eBay To Remove Dr. Seuss Books From Sale Over Offensive Imagery (thehill.com) 473
Online retailer eBay has announced it is working to remove sales of some books from Dr. Seuss over offensive imagery. The Hill reports: A spokesperson for the company told The Wall Street Journal that it is "currently sweeping our marketplace to remove these items." The spokesperson further told the newspaper that it would take time to review seller listings, and the company was monitoring new listings.
The move comes after Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced on Tuesday, which was the late author's birthday, that it will stop the publication of 46 books over racially insensitive imagery. The company told the Associated Press that ending the publications was a move to "preserve the author's legacy." The books reportedly include "McElligot's Pool," "On Beyond Zebra!," "Scrambled Eggs Super!," "The Cat's Quizzer," "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street" and "If I Ran the Zoo."
The move comes after Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced on Tuesday, which was the late author's birthday, that it will stop the publication of 46 books over racially insensitive imagery. The company told the Associated Press that ending the publications was a move to "preserve the author's legacy." The books reportedly include "McElligot's Pool," "On Beyond Zebra!," "Scrambled Eggs Super!," "The Cat's Quizzer," "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street" and "If I Ran the Zoo."
Because (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Because (Score:5, Insightful)
They sell MAGA hats, and Biden hats. One of those has to be rude or offensive to about 40% of the population. They also sell Playboy magazines, sex toys, and a million other rude or offensive materials. Here's a t-shirt that's bound to be offensive to someone..
https://www.ebay.com/itm/White... [ebay.com]
Or a simple search for "racist collectibles" gives plenty of outright racist collectibles, but they're still selling these...
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.htm... [ebay.com]
Re:Because (Score:5, Insightful)
Those may all be gone soon.
eBay will soon find that it is easy to hop on the wokeness treadmill, but impossible to get off.
Once you join the cancel culture, you will be deluged with demands: "If THAT was banned, then what about THIS?"
Appeasement didn't work in Munich and it won't work with the wokeful.
Re: Because (Score:3)
It's more of an inquisition to today's moral panic.
Re:Because (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect it has more to do with library books (Score:3)
Re:Because (Score:5, Interesting)
Investment opportunity ?
After years of searching I was finally able to secure a complete copy of the ancient Amos n Andy radio comedy series. It was a show about a community of black folks having a good time in each others' company. Some of them appeared to be ignorant and others would try to eddicate them, but their facts were usually wrong too. It probably appeared racist to newer generations. And yet, if they were all white actors, they would have done the same things, pretending to be dumb. I loved those folks. Now it is practically illegal to have the collection. They did some television too, I think, all hidden from your eyes now.
So grab somadat Dr. Seuss now before it's gone forever. Maybe it's offensive to some, maybe not- who are we to decide?
Re: (Score:3)
The radio version of Amos n Andy is on Archive.org, it entered the public domain a number of years ago. The TV show is still under copyright.
At the time it was being broadcast it was controversial and resulted in some large protests. So it's hardly just modern objections. Also, the radio version had many white actors, it was only when it moved to TV that most of the cast was black.
Re:Because (Score:5, Insightful)
I would apply the rule of major intent (that I just made up).
Amos and Andy is about ignorant Black people, made mostly for the purpose of having white people laugh at them. Doesn't pass muster. The Little Rascals was about a bunch of kids being kids. Yep, the black ones sometimes used broken English for comedic effect for the benefit of white audiences (and that's not cool) - but all in all, the series was not about that. Have at it, YouTube. America was a different place back then, but for the most part, we can handle it.
A Robert E. Lee statue is there so white people can pretend that the Confederacy was a legitimate nation - based on national identity. Not a breakaway state based on the preservation of slavery. Those statues went up in the 20th century as a statement against Civil Rights. No dice - take 'em down. A George Washington statue is there to celebrate the creation of a unique new country, based on a democratic system of self-government. Yep, Washington was a slaveholder. Yep, the constitution acknowledged and accommodated slavery - though it's since been amended in the attempt to fix that. The statue stays. Add a footnote to the history books, but don't rewrite it.
