The Cat in the Hat Bites Back

 

My friend Xerxes always gives me something to talk about. He is my window into the leftist soul. Without him, I would find it utterly unpredictable, because it seems mad.

I think it is significant that, in his latest column, he has come out, if obliquely, against the banning of Dr. Seuss books. He even expresses some qualified regret at the passing of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben. Sure, they “reek of southern slavery,” but he quotes a descendant of the original Aunt Jemima saying “"I wish we would take a breath and not just get rid of everything.” He is careful to put the sentiment in the mouth of a minority member, but still…

I am hopeful that, with Dr. Seuss, if not with Aunt Jemima, the book banners and the blacklisters may at last have gone too far. This is an attack on too many comfortable leftist people’s childhoods. 

For comparison, “conspiracy theory” was not always an automatic pejorative. It used to be fashionable to suggest conspiracies. I think the turning point came with Oliver Stone’s film “JFK.” It was so over-the-top with a particularly weak conspiracy theory that it discredited the entire genre for a generation or more. Now “conspiracy theory” is actually accepted as something immoral, and automatically worthy of banning. 

Something of the like may be happening with the attack on Dr. Seuss. Not a wise choice of target. It looks like overreach.

Xerxes terms this general movement to topple statues and ban books “revisionism.”

Revisionism, however, implies some reinterpretation of history. That is not happening here. Nobody before this wave of mass hysteria thought the South were in the right in the US Civil War, or that slavery or colonialism was fine. No vision has revisioned. I think it is safe to assert that nobody bought Aunt Jemima syrup or Uncle Ben’s rice thinking this was endorsing slavery. A more accurate term than “revisionism” would be “iconoclasm”; or, better yet, “memory holing.” This is a matter of erasing history, not changing our interpretation of it.

Erasing history is much more sinister than revisionism. It makes it easier to justify slavery or colonialism or Nazism in the present or future: the comparison, and the counter arguments, have been removed. Those who do not learn from history …

But I do not believe this is the actual motivation among the iconoclasts. That, after all, would be a conspiracy theory. It is just a fearful unintended consequence.

Xerxes points out that even great Biblical heroes did things wrong; even they could not withstand being judged by modern standards. He notes that King David was a murderer, a rebel, a terrorist.

This too is not the real explanation, however. It is not that morals have progressed, and we are judging our ancestors unfairly because “times have changed.” King David would have been as wrong to commit murder and adultery in his own time as in ours: check the Ten Commandments.

Nobody seems any longer to notice, but all the Old Testament patriarchs, and all the New Testament apostles, were sinners. Moses too was a murderer. Noah, as soon as he was rescued from the flood, got flaming drunk, then cursed his son. Lot got flaming drunk and had sex with his daughters. Abraham abandoned one son in the wilderness, and fully intended to slaughter a second. Having married his sister. . Isaac shamelessly favoured one son over another. Jacob cheated his brother Esau out of his inheritance. Solomon took a thousand concubines and sacrificed to Baal.

The Bible makes clear it is not condoning these sins. David may not build the temple; Moses may not enter the Promised Land. 

The point is that we are all sinners, even the most righteous among us. So long as we keep faith with God, our sins are not fatal—although they will not pass without punishment. 

The same error is often made by non-Catholics with respect to Catholic saints. Protestants object to Thomas More being canonized, because as Lord Chancellor he presided over the execution of Protestants for heresy. Is the Catholic Church supporting such practices? 

No. No Catholic saint is believed to be without sin; that would be the worst possible blasphemy. Canonization recognizes not the absence of sin, but positive acts of “heroic virtue.”

The same standard should obviously be applied to any figure from our past; no other standard is possible among humans. Robert E. Lee was a great general, and deserves recognition for that alone. Moreover, he sacrificed his own interests in refusing command of the Union Army rather than abandon his homeland, Virginia. He again behaved nobly in refusing to continue the fight as a guerilla war, and urging Southerners to lay down their arms and seek reintegration. Washington owned slaves; but he deserves eternal respect if only for declining absolute power when he might have seized it. This was heroism. Jefferson owned slaves too, but deserves eternal respect for having drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

I do not care so much for fictional characters with no story, like Aunt Jemima or Uncle Ben. But their disappearance is disrespect to the countless honest working people they represent, the many good-hearted nannies and waiters and cooks. And all for no fault of their own, but only because they remind others of sins against them.

