imagine....

It's been a while since I had a Potatohead toy, but if my memory serves part of the appeal of the toy was you could arrange the pieces any way you wanted to so as to design whatever your heart desired.  If you wanted the ears in the middle of the face you could do that.  You could interchange parts from different dolls if you wanted to.  The child's mind was the limit on the design of the finished product.

As I'm no longer in my child rearing years the truth is I don't really care what they do to the toys now a days.  Since Toy R Us closed I'm not even 100% sure where to go to get a Potatohead or anything else for that matter beyond logging on to Amazon.  I guess that's all I really need anymore anyway, but that's not the point.  The point is the IPhone seems to be well on it's way to replacing all kinds of physical toys anyway, so this is a bit of a futile gesture from a marketing standpoint in my opinion.  Digital Potatohead will probably make analogue Potatohead a relic soon.

Eh, whatever.  They obviously thought this was necessary or they wouldn't have done it.  A few years ago I accepted that I was living in my children's world and I was 20 years behind the times.  By the time I catch up I'll be a grandfather and then my grandkids and I can make fun of their parents as backwards and uncool, just like my folks and my kids do to me today.  I have to confess I'm looking forward to that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1mqg4C0awA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imFTk5exiDY

I guess it's true that you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain.  Or in this case you simply are around long enough to be found wanting.

I guess no one is perfect.  I'm spring loaded as a lawyer to be against censorship of any kind, but I've seen the books and the images and I can see where they might be found offensive.  But I'm looking at them with 2021 eyes, not 1950s eyes.  He was of the generation that had just fought two world wars and the propaganda regarding foreigners hadn't been all that endearing during that time.  That was the context he grew up in, so that explains it but doesn't excuse it.  I think the harm is to to take them out of context, treat them with more import than they have and judge everything based on a 2021 standard.  The books were silly rhymes to get kids interested in reading.  Yes his work in the 50s might have reflected some biases of the time, but this is the same man who wrote the Sneeches on the Beaches book in 1961 about diversity and inclusion.  Which grade do we give him?  The high or low?  Maybe just let it be and concentrate on the bigger injustices before we get o Dr. Seuss.  Just my opinion.

What people forget is the Freedom of Speech is the Freedom to Offend.  Always has been, there is no free speech if you are only free to say what everyone agrees with.

I'm not sure this is a Free Speech issue.  This isn't the power of government being used to shut down speech.  This is really a publishing company that is essentially self censoring for, most likely, market reasons.  The Free Marketplace of Ideas does presuppose the right to be offensive, but it does not insulate anyone from the consequences of giving offense.  I am within the Free Marketplace of Ideas and my right to speak up when I call my neighbor's wife a haggard troll, but he might respond by socking me in the nose and the Free Marketplace of Ideas does not insulate me from that.  Criminal law might punish his behavior, but that is a different issue.

Now we can argue whether the marketplace should be calibrated to protect the most delicate of sensibilities, but the truth of the matter is being offensive has consequences and regulation of those consequences is as much a violation of the freedom of expression as that is just another form of censorship.  Yes I believe people have the right to be offensive in speaking their mind, but I don't think it comes without a price.  People might disagree, argue back or even refuse to associate with an offensive person.  Haven't we experienced our own instances here on this very board? 

As a business man self censorship has been a watchword for me since before "cancel culture", Twitter or SWJs etc existed.  I'm careful about telling people which sports teams I root for because there are people out there who have need of a lawyer who might say, "Oh, you root for team X?  Well I root for team Y and I hate team X so I won't hire you."  It sounds irrational, but I understand that most purchase decisions are made emotionally, not rationally.  As a result I just don't go around telling everyone what I think all the time.  It is a tribute to how much I think of and trust the people who are on this board that I share as much of my inner self as I do here.  Ask most people I know in my real life what I think about politics, religion, art etc and you'll get a lot of blank stares and "I don't knows".  Thinking out loud is bad policy in most human endeavors save for brainstorming sessions in any event.  Consequently I talk a lot, heck I babble happy babble, but I don't say too much.  People say, "Boy Dave is such a great guy!  He's fun to be around and he listens to everyone" but not a one of them can tell you what I think.  It's just good business.  I have to thank my Uncle, another lawyer, for that.  When I went to law school the only advice he ever gave me is "watch what you say because people are going to think you're smart or something and they'll listen to and follow your advice.  Do yourself a favor and don't talk about what you don't know."

