Or: Dr. Seuss and the Hygiene Hypothesis.
I know I'm late to the party when it comes to commenting upon the Dr. Seuss brouhaha. Forgive me, but it took me this long to track down some of the forbidden books so that I might revisit the so-called "offensive content" - and its context - for myself. Unlike The Very Smart Set, I'm not inclined to follow, sheep-like, whenever the clerisy declare that some popular American writer or artist is "problematic." No: our blue check twits are currently encouraging a moral panic that outpaces the Red Scare in its cultural destructiveness -- and its detachment from anything resembling reality. I'm not going believe that the books that taught my brother and me how to read are racist simply on these commentators' say-so.
So I read four of those books again (I couldn't find the other two): McElligot's Pool, If I Ran the Zoo, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, and Scrambled Eggs Super. My conclusion? Some of the content would never pass muster today because it's dated at best and - yes, in a few cases - racist at worst. If I Ran the Zoo is the biggest offender on this score (for relative values of "big"). But in none of these books - not even Zoo - were the questionable bits so omnipresent that they completely overshadowed the benign elements of the text in which they were embedded. In fact, in three out of the four books, I could only find one page that featured words or art that would offend the politically correct. Why pull a book out of print for one controversial page out of 20-30? Why not simply add an introductory disclaimer (if you absolutely must)?
And yes, before some Very Smart Person says it, I know this was the choice of the Seuss estate, I know they have the right not to publish certain works if they choose, blah blah blah. It's still overkill driven by a craven and eminently critique-worthy fear of sociopathic bullies -- and I think it's only going to do more damage in the long run to the people our censors say they're trying to protect. According to the hygiene hypothesis, asthma, allergies, and autoimmune conditions may be more common in the developed world because, given our public sanitation and almost obsessive personal cleanliness, we no longer train our developing, antifragile immune systems to fire on the right targets. Similarly, purging our cultural space of anything deemed offensive seems to be making people more upset and uncomfortable, not less. Granted, some SJW's claim to be traumatized by, say, simple mentions of the n-word because they know the victim card confers the power to intimidate -- but I also think the younger folks who've been swept up in this are dead serious. Because they have not been taught how to confront less egregious instantiations of cultural insensitivity in a measured, confident way, they sincerely process every such "microaggression" as a Thanos-level threat. This is not good for them; it locks them into a state of permanent anxiety that prevents real empowerment and productive activity. Better, I think, to allow kids to encounter the questionable in the relatively safe context of old picture books than to bubble them up and deny them the chance to build their resilience.
"That's easy for you to say, RG." Is it, though? Do you think I've never had the experience of being the only X in the room? Because I have bad news for you: as a conservative-leaning Catholic Christian, I get "hit" all the time in fannish spaces - and in many of the books and comics I read - with casual, unthinking misconceptions about my political and religious beliefs. Do I complain about it? Yes. Do I wish writers and my fellow fans would actually do some research instead of embracing cheap stereotypes? Of course. Does the "hitting" inspire me to lift up people and works that actually get my worldview right? You bet. But I while I hope that fandom one day learns to respect the conservative minority in its midst and will continue to write posts that challenge fandom's endemic bigotry, I will never ask that any book that contains a problematic representation of conservatives and/or Christians be pulped for the sake of my feelings because, over time, I've learned to attribute such nonsense to ignorance -- and I've learned not to take them as intentional, malicious attacks on me as an individual. (At least, not without very good evidence.)
What's more, I have a couple intellectual questions about the assumptions beneath these censorship efforts that I think deserve real answers. First, have we actually demonstrated that pop culture has a significant impact on our behavior or beliefs? Or is this something we merely assume because it appeals to our common sense? Do our books/movies/television shows/etc. actually shape us as a people, or do they merely reflect a cultural reality that already exists? I don't think this is an idle line of inquiry. After all, I've been told repeatedly that there's no reliable evidence that violent video games lead to increased aggression in children. And those historical figures who've launched campaigns warning the world about the corrupting influence of novels/games/comic books/etc. are - in fandom at least - universal targets of ridicule. So what's the logic here? How can pop culture make us racist -- yet not make us violent, antisocial, or sexually promiscuous?
Secondly, how exactly does a drawing of a Chinese man wearing a conical hat and eating with chopsticks cause harm? What is the mechanism? And is this result truly inevitable? Traditionally, many Chinese did wear conical hats -- and even today, many Chinese do eat with chopsticks. What's the harm in observing something that, in certain times and places, is true? Mere acknowledgement of cultural differences in dress and eating style need not lead to disparagement of those differences (fortunately for any school that's held a multicultural fair). It certainly didn't in the context of And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. The boy in said book added the Chinese man because he thought such a person was more interesting than one of his American neighbors. "Orientalism!" cry the activists. "It's objectifying the so-called 'exotic'!" Or, if you would permit me to blow your minds, maybe this depicts a spark of child-like curiosity that could be fanned into a fire of genuine cultural appreciation and - just maybe - friendship and peace. Yes, the visual shorthand in that Mulberry Street illustration would not be used by an artist in current year -- but a child growing up today is not going to look upon such a picture and conclude that the Chinese are rightful targets of prejudice unless he is told by idiot adults that this is what the picture means by default. Or, to put it another way: we as teachers, parents and mentors can, through careful guidance, absolutely change how the young folks in our charge interpret a book like Mulberry Street and thereby squelch any bigotry before it takes root. The Wokerati seem to regard pictures and words as magic charms that instantly re-wire our brains at the moment we encounter them, but that's not what happens at all. Top-down processing exists -- and it can be molded.
Ultimately, am I saying suck it up and deal? When it comes to openly prejudicial actions perpetrated with malice aforethought, no. When it comes to lingering inequalities that should be tackled with smart public policy, no. But when it comes to art? Yes, especially if you have to pull out an electron microscope (or take a class in critical theory) to see what's offensive -- or if you have to yank the troubling thing out of its exculpatory context in order to argue that it's beyond the pale. By all means, do what I do and - within reason - argue for more accuracy and more sensitivity in our current books. But it's crossing a bright line to say, for instance, that a historical work like McElligot's Pool deserves to be unpublished because on one page, the point-of-view character imagines a school of "Eskimo fish." No, we don't use the word "Eskimo" anymore. Yes, we now perceive it as derogatory. But lots of innocent people didn't see it that way at mid-century. All a teacher or a parent need do is point out that we don't use that word anymore because we wish to respect the Inuit people -- and then move on to enjoying the beautifully illustrated story about a boy with a sense of wonder who doesn't judge a pond by its outward appearance.
And ICYMI, here's the second stream in my dystopian fiction series. Here, we discuss The Giver and its relationship to the worship of perfect order, the rise of safetyism, the tension between rationalism and romanticism, and many other topics!
? Plenty. Cedar, in my opinion, really gets it. She doesn't talk down to her young audience; rather, she invites them into our adult world by giving her adolescent protagonists mature responsibilities and, overall, demanding more. Linn - whom you may remember from last year's 
(reviewed 
