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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

#841
post #213

A bit off-topic, but I use Green Eggs and Ham to help teach my friends English here in Asia. It works pretty well, since there is quite a limited vocabulary. And it's pretty magical! I can have someone reading aloud from the book quite fluently, with extremely limited english skills, after only a few hours. The other part is, because of the superior illustration skills of the author, people quickly understand the dif…

Children's literature is undervalued by second-language learners. It will expose you to common language and vocabulary items that are, in a formal academic context, those you would be the least likely to encounter. (I can read an article in French usually without needing the dictionary on topics as diverse as cryptography and art history, but I don't know the words for some common kitchen utensils.)

Learned French reading first Tintin then Le Petit Nicolas.

There were no words for crypto, but both had words for kitchen utensils and art history!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Petit_Nicolas

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

#842
This is a foul collection of dire comments. I find it pretty asinine that the the personal choice of private individuals about how to distribute IP has brought out this vitriol. That is their choice, and I’m gobsmacked at the moral panic here. Don’t you Milton Freidman conservatives believe in the Right to Choose?

Oh you thought Biden did this by edict? You’ve just swallowed some KBG propaganda. You think that classic literature is being burned at the stake? Go look at those titles and decide for yourself.

From where I stand, the comments in this threat represents the worst of fear-mongering, retrograde thought. Ought we resurrect Briar Rabbit, because it was unfairly cancelled?

I’ll be laying atop the pile of books when the Firemen come to burn them. That isn’t this, and that isn’t now. Rush Limbaugh was out crying about apocalypse of Political Correctness since the early 90’s. It was a messaging strategy to defend the power of his demographic against moral pressures. I can’t believe this pervades the HN ethos. Rush was Wrong.

For the record I am black, and I don’t particularly care for being depicted as a zoo animal in children’s books. I’m not demanding those books be ‘disappeared’, but I appreciate the Seuss estate’s choice to retire these titles, and defend eBay’s ability to choose which products they distribute on their marketplace. How did a movement who’s message was ‘stop police from killing unarmed black people with impunity’ unleash this farce?

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

#843
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its not a cultural revolution, its a cultural intimidation, where groups have come to realize the real power of social media is to name, shame, and blame. there is no middle ground here, you cannot debate anything, as they consider no moral higher than what they profess. this is some serious Soviet Union type stuff being done to rewrite the world, no limits on how back one can go for an accusation, and then erasing p…

What’s happening is exactly the same as the Chinese cultural revolution.

I've heard reports from Chinese immigrants who lived through the Cultural Revolution and are saying the same thing - maybe not that what's happening is "exactly" the same but that we're very much heading that way.

We should be very worried, and we need to take action.

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

#844
The thread is lost if we narrowly focus on the distinction between public and private censorship. Yes, the distinction is important, but it is not the entirety of the issue.

Consider the following:

The gov. has discriminatory hiring practices.

The private sector has discriminatory hiring practices.

Yes, the state's monopoly role is an important distinction, but it does not mean that we cannot object to a culture of intolerance or the normalization of intolerance.

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

#845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are market-dominating book distributors like Amazon and eBay effectively deciding what people can and cannot read. The fact that a few people might still be able to view images of these books (illegally, as they are copyrighted) on some tiny closed forum on the internet isn't a real comfort. In the Soviet Union, there were also tiny isolated pockets where "forbidden books" were surreptitiously copied and read.…

> These are huge book distributors like Amazon and eBay effectively deciding what people can and cannot read. The books are available on Amazon. > This is book-banning, pure and simple. I'd wager that sales of these six books will be higher in the next week than they were in the last two years combined.

Amazon has started to remove books on political grounds as well: https://ncac.org/news/amazon-book-removal

The Dr. Seuss books were banned not just by eBay but also by their publisher, which holds the copyright, so you can still buy them used on Amazon... for $1,500+ per copy: https://www.wane.com/news/prices-skyrocket-for-dr-seuss-book...

The reality is that these books will not be accessible to the vast majority of future American readers. This is just a fact at this point.

