Years ago, I used to read a book to my (half-Chinese) daughter entitled, “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street”. It was Geisel’s first children’s book. As you probably know, that book has now been cancelled. Others have already pointed to the utter insanity of this book still being under copyright. (It was first published in 1937.) Extending copyright protection beyond 20 years makes America both less efficient and less equal—a lose/lose proposition.
The story itself is a celebration of diversity. The world is so much more interesting when there are all kinds of people to look at. Here’s the offending picture:
The picture is a bit offensive by today’s standards, but most of the problems were solved years ago. Here’s what the picture looked like in the edition I own, from 1991:
America used to be able to do things. We sent men to the moon, built subways and airports and interstate highways. We built houses for working class people in coastal cities. Now we’ve forgotten how to do those things, although it’s rumored that there are manuscripts explaining how that are preserved in lonely monastaries hugging the windswept coast of Maine.
In the old days, we knew how to fix a book that had become dated. Perhaps “sticks” should be “chopsticks”. But it doesn’t matter, as today we’d rather just cancel the book and engage in self-righteous moral grandstanding.