Canceling: My Reservations

A problem I have with "Cancel Culture" is that the people who object to "Cancel Culture" — the loudest ones at least — all seem to have plenty of people and things they want to cancel, including but not limited to "Cancel Culture" and its enablers. They may not use the "C" word but they all have people they think should be shunned, ignored, censured…or whatever "canceling" them is supposed to accomplish. Every Republican has Democratic people and programs they want to see extinguished and vice-versa.

A Presidential election is, in a way, a massive vote over which of two candidates should be canceled. A vote for one is a vote to cancel the other. I have never heard anyone say, "Vote for my guy but I sure hope the other one sticks around and is influential." They all want the "other guy" to disappear with the totality and humiliation of Harvey Weinstein.

A lot of folks are outraged at the moment over this

Six Dr. Seuss books — including And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street and If I Ran the Zoo — will stop being published because of racist and insensitive imagery, the business that preserves and protects the author's legacy said Tuesday.

"These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong," Dr. Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press in a statement that coincided with the late author and illustrator's birthday. "Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises' catalog represents and supports all communities and families," it said. The other books affected are McElligot's Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat's Quizzer.

I love Dr. Seuss and I grew up on some of those books, especially On Beyond Zebra! But I can't get too irate over this decision because, perhaps cynically, I think of a decision of this kind as going something like this…

"You know, we don't stand to sell very many copies of those six books these days but they could sure bring us a lot of grief from protests and maybe taint the whole body of Dr. Seuss work. Let's just exclude these for a while to protect his reputation and his better works and we'll wait a few years and take another look at the situation."

I believe some of those books actually have been outta-print at times without anyone feeling deprived or that they could never be read again. I don't think it's an ideal situation but I also don't think it's like Nazi Book-Burning, as some are suggesting. I think it's more of a marketing decision…and maybe someone at Dr. Seuss Enterprises has a legitimate concern about it affecting their brand.

And I want to amend something I said above. I said a lot of folks are outraged at the moment over this and that's true. But a lot of them strike me as outraged just because they thought it would be politically useful to act outraged about this. It's just a convenient way to complain about people who you think are engaging in "Cancel Culture" and you want to use it to maybe cancel them a little.