OPINION:
Today’s leftist cancel culture is like rust. It never sleeps; it only corrodes. The grievance-mongers and umbrage-takers of the cancel culture will leave no statue or stone unturned in their ceaseless search-and-destroy culture wars.
A week ahead of the annual Read Across America Day on Tuesday, the school district in the Washington, D.C., exurb of Loudoun County, Virginia, kicked children’s books by Dr. Seuss to the curb, citing what it called “strong racial undertones in many” of them.
Dr. Seuss (the nom de plume of Theodor Seuss Geisel) wrote more than 60 books, beginning in 1937, the best known among them being “The Cat in the Hat,” “Horton Hears a Who” and “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.” He died in 1991 at the age of 87.
How those “strong racial undertones” went undetected across eight decades, until now, was left unexplained by school officials in Loudoun. Nor is there any evidence that generations of youngsters who grew up reading them became raving racists.
The ridicule from the public was as swift as it was deserved, forcing a Loudoun school spokesman to hotly deny that Dr. Seuss’ books had been banned and to insist that they were “still available to students in our libraries and classrooms.”
The books merely were being broomed in favor of encouraging “our young readers to read all types of books that are inclusive and diverse and reflective of our student community, not simply celebrate Dr. Seuss.” (Never mind that Read Across America Day, a literacy event begun in 1998, was expressly designated for March 2 to coincide with the children’s author’s birthday.)
President Biden shamefully joined in on the cancellation Tuesday, pointedly omitting any mention of Dr. Seuss in his presidential proclamation of Read Across America Day.
All of this came on the heels of toymaker Hasbro’s announcement last week that it was switching to a gender-neutral rebranding of Mr. Potato Head and Mrs. Potato Head — toys that date back nearly 70 years — to just Potato Head.
That Feb. 25 announcement also was met with deserved disdain, which prompted Hasbro to hastily reassure consumers that the toy spuds would retain their distinct gender identities.
That’s good news because if there were no more Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head, there likely also would be no more Tater Tots, but it’s not likely to sit well with either the self-styled “nonbinary” wing of the woke left or with the California state lawmaker who on Feb. 20 proposed forcing department stores to stop separating children’s toys and clothing by gender.
The takeaway from both the Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head cancellations (not to mention last month’s assault on the Muppets or this week’s banishment of “Mallard Fillmore” by Gannett) is that cancel culture must be put in its proper, ignominious place.
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