1. From a political angle, the culture wars are dispiriting because actual policy debates get sidetracked, but from a cultural angle they are equally dispiriting because actual culture gets reduced to crassly partisan terms. Consider again Seuss & ethnic caricature.
-
-
10. My sure-to-please-nobody solution is that Seuss should be in the public domain so the early books with racist/ethnic stereotypes can stay in print and be part of a discussion of the pervasiveness of racist iconography. More here:https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/seuss-racism-cancel-legacy/ …
Show this thread -
11. This is a good selection of drawings that really show the debt the funny animal tradition owes to blackface. Again: not an argument for "cancelling" (whatever the fuck that means) but rather for historical awareness.https://twitter.com/ben_towle/status/1379855208721874946 …
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
Respectfully, this is what libraries are for
-
Libraries don't print books.
- Show replies
New conversation -
-
-
That's fair - much like the ways that objects produced by many racist ideologies or regimes (take your pick) should be in places of study, not veneration. In other words...pic.twitter.com/Flja05RI6m
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
well I think that's silly. it's not like these books were in high demand. it's very easy to find copies, so keeping them in print is unnecessary. it's not like we're talking about book burning here. I quite liked the rest of your thread, however.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
This Tweet is unavailable.
-
That's true; if I recall correctly, the most popular of the discontinued books had yearly sales in the low thousands, while the least popular was in the less than a dozen range. For comparison, Green Eggs and Ham moves like 40k copies a *day*.
End of conversation
-
-
-
"The books should stay in print for adults." Why? Is there really such a market for children's-books-not-read-to-children that we need to make more of them? Plenty of books go out of print. No need to commercially exploit them to preserve the "cultural history."
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
Not all books stay in print. I can name a few of my childhood favorites only available on Gutenberg or nowhere now. There's a lot of copies of the Seusses in special collections all over the place. No need to use more paper, ink, & power to propagate them.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.