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Unread 04-02-2021, 07:51 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is online now
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Location: New York
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I think that the announcement by the Suess Foundation was entirely appropriate. If you're going to do something on principle, then it makes sense to announce it. They didn't just want to quietly phase out the books and hope no one would notice, but they wanted to make a point. Either it was sincerely held principle, or it was a business judgment that the entire Seuss line was being tainted by a growing perception that Seuss was a racist. By publicly singling out a handful of titles to withdraw and stating their reasons, the suggestion is that all of Seuss's books have been reexamined with modern eyes and the remaining books pass muster. Rather than avoiding Seuss in general, because you never know where the racism will crop up, people can now be comfortable that the Seuss books remaining for sale are suitable for politically correct parents and their children.

For those of us who happen to think they made the right decision to withdraw those books, to criticize them because we assume that they made the decision for less principled and pure reasons than our own, strikes me as unfair. I would hope that all for-profit businesses decide to make business decisions, even if also financially motivated, that comport with the more elevated moral principles of those of us whose finances are unaffected.
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