And perhaps that is the key. It is not enough that the people we choose to remember must never have sinned. They must not remind us of any sins. 

It is not, then, that those doing the statue-toppling, banning, boycotting, and deplatforming, imagine that they themselves are without sin. This seems too improbable to be believed, or too monstrous. We all have a conscience, and know we have violated it. Unless, perhaps, these leftist mobs are all psychopaths. 

More probably, they hate to be reminded of sin, of the very existence of sin, because they are too aware of having sinned. And the sin our generation is conscious of is not slavery, and not colonialism--those were generations long ago. And so those are safe sins to condemn.

Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Dr. Seuss are being scapegoated. The sins of the community are being cast on them, and then they are driven out. It is the eternal way with scapegoating.

Dr. Seuss is being crucified for our sins.

A Cat in the Woodpile

This is a repost of an older blog entry that is newly relevant.

So today I learned that Dr. Seuss is racist. I loved him as a kid. I had no idea. I feel so dirty.

It’s probably true, too--by today’s standards. I went back and checked his book, If I Ran the Zoo, which has been mentioned in this regard. In it Seuss writes of trips to exotic destinations to capture exotic beats. None of the destinations are real, but the people of Zomba-ma-Tant all wear their eyes at a slant. It is racist nowadays to notice such things. The inhabitants of the African island of Yerka are drawn wearing grass skirts and nothing else.

Of course, logically, there is nothing inherently wrong with having eyes that slant, or wearing grass skirts. Some find both attractive. So why is featuring them racist?

I suppose Seuss might be accused of not seeing these exotic folk as fully human. That’s a stretch—it involves mind-reading. But then again, if so, he is at least fair-minded and non-discriminatory in his racism. Besides these portraits of East Asians and Africans, his child protagonist also hunts the Russian Palooski, apparently a rara avis, among heavily bearded men wearing high fur hats. Its belly, we are told, is blueski.

Another expedition is “to the wilds of Nantucket.”

The book is about imagining exotic animals and exotic places. Really, if you portrayed people all around the world as looking just the same, where’s your book?

The other “racist” book he wrote, I am informed, is And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street. This one features a “Chinese boy who eats with sticks,” again in the context of trying to imagine something remarkable and exotic. Yet Chinese boys do eat with sticks, and it would not occur to me that they ought to be ashamed of this. Who’s the racist here? Are you supposed to be ashamed of being Chinese, or African, and holding to traditional practices?

I suppose I should be offended too, as someone of Irish ancestry. The book gives the chief of police a distinctly Irish name, Mulvaney. Stereotype!

This all came up, as you have probably read, when a librarian in Cambridge Massachusetts actually rejected a donation of a collection of Dr. Seuss books from Melania Trump on the grounds that they were racist. Interestingly, none of those books was If I Ran the Zoo or And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street, although she cites them as the prime examples of what she objects to.

But then, she mentions “The Cat in the Hat.” Apparently the cat mocks black people. The librarian refers to a study by Katie Ishizuka, whose claim to fame, at least as the librarian’s source puts it, is that her husband is a grad student at UCSD. “She [Ishizuka] points out that the Cat in the Hat, perhaps Seuss’ most famous character, is based on minstrel stereotypes. ‘The Cat’s physical appearance, including the Cat’s oversized top hat, floppy bow tie, white gloves, and frequently open mouth, mirrors actual blackface performers; as does the role he plays as ‘entertainer’ to the white family—in whose house he doesn’t belong.’”

Now let’s be honest here. Ishizuka is probably right that elements of the cat’s appearance really do come from minstrel shows. Minstrels did tend to wear top hats, big bow ties, and white gloves, like the cat. But there are a lot of leaps of logic here.