It doesn't even matter if Amazon keeps selling them, as the publisher banned them, so the number of (legal) copies will dwindle to zero. Also, with Amazon starting to ban books on similar political grounds, saying "but Amazon didn't ban this specific book (yet)" or "you can still get a copy at some obscure second-hand stores" is burying our heads in the sand and ignoring the reality of what is happening.

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

#846

As dis-heartening as this story is, compared to a couple of years ago, it is encouraging to see lots of comments from people beginning to wake up to what is going on with this craziness and not being modded here. Free speech is about protecting the right of the un-popular and views that some may find utterly repugnant. Why? because, as we are seeing with all of the woke craziness, when you don't stand up for everyone…

There's two kinds of freedom: freedom from and freedom to. These are some children's books that contain illustrations that some people find offensive and the publisher (and sellers) are deciding they no longer want to be associated with and sell to children. There are internet forums where the images are available and people can view them without the police knocking your door down, and I'm sure these are available in…

Everything is offensive one way or another. It's a personal opinion and there are way too many people in the world. Even Good Morning can be seen as sarcastic or any text in English can be see as colonialist.

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

#848

As dis-heartening as this story is, compared to a couple of years ago, it is encouraging to see lots of comments from people beginning to wake up to what is going on with this craziness and not being modded here. Free speech is about protecting the right of the un-popular and views that some may find utterly repugnant. Why? because, as we are seeing with all of the woke craziness, when you don't stand up for everyone…

There's two kinds of freedom: freedom from and freedom to. These are some children's books that contain illustrations that some people find offensive and the publisher (and sellers) are deciding they no longer want to be associated with and sell to children. There are internet forums where the images are available and people can view them without the police knocking your door down, and I'm sure these are available in…

> These are some children's books that contain illustrations that some people find offensive and the publisher (and sellers) are deciding they no longer want to be associated with and sell to children. There are internet forums where the images are available and people can view them without the police knocking your door down, and I'm sure these are available in 2nd hand bookshops.

Here is something from 1981 for your daily dose of irony: https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/opinion-censors-play-...

"The Pico case is only part of a pattern of intense local battles erupting around the country as opposing forces arm themselves for what could become a destructive war over books in America’s schools and school libraries. The insurgents, whose ideological supply lines extend deep into the right wing and its quasi-religious satellites, are well organized; and the advocates of civil liberty in the nation’s schools are reading reports from the front with alarm. “The community of the book,” as Random House vice president Anthony Shulte calls it, is beginning to prepare for a long struggle whose outcome is by no means clear."

...

"Unfortunately for the nation’s authors, their publishers, and readers, the AAP report understates the magnitude of the movement to ban books. Ira Glasser, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), calls the proliferating challenges to books “an epidemic of future shock” among individuals who “have little more in common than insecurity and fear of a world they can no longer understand.” Judith Krug, director of the ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Committee, is alarmed that the number of reported incidents of attempted book censorship in school and public libraries ballooned immediately after the Nov. 4 election of Ronald Reagan, and has continued at a record rate along with the rising fortunes of the new right."

[p.s. I'ts even better than I thought. I missed the sidebar on the above 1981 page on Seuss:

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/the-dr-seuss-contro...]

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

#849
post #75

My work sent out a memo today regarding what pronouns I'm allowed to use. We're in the middle of a cultural revolution, and the current trend seems to be for rapid acceleration rather than moderation.

The company I work for did something similar at the end of last year. We had consultants who went over everything, and made a massive document of all sorts of things they deemed "problematic". Along with a week long of seminars/training/workshops on sensitivity/inclusion/etc. - Everyone had to list what pronouns they wanted people to use. In slack / our email footers everything. This was not optional. We were also to…

Serious question: did your workplace also eradicate Mr. and Mrs., which are short for master and mistress?

Folks are renaming git branches, but not these honorifics, and I’m curious about the logic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_honorifics

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

#850

As dis-heartening as this story is, compared to a couple of years ago, it is encouraging to see lots of comments from people beginning to wake up to what is going on with this craziness and not being modded here. Free speech is about protecting the right of the un-popular and views that some may find utterly repugnant. Why? because, as we are seeing with all of the woke craziness, when you don't stand up for everyone…

Nobody if importance is going to stand up. Ask J.K.Rowling

Quick she's been canceled! Get her a book deal!
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