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Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

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Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#521

Post by mushbino »

hintymad wrote: post #347

I was wondering if Americans learned history of other countries in school. HN users or Americans in general probably think China is a totalitarian country, but even Chinese students are taught in both elementary and high schools, repeatedly, that an authoritarian regime always started with moralizing everything, always started with telling its citizens to hate their neighbors, and always told their citizens that misi…

This is a wildly inaccurate, simplistic, agenda driven take. I was going to give some additional perspective, but you've covered about 40 topics, and all of them poorly.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#522

Post by proc0 »

refenestrator wrote: post #384
hintymad wrote: post #347

I was wondering if Americans learned history of other countries in school. HN users or Americans in general probably think China is a totalitarian country, but even Chinese students are taught in both elementary and high schools, repeatedly, that an authoritarian regime always started with moralizing everything, always started with telling its citizens to hate their neighbors, and always told their citizens that misi…

History is written by the victors in all cases. If Hua and Deng didn't win against the Gang of Four, you'd have a different history of the cultural revolution. Fortunately, they won. America's won too much, even when we're wrong or stupid, and our historical frame has suffered.

History refers to what actually happened, victors might write history books, but at least in modern era everyone can write their own version and have it out there. The point is I think Americans have little to no World History knowledge because education has been steadily deteriorating and seems to now be culminating in what we can observe as an attack on STEM. Not knowing World History has led to this, but now let's see what happens when Math undergoes a similar change of focus.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#524

Post by jasonv »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #62

About 5 years ago a friend of mine was saying, "yeah, it's bad at the universities but it doesn't affect the real world." Pretty funny how quickly things accelerated. I'd like to get off this ride.

I disabled my Twitter account tonight.

I’m pretty sure my HN account will be next. I’m not going to solve this, but I won’t drown in it either.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#525

Post by ncallaway »

nph5667 wrote: post #434
o_v_o wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 6 of Dr. Seuss's books, and ones that most people haven't heard of. If you actually look at the content of the books, they are clearly racist and demeaning to those they make caricatures of. And in any case, it was not a sudden "canceling" or anything approaching that. Seuss's estate, managed by his family, made the decision after much deliberation to cease the publication of only six books due to the content. Y…

The problem is that you call it "clearly racist". If that is so clear why it took months to decide? In reality it's not that clear and you know it. You just moved a goalpost a little to include something that yesterday nobody complained about to become "clearly racist". And tomorrow will be something else.

Do you think they spent months deciding whether the works were racist?

Or, is it possible there's an interpretation of the sentence (and a perfectly reasonable one) where they spent months deciding whether they should stop publishing a publication that they had decided was racist?

The decision matrix might have been more complicated than: "does the work contain racist content".

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#526

Post by Ekaros »

legitster wrote: post #106

I think nearly every reasonable person agrees: - Particular illustrations have not aged well - The content itself nor Dr. Seuss can be accused of malice - The offending content is not really a high risk of perpetrating future malice - It's completely within the right of the publisher to not want to profit from these books anymore But at no point did it seem like anyone made the point that you can't read or enjoy the…

> - It's completely within the right of the publisher to not want to profit from these books anymore

So they just need to stop printing copies. They have absolutely zero rights to stop reselling of those copies already on market. And if they do, they should be punished by removal of all of their copyright rights.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#527

Post by nine_k »

hintymad wrote: post #347

I was wondering if Americans learned history of other countries in school. HN users or Americans in general probably think China is a totalitarian country, but even Chinese students are taught in both elementary and high schools, repeatedly, that an authoritarian regime always started with moralizing everything, always started with telling its citizens to hate their neighbors, and always told their citizens that misi…

But the US have started as a strict official theocracy of Massachusetts, and also highly religious other states, like Pennsylvania (even though Quakers were not as oppressively moralizing).

This moralizing aspect runs very deep in the US, and religious, righteous fervor is more widespread than one might think, covering much of non-church-going population. Human imperfection is still seen as a degeneration or a disease; it's just being Catholic, or Black, or gender-queer is not seen as an imperfection any more. But breastfeeding a baby in public still is :(

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#528

Post by dc2k08 »

hintymad wrote: post #347

I was wondering if Americans learned history of other countries in school. HN users or Americans in general probably think China is a totalitarian country, but even Chinese students are taught in both elementary and high schools, repeatedly, that an authoritarian regime always started with moralizing everything, always started with telling its citizens to hate their neighbors, and always told their citizens that misi…

The critical race stuff is getting more and more sinister and anti-white.

https://www.unz.com/article/review-of-robin-diangelos-white-...

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#529

Post by christophilus »

moonchild wrote: post #515
nph5667 wrote: post #29

What bothers me is the speed with which this process - "accused -> convinced -> executed" happens. We are not discussing things anymore. Today, you could tweet any accusations, and, no matter how ridiculous they look at first, it will lead to a race of who is taking them most seriously. Something definitely is broken. Look at what happened to the "okay". 4chan forced that meme 5 years ago in what they thought is a mi…

> audience gasped in disbelief when one of the sketches included "o"-word Sorry, what ‘o’ word? I'm seriously asking.

Oprah

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#530

Post by nzmsv »

mushbino wrote: post #521
hintymad wrote: post #347

I was wondering if Americans learned history of other countries in school. HN users or Americans in general probably think China is a totalitarian country, but even Chinese students are taught in both elementary and high schools, repeatedly, that an authoritarian regime always started with moralizing everything, always started with telling its citizens to hate their neighbors, and always told their citizens that misi…

This is a wildly inaccurate, simplistic, agenda driven take. I was going to give some additional perspective, but you've covered about 40 topics, and all of them poorly.

Of course. Or in other words: "I didn't read Pasternak but I condemn him"
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