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"CANCELLING THE PLANET"

 3/14/21

The latest "issue" used by Republicans to distract from their opposition to the covid-relief package involves misrepresenting the Dr. Seuss estate's refusal to print 6 titles with racist imagery as "cancel culture" run amok. The book House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy read aloud as political theatre is "Green Eggs & Ham," which is not a title in question. Dr. Seuss's own estate was self-censoring. Seuss in time abandoned using racial imagery, which most people agree indicated he had improved as a person.

As an aside on the phenomena of "cancel culture:" while  I do agree that it is more and more a problem, and in many cases, outright overkill, the Dr. Seuss case doesn't really hold up as a strong example of it. When it comes to older material, it's important for people to see how offensive attitudes played a damaging role in American history. If you sweep it all under the rug and pretend it didn't exist, then you can't learn from the mistakes of the past, and there can come a danger of history repeating itself through public ignorance.