That Teddy Roosevelt statue at the New York Museum of Natural History is somewhere in between. The Indian and African figures were probably originally meant to be tributes to 'noble peoples', but they sure don't come off that way to modern eyes at least. A misfire by a clueless artist a hundred years ago. It oughta be cringe-inducing, not wounding. Whether it stays or goes is a tossup. Its wrongheadedness is almost its own disclaimer.
I think the Dr. Seuss 'chinaman' is in the Teddy Roosevelt range. A cringe-worthy misfire that's all the more cringe-worthy today. But it doesn't need to be banned. Likewise, the black porter in "Sullivan's Travels" whose racist portrayal almost ruins an almost great movie - about the evils of Captialism, no less. But not worthy of a ban. Or Mickey Rooney's truly offensive buck-toothed Japanese character in "Breakfast at Tiffany's". Just look away when he's on screen. Be embarrassed... be very embarrassed. But don't ban it.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:It's not about being offended (Score:5, Funny)
"it's about a racial stereotype that causes leads to the kind of thinking that gets us white supremacists."
I find that opinion to be terribly offensive and insulting. So what now? Can we censor you?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You could read my subject line (Score:4, Funny)
Show me one example in history where the people trying to ban books turned out to be the good guys.
The only thing that comes to mind was a 3-part documentary with Bruce Campbell about some 'Book of the Dead.'
Re:You could read my subject line (Score:4, Insightful)
Show me one example in history where the people trying to ban books turned out to be the good guys.
Germany banned sales and distribution of Mein Kampf until recently and they're the good guys, certainly compared to the guy who wrote it.
Dr Seuss books aren't banned, some of them just shouldn't be given to children who couldn't possibly understand the context of the racist caricatures.
Re: (Score:3)
As soon as you show me one example where the racists turned out to be the good guys.
Indoctrination (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:You could read my subject line (Score:4, Informative)
Growing up with those books, never seemed to lead everyone to thinking one race was better than another....no one was pushed into "white supremacy"...
It's almost as if we grew up as kids then, with more common sense about cartoons (hint: We knew in real life you didn't want to drop an anvil on someone's head), and that they were just whimsical, exaggerated drawings.
Seems no one was out looking for reasons to be offended from children's books.
Funny up till now, no one has been been documented as being warped from childhood due to these "insidious" Dr. Seuss books.
Yes, this is a recent woke thing, people just looking to be offended about something....and stupid corporate types afraid of a small but very loud band of perpetually offended types set on judging everyihing ever written and published or broadcast by their new extreme and narrow sense of what is acceptable....re-writing history is their little guilty pleasure.
This stuff never harmed anyone...geez.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not about being offended (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes parents generally are concerned about that sort of stuff because kids minds are easily warped with what they see around them. Attempting to regulate what kids see out of concern for their mental development so they do less stupid shit (and therefore know stupid shit when they see it) isn't world proofing. Quite the opposite. It's the core of parenting, giving the kid the knowledge of what in the world is normal and what is not.
Now you can replace stupid shit with racist shit, and you get precisely the dumb racist adults you see today. Those who don't think imagery of black face makeup servants working for a white male on a white horse isn't slavery because it's just good clean fun you saw in your own childhood.
Preventing a kid from coming into contact with the shit of the world isn't going to work. That doesn't mean we need to throw buckets of shit on top of them and teach them that shit is normal and they should go around spreading shit too.
Re:It's not about being offended (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude...
The problem I have with these types of actions is that the media gives NO context. People just hear "Dr. Seuss did BAD things," and they are never given the chance to decide for themselves. The media does not give any example of these "horrible and racist images" that Dr. Seuss included in his books. We're just supposed to accept that what the media tells us is the 100% honest truth of the matter. Practically no one is going to do their own research to think for themselves.
I did my own research, and McElligot's Pool made the cardinal sin of using the word Eskimo, and depicting someone in a COLD place wearing COLD WEATHER GEAR. Oh, the HORROR! It's like the "racism" of the word oriental. It's not racist. It's a direction. It's like saying "western" culture or "eastern" culture. People just get all huffy because it implies American/European exceptionalism that we have somehow decided that we are the "prime meridian" of the world, and so we determine that Asia is the orient. Sure, maybe the term Eskimo is offensive to people today. Was it offensive to the people back then? I don't know. The point is that we need to be given the evidence to make up our own minds how "horrible" these books really are.