Anyone who owns a business is familiar with the old saw that "people do business with people they like."  Avoiding giving offense is simply good business.  It's as true now as it ever was.  Everyone gets to decide what offends them and they get to decide who they do business with, so from a crass business decision point of view the self censorship here is a rational decision.  They just don't need the grief and they fear the economic power that can be wielded against them the same as any company who has changed things due to the hue and cry of segments of the buying public.

Whether that grief is warranted is another debate.  However, I'm not getting too bent out of shape because there are just as many examples going the other way and this kind of thing has been happening all my life.  The Dixie Chicks got themselves "cancelled" by coming out against the Gulf Wars and talking bad about President Bush in France (which is a population that doesn't vote in the US).  Upon hearing about their opposition their fans dumped them in droves and used steam rollers to smash piles of their CDs while waving the flag and calling the Chicks "unamerican" and "against the troops."  They didn't "deserve" it any more than Dr. Seuss, yet they got it.  At least the Seuss thing is arguably self imposed.

Personally I get offended too, but I tend to roll over it and I do business with people I don't particularly like because I know they can get the job done.  However I don't fool myself into thinking I'm typical because I realize that nothing really bad happens when I get offended.  My world doesn't come crashing down, my wife and kids are still fine and the day goes on.  By the same token I don't sit around waiting to get offended either by an offender or the people who respond to the people giving offense.  You can argue these people are over sensitive to offense.  You might even argue these people are getting offended on behalf of people that don't seem to really care what Dr. Seuss says.  You can argue that their option is to simply not buy and read that particular book.  However their response, in the end, is their response and we can draw conclusions about them for their assertions as they can about us about our replies and on it goes ad infinitem.  Maybe some of us just have other things to do with our time but "virtue signaling" is universal.  We just all signal different virtues to different friend groups (read "bubbles" in 2021).  In all honesty that's kind of what we're doing with this particular thread, at least in part.  We're signalling our support for a particular idea to each other.  No one outside this little forum even knows we're talking about this, much less cares, so can you see my Enlightenment Hued Plumage?

Dr. Seuss is still out there to read, whether the SJWs like it or not.  I didn't see any mass, state sponsored book-burnings where piles of Green Eggs and Ham went up in kerosene soaked fury and effigies of Dr. Seuss were frog marched through the streets via torchlight parade and thrown on the flaming pile of literature.  I will read to my Grandchildren about Sneeches on the Beaches and the Cat in the Hat and they will be able to read it to their children and if one or two books is missing from the Dr. Seuss catalogue because a private company bearing his name and publishing his books made a decision not to publish the book anymore due to market considerations then so be it.  Perhaps future generations (and us for that matter) might even concede that the Free Marketplace of Ideas was employed and actually worked in this case.

Just my opinion.

Agreed, there are other issues when you are in business, but what bugs me is that certain opinions carry more weight than others and others are more "entitled" to be "outraged/offended" than me. That is the crux of it, everyone has an opinion and regardless of that opinion they should all carry equal weight.

We are all empowered to read/watch what we like and if something offends you, don't watch/read it, but please refrain from some sanctimonious homily about protection and/or offence and defending those that cannot defend themselves or some other perceived (and I use that word deliberately) harm/hurt/offence when all that they are actually doing is advancing their own zealotry and ego.

Now the obvious answer to that is that it has always been so, but stupidly when I was younger I thought we were advancing beyond that parochial stage, and now I see society falling back into its usual "burn the witch" mode, which I find both sad and disturbing.

We seem to be in a stage of Freedom disarmament akin to the military one in the UK during the Baldwin/Chamberlain era.

The Germans have illegally rearmed, ordered compulsory conscription, trained an airforce, violated the Washington Treaty wholescale, occupied and fortified the Rhineland, annexed Austria, and are preparing to take the Sudetenland.....

Our plans as a society seem to be to have James Taylor sing "You have a friend" and then wave a "peace in our time" banner while wearing a pussyhat.

What's funny is my kids didn't know who Pepe Le Pew was.  It's been a long time since he was on television with any kind of regularity.