:

Books Sell Out; Cancel Culture backlash

One could say that market forces are already correcting the “error” that “nobody wants” because “As of Wednesday, nine out of the 10 selling books on Amazon were Dr. Seuss titles, with “The Cat in the Hat,” “Green Eggs and Ham,” and “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!,” holding the top three spots respectively. At least 30 Dr. Seuss titles made up the top 50 books on the list, including “If I Ran the Zoo,” which came in at number 49.

Both “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” and “Scrambled Eggs Super!” made the top 100 bestseller’s list, with offers ranging from $950 to $1,899.”

It would be sensical that conservatives would be sympathetic to Amazon’s removal of the books— since the decision to cease publication of these books were made by the publication itself— if Amazon didn’t have a history of removing or burying books at their sole discretion.

Leftist media would have us believe that cancel culture does not apply here, not there, and certainly not anywhere. Especially since that cancel culture always comes at the helm of their leftist allies.

But there are numerous instances that private companies are not only firing people that are not ideologically conforming, but will gladly cancel themselves before the leftist mob does; that Amazon removes books or films that it deems hateful from its digital shelves; or that noneconomic, educational stunts are coerced onto white children who are told to reflect on their ‘whiteness’ (one example here).

One recent documentary on Clarence Thomas was just taken down from Amazon as well.

Suddenly, in Black History Month, Amazon took down a popular documentary about the Justice: “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words.” Why? Amazon won’t say. https://t.co/AgdImFVjl8

— Brit Hume (@brithume) March 3, 2021

The culture is certainly always changing. Leftists like Schlesinger would say that it’s changing out of conservatives’ favor. Even if it wasn’t, so it would seem because, leftists, after all, do control nearly every government, academic, and civil institution and association. Indeed, they have even infiltrated the Boy Scouts when they didn’t conform to the left’s standards of virtue.

We have also seen time and time again the government overreach not only suggested by Democrats, but implemented by them. It’s in their mantra to federalize and subject to the left’s popular sentiment, the other half of the country.

Conservatives’ fight in the culture is not an example of ‘losing power’. That would denote that even the leftists who, through their calls for mandates, federalization, government intervention, firing, censorship, etc., are ‘losing power’; hence, the activism on the part of the media, academic and civil institutions to coordinate their efforts.

I would concede that conservatives are experiencing such a loss in culture, especially politically, insofar as media and institutional representation is concerned. They never seized institutions for an ideological agenda in the same way the left has.

Marinate on this

As conservatives or dissidents of all sorts are being cancelled, as books and films are digitally burned, as companies go woke, and educational institutions teach our kids racism in the guise of anti-racism, conservatives are hit with confusion:

How did a generation that grew up on South Park and Family Guy become so offended at everything?