McElligot's Pool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
By that same token, I think the prime meridian is racist. Why does London get to decide they are the center of the world? Ooooh! Let's cancel them!
Honestly, there are some real issues with some of the depictions, but most of them are like the adult messages in kids' movies like from Disney and Dreamworks. It's stuff kids won't even notice, but "woke" adults get all up in arms about. Kids don't know what racism is. Young kids meet other kids who look different from themselves, ask some honest questions, get their answers, then move on with their lives. They aren't trying to be hurtful, and most of the time, if no adult flips their shit over the situation, end up just accepting each other for who they are.
It's like when a kid falls down or something. Most of the time, they're fine until their overprotective parent flips out, runs to them, and acts like they almost died. At that point, the kid realizes they're supposed to freak out and cry.
I don't have a problem with what the Seuss estate is doing. If they want to stop publishing these books, then fine. My only issue is how the media is portraying the story without giving all the facts so people can think for themselves. Nine times out of ten, a person's imagination of what might have happened is SO much worse than reality.
Re: (Score:3)
And I'm glad you brought up the economy, because the very same people trying to tear down our culture are the ones who want to tear down our economy and who wrote the very bill you're complaining about. One might almost think they're the ones trying to distract attention away from what
Re:Because (Score:5, Insightful)
You can dress it up however you like, but when a single company controls a vast segment of the market, hiding behind the disingenuous argument that "they shouldn't be forced to [let other people] sell [what the company considers to be] rude and offensive materials" is functionally siding with the book-burners.
And I'd be careful where you go on that train. Some people consider public displays of homosexual relationships rude and offensive. Some pharmacists consider birth control rude and offensive. Some people consider Dr. Seuss's caricatures of white people rude and offensive. Green Eggs and Ham can be read as a sneering and contemptuous belittlement of the challenges those on the autistic spectrum face when being asked to step outside their comfort zone.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They're not book burners unless they're going after the extant copies.
Which is not happening.
They're deciding not to express certain things any more, which is after all their right. In fact, they can choose to [not] do it for any reason at all.
Compelling them to publish those books would be a violation of their rights to free speech.
I personally think what they should do is put those six books into a single volume with commentary, and sell it in the adult section as a cautionary tale, and for reference. If
Re:Because (Score:5, Insightful)
Multiple listing are on eBay right now for Mein Kampf but Dr. Seuss is too much for you?
Re: Because (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Because (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually proven, not emotionally justified by the pseudo-academic fantasies of modern sociology.
Re: (Score:3)
Funny....to date, not a single Dr. Seuss book has warped or ruined a child.
Show me the damage...seriously.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
but its not like these are modern works. if someone was drawing them now, mb they should face pushback. but you should never try and make history disappear.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
A company choosing what they will or will not sell is adhering to the first amendment. In case you don't know it, here is the first amendment in its entirety:
Re:Because (Score:5, Insightful)
A company choosing what they will or will not sell is adhering to the first amendment. In case you don't know it, here is the first amendment in its entirety:
You are 100% correct. I should have said the principal of the first amendment. If you want to be a corporation in the US, and have all those protections that we have just handed over to them, then they need to have a list of guidelines that they must adhere to -- no censorship being one of them, If you want to start a business and NOT have to adhere to that, then you can't be granted the corporate protections -- so I can sue your ass personally (amongst other things).
You can't have it both ways. A corporation in America has more protections than a US citizen -- that is BULSHIT. Don't get me started on taxes.
Re:Because (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you suggesting that this company should be FORCED to publish? Because that's completely different than free speech. I'm not allowed to silence your voice. As a good American, I should be willing to defend your right to be a booger-eating retrograde, if you so choose to be. However, that's not the question here. Am I allowed to FORCE you to say something specific? Because that's the position this company is in. They are choosing to cease the production of certain products that THEY OWN. Who are we to tell them otherwise?
