I think Seuss would have been in favor of his offensive works being removed
He wrote books about how we're destroying the environment through rampant industry and consumerism.
He wrote books about being kind to people [i]because[/i] of our differences.
He went back and edited his old books to make them less offensive because he felt regret that his work would ever make anyone feel bad about themselves.
You wanna know what shitting on someone's legacy looks like?
Posting that kind of image and thinking Seuss wouldn't be in favor or removing anything offensive from his work is what shitting on someone's legacy looks like.
Dr. Seuss was definitely no conservative. I just have a problem with anything that seems like censorship of written works. This comes from my own interest in literature and artistic freedom and an ability to read and listen to things by "problematic" individuals. It's hard to say what he would have wanted, but I think it's always better to confront racist imagery than cancel it.
@MalteseFalconPunch This is a fairly minor action in the grand scheme of things, but cynically I see a lot of companies "preemptively canceling" so they won't get called out and shamed and all that. I prefer conversation about things rather than making them disappear.
Six books of his got pulled from Amazon. He's not going anywhere. Dude had racist imagery as was common at the time but it's not like the Lorax is being burned.
Disney still exists evne if it's kinda hard to find Songs of the South now for some reason.
That's a bit extreme. Five of the six books were so long-forgotten they were effectively out of print anyway, and it was his own estate that made the decision. And this isn't unprecedented. Good luck trying to watch Song of the South--Disney stopped making that available decades ago. Times change.
For the record, Dr. Seuss hated America First types. He has a couple famous cartoons clearly equating them to Nazis.
@MalteseFalconPunch That's well said. I wouldn't defend his specific caricatures, but they look really different today than they did 80 years ago. And would any of us want to be judged on the worst things we ever said or wrote--if our whole subsequent history was different? I'm glad a few things I did in college never saw the light of day.
@MalteseFalconPunch which we're talking about this though, I finally got my toddler to the end of Green Eggs and Ham and I. Am. Concerned 😅
A story about one person repeatedly insisting that another person does something they find uncomfortable and the other person very clearly stating that they don't want to. Eventually the other person is beaten down by the constant badgering and gives in to their demands, then... Then they thank them. 😓
It is a real shame. Most of his stories are wonderful. The few that were cancelled were not commonly known or read, and they were a testament to the times we lived in.
Its a bit like saying they killed kids in Macbeth, let's ban Shakespeare.
@MalteseFalconPunch I get that, but as I said these were written in a time that dis nit recognise that it was offensive and should perhaps exist as an example of how bad things were.
Does that make sense? It is not about judging the author but the times we were in.
