Same Fire, Different Nazis

I have to be fair: I’ve heard of only one of them.

Them being the six books Dr. Seuss Enterprises will no longer publish because of reasons. The one I’ve heard of? “And To Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street.” I don’t remember much about it, except that the denizens of Mulberry Street get more . . . what’s the word . . . diverse as the journey progresses.

But alas, it appears one of said denizens is clad in caricatured Chinese garb and is eating out of a bowl with chopsticks. So to the memory hole.

Yes, the republic will continue. Seuss will continue to amuse children.

For now.

The books are getting older. There are more enlightened books, more current books, that share the same message, but in a vetted way, written by the right people who have done the right things in the right way and have the approbation of those who curate the greater culture. So soon, Seuss, soon.

Soon.

We must protect the children – think of the children! – from even the remnant of harm, per James Lileks, a columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, whom I read a lot but is probably not the arbiter of All Things Right, because he has Wrong Opinions.

Remember this: We can’t have relatively harmless caricatures of people in Chinese garb. That’s bad.

We can have vicious caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, which really upsets fundamentalist Muslims, because lolz they’re all backwards and don’t really understand the whole free speech thing and to stand with them you stand with those who shot up Charlie Hebdo YOU MONSTER.

There’s probably a logical fallacy there somewhere that negates the example. So find it quick before a penetrating thought enters your cerebral cortex.

I bring this up because for a while I have toyed with writing a parody of “And To Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street,” a fandom-based parody that would transport the street and its denizens to a rather popular world of a recently-deceased author.

But therein lies the potential of exposing people to even the remnant of harm. Even though said fandom world contains its own caricatures of those it is Socially Appropriate to mock because ain’t they all backwards in modern society, amirite?

An oh, the prudes.

They’ve put a brassiere on the camel,

They claim she’s more decent that way.

They’ve put a brassiere on the camel,

The camel had nothing to say.

They squeezed her into it, I’ll never know how

They say that she looks more respectable now.

Lord know what they’ve got in mind for the cow,

Since they’ve put a brassiere on the camel.

Nonsense verse from Shel Silverstein.

But apt. They’ve nixed the six from Dr. Seuss. Who’s next, and what will happen to them? (And yes, I know this was a self-nixing. As self-nixed as we can get these days, with mobs threatening at the door.)

The camel and the cow ought to be left unadorned, no matter if their bits offend.

If I don’t like a book, I don’t read it. I might suggest to others they avoid it for reasons, but if I see someone reading it, I’m not going to snatch it out of their hands and tell them they’re bad, bad people.

Because who’s behind me, waiting to snatch up what I’m reading?

Here’s another literary consideration for you:

We sound like the firemen from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. We sound like the people whom Bradbury laments when he said “The problem in our country isn’t with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

Probably another logical fallacy there. But, aha, you say. We’re not not reading. We’re just not reading the offensive books. Or publishing them anymore. We’re reading better, wholesome books. We’re avoiding things that could potentially expose us to harm. Or the remnant of harm. Which is the same argument the book-banners and book-burners used when they banned and burned the books that made them uncomfortable.

Same fire. Different Nazis. Damn right I just Godwinned this post.

So. Howya feelin’ now?