FWIW, I'm of the opinion that some of his books should be revised. If you ignore the problematic areas, in terms of writing and cleverness, "If I ran the zoo" is an absolute master work of genius. Very few kids books can hold a candle to the brilliance of that book. Yes, there are a few very unfortunate wording choices and one or two illustrations that have become VERY out-of-step with today's sensibilities. Fine. Revise the book and release a second version. It wouldn't take all that much to bring it up to today's standards.
And don't give me any of that idiotic right-wing "there's nothing wrong" crap. When Seuss wrote that book, eugenics was fashionable, race riots were a good way to spend a lazy afternoon, and an illustration of a white guy getting carried around by 4 black tribesmen dressed up in full stereotypical clothing while he poses and hunts and bags an exotic animal was considered wholesome for children. Sorry dude, if you think that's ok, you're brain-damaged. The company is doing the right thing by stopping printing. It just aint right anymore.
Times change. You don't have to like it. They'll change anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
I was referring to eBay pulling the listings. Are there other auction sites -- sure. Can you name one off the top of your head? Actually, you are probably that 1 in 1000 that can give an alternative. To the average person though, eBay is THE auction site.
Also, to answer your question, no of course I don't think someone or thing should be forced to say or publish something that they don't like / agree with. Again, that is not what my complaint is about. eBay has gotten so big that they can make it very diffi
Re:Because (Score:5, Interesting)
Copyright is an artificial construct that stops other people from publishing things that are already otherwise in the public domain.
While the publisher has the right to cease publication, they don't have the moral right to deny it to the public by preventing others from publishing.
Re: (Score:3)
Your post started good, but by the end wandered off into unbridled fantasy.
Re:Because (Score:5, Insightful)
Your post started good, but by the end wandered off into unbridled fantasy.
I merely give a warning, I find the act of cancelling a beloved children's book writer to be as offensive as most things the far right does that trample rights.
If you wrote a book, and some group wanted it to be banned from sale because say - they didn't like a character - you would just think that's fine?
The biggest problem with cancelling Doctor Seuss, he was also hated by conservatives for his liberal outlook. Many considered him so far left as to be a communist. I have some friends who would not allow Seuss to be read to their children.
Funny how it is the far left who have succeeded in getting the man who was hated fiercely by the far right banned. The far right gets what they wanted all along. Strange bedfellows, amirite? Just fueling my conviction that as people go further and further right and left, they eventually become identical other than for the rhetoric.
No, if we want to correct wrongs, we don't try to rewrite history, to redefine everything. We make note of it and move on. Some groups have complained that the movie saving private Ryan was a racist movie because the characters were all white. https://www.empireonline.com/m... [empireonline.com] Apparently there were problems with female representation in it as well.
There might be some questions about why there weren't people of dark skin color in private Ryan. The answer is that soldiers were largely segregated at the time. Then segue into the Tuskegee airmen as a nice counterexample of American soldiers fighting for us, noting that we have grown.
The same with women. At the time, women worked as nurses, or when in the military, they freed up males for combat duty. They flew aircraft, some delivering planes to get ready to fight. Now today, they are priveliged to die for their country just like all men are regardless of race.
Side note - Bea Arthur she of Golden girls fame, was a Marine during WW2, she served as a dispatch at Cherry Point NC. https://www.nationalww2museum.... [nationalww2museum.org]
Stories like that are a much better learning experience than demanding idealogical purity. Because in some cases, the narrative is that say all women are starting from ground zero against the patriarchy. And that's not true. That's political narrative with an ulterior motive.
But hell - what do I know?
Re: (Score:3)
Now let's address my "incoherence."
Well, no. I can't be arsed. Suffice to say that you're screeching into the wind regarding matters on which I didn't comment.
Incoherent. Check your blood sugar.
Well now - you just pop in, call me incoherent in response to a post to someone else, then back out when I give you the citations and the rationale.
Brilliant! Or perhaps not. Carry on, mate.
Didn't read the article, cause (Score:4, Funny)
But they missed the Dr. Seuss classics: "Hitler was Right" and "The KKK took my baby away" /s
In all of history... (Score:5, Insightful)
In all of history, when were the book burners the good guys? Never.
