Please Cancel Dr. Seuss
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
198.84703
Summary
Dr. Seuss has been accused of being a racist white supremacist for his depiction of brown, black and Asian people in his children s books, but is he actually a progressive anti-white globalist? Is this even a thing?
Transcript
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dr seuss books i'm sure many of you know i grew up reading dr seuss books and i still have several
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oh the things you can think turns out it's oh the things you can't think dr seuss so it turns out
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the publisher will not be publishing several of his books anymore because it's basically because
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it showed brown black and asian people so leftists are celebrating basically essentially this
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cancellation this book burning really even though it's the publisher they're burning their own books
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but here's the thing dr seuss isn't the horrible racist white supremacist that they think he is
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turns out dr seuss was uh friendly to communism when you look a little deeper he hated nationalists he
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hated mussolini he hated hitler he was against jim crow and he even railed against we'll show later
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a little comic because he did a little political comics before writing children's books it was even
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against the idea of america first and tied that made that association with nazism what do you think
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about all this well yeah i mean initially it's like you know the conservatives are are jumping on this
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and they're like oh my god another person being canceled and stuff like that and then you think
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okay well there's got to be you know it's it's traditional traditional there's someone that's
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come maybe not upholding values but you know these are children's books it's been part of at least
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american life for for a few decades now so automatically the conservatives have to kind of jump to to
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like try to rescue that or at least uh speak up against the cancellation of the less but that left but
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then you find out you look a bit deeper it's like oh actually he's a guy what i'm saying is just
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because the left wants to ban this guy doesn't mean that he's based right it doesn't mean that
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he has anything to come with in fact it's actually he would be a progressive anti-white globalist
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yeah exactly but also the fact that someone like this who had a mentality that he'd and not every
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book as far as i understand it we i mean we have a couple not every book is political not everything
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goes into that but there were some books that he did you know do and and you know as you said that
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he spoke up against uh you know the you know america first nationalism and these kinds of things
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and uh railed on on other leaders that looked after their countries and stuff like that obviously
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right but uh the the item here though which i think is interesting uh is that he has he has been
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partially one of the guys helped to create the environment that we now are in which means that
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you're the left are now burning his books right so he was he was one of them essentially but to them
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that's not good enough why because he depicted people in the wrong way that's the only reason
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he just showed them in a stereotypical way the other thing that's really ignorant about this is
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a lot of people in in the way he did some of the drawings like that's just his style you'll see he
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draws white people in this weird kind of style i mean he railed against white people plenty by the
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way they won't say that in his political uh comics before doing kids books and stuff but it's just a
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style that he had but oh my god there's a brown person or a black person therefore
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uh it's racist here's one example of how he compared look at that america first is is nazism
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right so you know yeah the great u.s sideshow and it says underneath and on this platform folks
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those most perplexing people he's talking about i guess nationalists then the lads with the siamese
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beards unrelated by blood well that's not true a lot of americans actually have german blood
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um they are joined in a manner that mystifies the mightiest minds in the land so nazism and
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america first was apparently the same thing yeah so it turns out nazis basically not the cool uh
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kids author that i thought he was so it has brought that to my attention and i probably won't be reading
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any more of those books either but not for the same reason that these progressives actually last
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night the the same day that idahoans were burning masks they were actually leftists in san diego were
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actually burning dr seuss books yeah and then while the while all the while they were crying about
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book burnings and all this stuff you know turns out dr seuss would have been one of you if he were
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here today we can burn books now it's it's totally fine uh so speaking of this check this out and again
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these liberals they're very very aware even of the things and she mentions that the reporter here of
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uh well he spoke up against america first a lot of the things that we've seen under trump and stuff
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so what but the the woman being interviewed doesn't care about that it doesn't matter if you
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as much as what was he greek or what's his ethnicity obviously he looks white right so he's a white guy
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um dr seuss is white guy so how dare he just portray a little chinese boy uh with a chip with a
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traditional chinese hat and chopsticks right that was that's that's the crime anyway look at this uh clip
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here okay well let's show you the sorts of images we are talking about again dr seuss enterprises uh
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making this decision this is from one of the books that will no longer be published called if i
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ran the zoo the crime look at the crime caris ranger boba it's a long time and wrote an op-ed for
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the atlanta journal constitution called why schools should rethink dr seuss and you were just so thoughtful
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about this and i know there's this tendency to sort of you know it's either cancel culture or it isn't
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and and you you've just been so careful about it you talk about how you received sure
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she's been so nuanced soon to be born you thought it'd be a great addition to his book collection
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i mean i even remember how how my mother who who was not into dr seuss frankly at all but when i
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graduated i got the book everybody got right the oh the places you'll go right and and i know that's