First, it is a perfectly arbitrary re-interpretation of history to hold that minstrel shows were insulting to blacks. As I have written here before, they were thought of as pro-black in their day, and often banned in the South before the Civil War. They were especially popular with black audiences. They were, in principle, about as anti-black as the Rolling Stones, in emulating the American black music that they love.

Second, every other cartoon character before the Cat in the Hat came along wore a bow tie and white gloves. How is Seuss being racist, if he is simply following the conventions of his genre?

Third, there are good reasons for the convention. For example, fingers are hard to draw; gloves get you out of all the fussy detail. In general, these bits of costume have been tried and tested in the minstrel shows, and shown to be useful and popular. Why would you refuse to use them? White gloved hands make gestures clearer and more dramatic. Bow tie and top hat frame and draw attention to the face and its expressions.

Fourth, given that nobody else has noticed this minstrel allusion over the sixty years or so since the book was published, is it reasonable to assume that Geisel himself ever noticed this? Isn’t it the person who sees this and points it out who is being racist? As someone once says, if you keep hearing dog whistles that nobody else hears, chances are, you’re the dog.

But then, racism is not the librarian’s main reason for rejecting the books. It is, she says to the First Lady, “You may not be aware of this, but Dr. Seuss is a bit of a cliché, a tired and worn ambassador for children’s literature.” 

And this is the really striking thing.

How does a children’s book ever become “cliched,” “tired,” or “worn”? Think about it. For any children’s book, an entirely new generation of readers comes along every five to seven years or so, and they necessarily have not heard it all before. Nothing that was once good can possibly, for these intended readers, have become tired or cliched by the time they get to read it. Our familiar fairy tales can often be traced back to the bronze age.

Consider, too, objecting to the Cat in the Hat for perhaps having echoes of the minstrel shows. How can this be important if you are thinking about the actual readers? They were born five to seven years ago. They have never seen nor heard of a minstrel show. They will be perfectly unaware of any such references, even if they are there, and even if Seuss meant them maliciously.

In other words, this school librarian, whose job it is to find and curate books for children, has never taken a moment to think about the children. She does not care about the children in the least. It is all about herself and other librarians and their professional expertise. The library is there for her benefit.

This illustrates well the dangers of “professionalism.”

Fire them all.

And to Think That I Saw It in 2021

 

The current hysteria of blacklisting and censorship has now reached Dr. Seuss. A year ago, this sounded absurd. What still sounds absurd today is likely to be law tomorrow.

I managed to dig up online some of the offending images that have prompted this.

These are simply comic stereotypes. All figures in any cartoon format are comic stereotypes.

Imagine, for comparison, if you are Canadian like me, a Seuss illustration of a Canadian as a lumberjack wearing a red plaid shirt, suspenders, hobnail boots, and a cap with ear flaps? Or a Mountie uniform? We might roll our eyes at the supposedly ignorant Yank. But would we feel offended? Why?

Reality check: my Filipina wife and my half-Filipina children have no problem talking about slanted eyes. Are they supposed to be ashamed of them?

A Cat in the Woodpile?

So today I learned that Dr. Seuss is racist. I loved him as a kid. I had no idea. I feel so dirty.

It’s probably true, too--by today’s standards. I went back and checked his book, If I Ran the Zoo, which has been mentioned in this regard. In it Seuss writes of trips to exotic destinations to capture exotic beats. None of the destinations are real, but the people of Zomba-ma-Tant all wear their eyes at a slant. It is racist nowadays to notice such things. The inhabitants of the African island of Yerka are drawn wearing grass skirts and nothing else.

Of course, logically, there is nothing inherently wrong with having eyes that slant, or wearing grass skirts. Some find both attractive. So why is featuring them racist?

I suppose Seuss might be accused of not seeing these exotic folk as fully human. That’s a stretch—it involves mind-reading. But then again, if so, he is at least fair-minded and non-discriminatory in his racism. Besides these portraits of East Asians and Africans, his child protagonist also hunts the Russian Palooski, apparently a rara avis, among heavily bearded men wearing high fur hats. Its belly, we are told, is blueski.