How is refusing to sell a book "book burning"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mind you, Dr. Seuss was very much a liberal of his day, and these works clearly just victim of changing societal standards, but surely you can tell the difference between government thugs emptying libraries (both public and - at the point of a gun - private) of all "wrong think" and a website deciding that they don't want to carry a certain product.
Far more dangerous to my mind is the willingness of people to invent random "alternative facts" to support their beliefs when their ideology conflicts with actual facts. Screaming "fake news" at the truth because you don't want it to be, is the true intellectual descendant of book burning.
Need I also point out that the original decision made by his estate, was done last year? When a different man was President? I need to point this out because of all the partisan bullshitting, like Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy lying about "the Democrats outlawing Dr. Seuss" when they did no such thing. [newsweek.com]. To borrow from another classic, that's Orwellian Doublethink in action.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
"like Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy lying about "the Democrats outlawing Dr. Seuss" when they did no such thing."
"President Biden removed mentions of Dr. Seuss from Read Across America Day amid accusations of “racial undertones” in the classic, whimsical tales for children. Read Across America Day, started by the National Educational Association in 1998 as a way to promote children’s reading, is even celebrated on the author’s March 2 birthday. In his presidential p
Re: How is refusing to sell a book "book burning"? (Score:3)
And that is outlawing, how?
**NEWS FLASH!**
Apparently GW Bush and Clinton "outlawed" Dr Seuss, too!
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-... [newsweek.com]
Remember the uproar on Fox News when GW didn't mention Dr Seuss? I sure don't.
Re:How is refusing to sell a book "book burning"? (Score:5, Insightful)
As the publisher, they have the right to do whatever they want. It's their intellectual property-- if you don't believe it, consider the hue and cry over George Lucas personally breaking into every house that owned a copy of the Star Wars Christmas Special (Any statement that George Lucas was personally responsible for the near total extermination of all existing copies of said TV Special are entirely theoretical).
However, this isn't about the publisher any longer, this story is about eBay blacklisting those books-- surely, a well-meaning act, but getting much closer to banning. And immediately after banning, comes burning.
Any time a society decides collectively to ban a book, a statue, a person (and no, I don't mean Trump, who was given every opportunity to admit he lost, instead of trying to ignite a civil war, or Gina Carano who didn't understand that when you work for Disney, and you speak, you are held accountable to Disney standards, for better or worse), or an idea, serious concern is warranted, because this is the metaphorical precipice of a very slippery slope.
The Right has done everything in it's power to shame, humiliate, ostracize, belittle and in all other ways render irrelevant any idea or truth that they deem inconvenient-- but even they are careful about calling for something to be outright banned (aside from voting rights, minorities and the 50% of America that identifies with the Left).
The problem is, Dr. Seuss books (and only 6, not 46, who the #$@%* edits these submissions?!?) are being effectively banned for "good" reasons-- but you can't claim to have free speech as a society, and support banning of books. Doing the wrong thing for the right reason, is still doing the wrong thing. Next, we should ban any book that contains the "N" word-- because it's insensitive. Except that includes Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Uncle Tom's Cabin, and I don't know how many other classics. If you include "Negro", then you're pretty much wiping out every book from the 19th and early 20th century that had any form of diversity in it's characters.
So where do we stop? Do we add Mein Kampf? The Little Red Book? Should Ivanhoe be banned for containing too much Saxon violence (say it out loud)? If society deems "socialism" bad (without understanding what the word actually means), does that mean Bernie Sanders should be barred from public speaking? Who decides what is offensive? Fox News? MSNBC? CNN? Congress? A Gallup poll? Religious fundamentalists? All are equally terrifying.
As a society, we have a choice. We can decide whether to buy, or watch, or read any given book or tv show, or movie. We can face our past (and present), reasonably, and rationally. We can discuss with our peers and our children the differences between what was acceptable then and now-- we can talk about inequality, and what makes us all unique, and how to better understand each other-- or we can continue to stick our fingers in our ears and hum really loudly while pretending there's nothing wrong, and that we never made mistakes.
Telling someone they're racist because of the color of their skin, is ironic. Telling someone to not be who they are, lest they offend, is offensive. Neither is a solution.
