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[Maximum Spin]

Mulberry is absolutely one of the more iconic Seuss stories. I don't know how anyone who grew up in the last century could think otherwise. It was also the first, which has value in its own right.

Let them manage their story.

I don't think people have a moral right to manage their stories. Once it's out in the world, it's out of your hands, forever.

[Frumple]

I mean, I'll repeat. I work in a library; we have that one. It doesn't circulate compared to stuff like cat in the hat.

[Maximum Spin]

I mean, I'll repeat. I work in a library; we have that one. It doesn't circulate compared to stuff like cat in the hat.

Yeah, but, like, in Arizona. Do people even read in Arizona?

[Frumple]

The arizona is a lie*. The kids stuff actually circulates decently where I'm at. So yes, they read, and barring significant cultural or demographic shifts (and not the kind that's going to increase popularity of stuff with racist junk in it, ha), kids stuff tends to be relatively stable in cross-region popularity, from what I've picked up so far. Mulberry's just not one of the particularly popular Seuss stories, these days.

* e: Though there's a bit of a "screw you" on AZ's behalf, there. For all the state's problems, it actually has some pretty good libraries in places, and you don't get those if they ain't being used.

[Maximum Spin]

The arizona is a lie. The kids stuff actually circulates decently where I'm at.

I appreciate that you did not in any way bother to contradict the idea that people WOULDN'T read in Arizona.

[Frumple]

I'm half asleep, and you just missed an edit

[Vector]

It doesn't matter. While I wholeheartedly support rehabilitation for theft, assault, etc. Even murder if they're truly sorry.

But serial killers don't even deserve redemption. I don't care what they can bring. They gave no mercy to many innocents, they don't deserve any either.

Or what if someone shoots up a church/mall/theater? Would you forgive them?

I notice that you're emphasizing the forgiveness question. What I'm trying to say is not that it's irrelevant, but there are some other questions we don't normally think about:
- What happens to the people who create the prison environment?
- Why do people actually shoot up places? Is imprisoning the individual the best route to preventing these kinds of crimes?
- Given that people like Kyle Rittenhouse are currently walking free and not considered to be "murderers," what does it actually mean to be a "murderer?" Why do we consider people like Kyle to not be a threat -- to not be part of the population justifying the carceral apparatus?
- What would change, concretely, rather than through abstract measurements like "fairness" and "justice" if we had put Kyle behind bars? Would we be safer?
- Most rapists are walking around on the street without consequences. Are they a public threat?


These aren't rhetorical questions. I actually don't know.

[Rolan7]

Yes, yes; the correct way to solve problems is to stop publishing Dr. Seuss books, because we don't like the fact that people in history had certain views.  "It's not a ban, because you can still keep the books if you already have them. But maybe this will cause libraries to reconsider the books they have on their shelves."

 

His estate voluntarily ending the publishing of some of the works he made which had egregiously bad takes on race;
Works he arguably didn't stand by at all, at the end, being a victim of persecution himself.

There are real issues with cancellation, and then there's this shit.

[McTraveller]

which had egregiously bad takes on race;

Did it though? I don't recall anything about those books, other than that I read them as a kid.  I think it's a special kind of hubris to assume that they are promoting any kind of such badness.

I mean maybe it really did subliminally impact my formative years and secretly made me an Evil Person.

That's the danger here - it's assuming that everyone will view something in the worst possible light, and taking things away from people to "keep them safe" or something.

If only it were as simple as that.  Because there is also the fact that if you just "make light of" portrayal of some characteristic or lifestyle in some book, then you really can end up with systemic oppression.

[Rolan7]

Did it though? I don't recall anything about those books, other than that I read them as a kid.  I think it's a special kind of hubris to assume that they are promoting any kind of such badness.

I mean maybe it really did subliminally impact my formative years and secretly made me an Evil Person.

This is making an obviously different argument.  The argument isn't that he was... what, bad?  It's that a few of his works had harmful memes.  Ones even he didn't stand by.

[McTraveller]

I think it's more the philosophy of what makes a meme "harmful."  I think it's not a property of an idea itself, but is an emergent property of the information and its environment. Even that though is not a universal heuristic - some ideas are inherently incorrect (e.g., flat earth).

So we have to encourage discernment.  Actions like this, choosing to stop publishing because someone might interpret something in some way, removes the incentive to be discerning.  Yes it involves discernment in the publisher or whatever, but takes the incentive away from the general public to even think about discernment.

This is why I don't like this type of action.

[Lord Shonus]

The works no longer being published feature overt racial caricatures of the sort that Theodore "Dr. Seuss" Geisel spent much of his later life -his middle life as well, for that matter, given that he started in 1954- condemning. It is highly likely that he himself would have done it if he were alive today. I personally would prefer that the art be redrawn instead, but he's no longer alive to do it.

[wierd]

I have a radical suggestion:

If you find that bit of children's literature offensive, then create something to replace it with, and then subtly replace it.

Dont make a virtue signal that space aliens can see from alpha centauri out of it.

[Starver]

(Semi-ninjaed) Talk to the Enid Blyton estate about the (now, IIRC) "three naughty teddybears".

Apart from the "redraw the original art for what is more like worded illustrations than illustrated words" bit, I suppose, where it's not even the author's hand so a redo is easy. Maybe that's more Tintin In The Congo territory. Or some infrequent episodes of Asterix. (If they haven't done something with the lookout of the pirate ship that keeps having the misfortune to encounter the Gauls on their sojourns across the Mediterranean, they probably should have by now.)

Heck, even if Tiger Lily isn't a particulay bad representation (along with her father, two of the few actually human characters in an almost entirely evalitarian hyperanthropomorphic-animal setting) in the Rupert Bear comic-strip stories of my youth, she'd probably not pass the modern editing process. Possibly also a gypsy character to worry about - not so sure about the other racial types already aluded to.

Some of this probably means little to leftpondians (even/especially) of the right vintage, but then the US never had the same magnitude of Empire to misrepresent, you mostly had to be potentially/xenophobic to people arriving at your shores (or brought there, or there when you arrived)... Deliberate wartime propoganda aside, maybe.

[Lord Shonus]

They're not virtue signalling. They've simply decided that six of the artist's books (out of something like 50) will no longer be published. They have every right to do that - they are the rights holders. They are not obliged to keep publishing something they feel will represent them poorly just so they can avoid criticism from racists.