Even good old Dr. Seuss’s zany imagination
could not have ever thunk a place as crazy as our nation.
Where decent folks, quite sane in fact, upon one knee quite bended
Fear the cry of “racist!” from the perpetually offended.
Who scream and swear and stamp their feet at everyone else’s sins;
They cannot create, they only destroy, so do not let them win!
So I can get why people think that And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street is racist. I personally don’t think it’s racist, but “a Chinese man who eats with sticks” is admittedly pretty insensitive. But this book? Seriously? You do realize that there is no place called “Bazzim,” and that the “Nazzim of Bazzim” is an entirely fictional, even Seussian creation, right?
I speak Arabic. I have lived in and traveled across the Middle East. I know more about and am more personally connected to the culture that supposedly was offended here than most, if not all, of the people calling for its cancellation. I can tell you right now, the Arabs are a very proud people, and they would be far more offended by the thought that they need to be protected from the cultural insensitivity of Dr. Seuss than they are from this book itself.
And with good reason. We are living in a moral panic over “racism,” “whiteness,” and “white supremacy” that will, in the fullness of time, be viewed with the same contempt and horror that we hold for the Salem witch trials and the red scare of McCarthyism. Sadly, I fear that the digital book burning is only just getting started.