Another expedition is “to the wilds of Nantucket.”

The book is about imagining exotic animals and exotic places. Really, if you portrayed people all around the world as looking just the same, where’s your book?

The other “racist” book he wrote, I am informed, is And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street. This one features a “Chinese boy who eats with sticks,” again in the context of trying to imagine something remarkable and exotic. Yet Chinese boys do eat with sticks, and it would not occur to me that they ought to be ashamed of this. Who’s the racist here? Are you supposed to be ashamed of being Chinese, or African, and holding to traditional practices?

I suppose I should be offended too, as someone of Irish ancestry. The book gives the chief of police a distinctly Irish name, Mulvaney. Stereotype!

This all came up, as you have probably read, when a librarian in Cambridge Massachusetts actually rejected a donation of a collection of Dr. Seuss books from Melania Trump on the grounds that they were racist. Interestingly, none of those books was If I Ran the Zoo or And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street, although she cites them as the prime examples of what he objects to.

But then, she mentions “The Cat in the Hat.” Apparently the cat mocks black people. The librarian refers to a study by Katie Ishizuka, whose claim to fame, at least as the librarian’s source puts it, is that her husband is a grad student at UCSD. “She [Ishizuka] points out that the Cat in the Hat, perhaps Seuss’ most famous character, is based on minstrel stereotypes. ‘The Cat’s physical appearance, including the Cat’s oversized top hat, floppy bow tie, white gloves, and frequently open mouth, mirrors actual blackface performers; as does the role he plays as ‘entertainer’ to the white family—in whose house he doesn’t belong.’”

Now let’s be honest here. Ishizuka is probably right that elements of the cat’s appearance really do come from minstrel shows. Minstrels did tend to wear top hats, big bow ties, and white gloves, like the cat. But there are a lot of leaps of logic involved here.

First, it is a perfectly arbitrary re-interpretation of history to hold that minstrel shows were insulting to blacks. As I have written here before, they were thought of as pro-black in their day, and often banned in the South before the Civil War. They were especially popular with black audiences. They were, in principle, about as anti-black as the Rolling Stones, in emulating the American black music that they love.

Second, every other cartoon character before the Cat in the Hat came along wore a bow tie and white gloves. How is Seuss being racist, if he is simply following the conventions of his genre?

Third, there are good reasons for the convention. For example, fingers are hard to draw; gloves get you out of all the fussy detail. In general, these bits of costume have been tried and tested in the minstrel shows, and shown to be useful and popular. Why would you refuse to use them? For example, white gloved hands make gestures clearer and more dramatic. Bow tie and top hat frame and draw attention to the face and its expressions.

Fourth, given that nobody else has noticed this minstrel allusion over the sixty years or so since the book was published, is it reasonable to assume that Geisel himself ever noticed this? Isn’t it the person who sees this and points it out who is being racist? As someone once says, if you keep hearing dog whistles that nobody else hears, chances are, you’re the dog.

But then, racism is not the librarian’s main reason for rejecting the books. It is, she says to the First Lady, “You may not be aware of this, but Dr. Seuss is a bit of a cliché, a tired and worn ambassador for children’s literature.” 

And this is the really striking thing.

How does a children’s book ever become “cliched,” “tired,” or “worn”? Think about it. For any children’s book, an entirely new generation of readers comes along every five to seven years or so, and they necessarily have not heard it all before. Nothing that was once good can possibly, for these intended readers, have become tired or cliched by the time they get to read it. Our familiar fairy tales can often be traced back at least to the bronze age.

Consider, too, objecting to the Cat in the Hat for perhaps having echoes of the minstrel shows. How can this be important if you are thinking about the actual readers? They were born five to seven years ago. They have never seen nor heard of a minstrel show. They will be perfectly unaware of any such references, even if they are there, and even if Seuss meant them maliciously.

In other words, this school librarian, whose job it is to find and curate books for children, has never taken a moment to think about the children. She does not care about the children in the least. It is all about herself and other librarians and their professional expertise. The library is there for her benefit.

This illustrates well the dangers of “professionalism.”

Fire them all.