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not one of them differently though about about that gift is that not dr seuss oh the places you'll go
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is not a book i do so i think there's a lot of learning that's taking place and a lot of awareness
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that is uh happening i wasn't as aware seven years ago when i had my son about the racist images in
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a lot of dr seuss's children's books but now that i've become more informed i think that it's worth
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thinking through a little bit more and maybe moving towards books that are more inclusive
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and more diverse there are just so many other options that do exactly what dr seuss books have
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done um that aren't seeped in racist stereotypes and so write your own i always love when they bring
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out this well i think we have a lot of learning to do and a lot of education and he was like okay
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like basically liberal brainwashing and then now we're we're progressing by just like hanging out one of
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the classic authors to drive and again dr seuss getting canceled now i'm like okay well good you
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like you do it do it right but i want to listen a little bit more so all the places you'll go is is
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a book i figured i mean i'm not saying that they don't never are wrong it has rainbows in it oh my
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god always are are wrong on cnn but uh you know anyway okay let's continue we can use those and help
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all children feel included so the six books that are no longer going to be so just wait a minute
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so just because dr seuss what three decades ago depicted a chinese boy in china about a chinese
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story chinese people chinese boys who are in america today would do not feel included and well
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wait a minute he's he brought those very cultures into the concept and the and the pool of american
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literature but you see that's not good enough now yes because they can't be betrayed in a certain
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way multiculturalism exactly that was just it right those who know dr seuss well on beyond zebra
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the cat's quizzer uh and to think that i saw it on mulberry street which has an image of an asian
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character raising a uh wearing i'm sorry a clinical hat this this is uh holding chopsticks we're looking
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at the cat in the hat um some are going to say these books could be used to teach about racism
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that the whole point would be you know you show a young child this and explain why why it is racist
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why this isn't how about we do this with white response to that books that depict white people
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so i think there's a time and a place for having those discussions and i think it is important for
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children to become aware of um our history and of uh some of our racist past yes we need to learn
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about uh uh basically that uh all blacks were victims and the whites were bad yeah and slavery okay
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gotcha but when children are learning to read and um are beginning their love of literature i think
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what's more important is that they see themselves reflected in the stories that they're reading
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except for white kids but that's just what he did as far as i understand it he he depicted foreign and
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different diverse people yeah they're traveling they're meeting different characters and oh there's
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an african or there's an asian i guess it's to to imply that they were they were different that's
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to crime right but they're but they're always different gonna make these people exactly that's
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just it whatever you do you can never wait you have to watch your knees just confused you need
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their approval before you depict anyone of their race but they can shit all over our race and depict
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us in all the worst possible ways i think she brings up the america first let me listen a little
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bit more here i think to build their self-confidence and their self-worth um by seeing experiences and
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stories that tell what they have seen and their experiences and there's a place for um critical
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analysis of dr seuss's work um by no means do i think that books should be banned i'm a former
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english teacher i believe in literature and the power of books but there's a place that we can have
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those discussions and look at dr seuss in a critical we get banned for having these discussions
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but when i'm thinking about my six-year-old son in first grade um or my daughter in preschool i want
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them to see books that reflect them i want them to know that their stories are important and that
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diversity and no one is stopping you from having those books no one ever if you don't want to buy
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those books you don't have to no one is forcing you to buy those books just don't buy those books
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buy books where kids look like you do that's fine does the lady in red say anything yeah i think
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dr seuss i think she does that i don't want them to see themselves reflected as monkeys and an apes
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from africa i don't think okay so basically the monkey he wasn't thinking like oh there's a monkey
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it's more indicative of what her mind is oh there was a monkey in the book okay he's obviously talking
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about black people i mean all right lady sure wow so so you know it was interesting i was reading a
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book review about um a book about dr seuss today and i learned something i did not know caris i
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realized how politically aware and motivated he was in a lot of his work frankly um so in the
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introduction to a book about dr seuss um his work during world war ii art spiegelman you know who
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wrote uh mouse right um explains how seuss's work and this is interesting he writes quote would rail
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against isolationalism racism and anti-semitism with a conviction and fervor lacking in most other
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american editorial pages of the period um he says seuss railed against jim crow charles lindbergh
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and the america just rail against charles lindbergh holy crap you can have him frankly
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which of course has such an echo of what yeah there was right there sorry i talked right over
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dude she mentioned america first there's lindbergh and the america first policy which of course has
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such an echo of what what we've seen now in this country um how dare we care about our country
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first america last how dare we care about america first it's nazis these people think it's nazis
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so did dr seuss so whatever you guys can have each other yeah good ban him then i don't care
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