I have been on this planet for 5 full decades now, and I can honestly say, at no time during my life, have racial tensions been higher-- and I was born long enough ago that segregated schools were still a thing. I remember the race riots in Miami. I attended a school system that had been forcibly integrated 2 years earlier-- and during the next decade, never encountered racism in that school system. As kids, we made fun of each others differences-- but we didn't hate each other. We knew we were different, but equal, and when possible, tried to learn from each other. When we disliked each other, it was for petty (or real) reasons that had nothing to do with skin color.
When I saw Song of the South as a child, or read Mark Twain's books, or read my all
Re:How is refusing to sell a book "book burning"? (Score:5, Funny)
Make Goatse Great Again.
Re: How is refusing to sell a book "book burning"? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:In all of history... (Score:4, Insightful)
I paused to see if she would work out the glaring flaw in that logic, but no, she thought that was a tight argument.
So I ask, what if I find the word 'the' offensive, do you get a warning for saying it? She laughed and brushed it off, 'Don't be silly'. What if I find your shoes offensive? If I don't like someone I can find something about them offensive and then you have to issue them a warning? It simply didn't click to her at all that an offence has to have some level of objectivity about it.
At the time I didn't think that much about it, but I slowly started to see this crazy logic creep into mainstream conscience. Some people simply lack the ability to grasp the concept of subjectivity.
Wokeness is a cancer on society. It will only lead to tears.
Re:In all of history... (Score:5, Insightful)
"If you give an inch, they'll take a mile."
The "take offense" thing can swing in two directions, its not just in the woke direction. The problem is the quote I gave though. No one has wanted to sit down and try and draw lines in the sand. Instead it's functioning under an insane warped sense of "I know it when I see it," which is how I think most people operated with the "Take offense" stuff prior to the 00's, but when you have HRs staffed with idiots out of say, liberal arts schools, their reality isn't the same as most people's.
Hence why you get people getting distraught because you used a "Master/Slave design pattern" and "that's offensive!"
Re: (Score:3)
Personally, I find taking offense where none was given to be deeply offensive.
Re:In all of history... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
C.S. Lewis
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Re: (Score:3)
First, I don't think 6 year olds typically go book shopping on ebay. If a child is shopping on ebay and has a credit card, I'm more worried about their home environment than I am about what books they might find.
Some of his wartime propaganda (not released under the name Dr. Seuss) was unfortunate by today's standards. Most of it is understandable enough (and who cares if his caricatures of Axis leaders offended them!) given the times, though I do find the treatment of Japanese Americans during the war offe
Re: In all of history... (Score:2)
This Woke BS is getting out of hand (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, political correctness and cancel culture is going to be the downfall of western society.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I know! That's what I said when they force me to give up all the slaves I owned. We had them for ages. This changing times and changing norms insanity has to stop. Next they're going to tell me I'm not allowed to beat my wife. It's insane!
Re: (Score:2)
Let the Book Burning Begin (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let the Book Burning Begin (Score:5, Informative)
This article is about Ebay removing used copies of this book for sale, and mentions that the publisher is also discontinuing them.
> Would that not be the free market deciding?
Ebay can prevent its sellers from selling legal and speech protected items- that's their right. I hope both sellers and buyers leave Ebay over this - that's the free market deciding.
Re:Let the Book Burning Begin (Score:4, Interesting)
It's fine if a publisher doesn't want to sell a book that is unprofitable to sell. There is a finite capacity to print books and they should print ones that they can stand by and profit from. But ebay banning sales of it? That's kinda creepy. While they are a private company and can do whatever they like, we should invoke the "private companies can censor whatever they like" line of thinking cautiously. Ultimately, private companies are responsible everything from communications to transportation to commerce. It is quite risky to have that infrastructure making value judgements on how people use it. Legal ones, yes. Value ones though...? That's where the line ought to be drawn.
I don't see any difference (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I don't see any difference
Here is the difference: eBay is a completely automated system that takes input from users and displays it on a web page. It functions the exact same way if you sell a book, or a sock, or a brick, or a rock. You can sell things here or there; you can sell things anywhere! And eBay works the same. eBay has essentially infinite capacity. If it needs more, the automated devops systems buy more and it makes more money. By comparison, a book publisher takes submissions, has human beings who decide what they
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This link is literally about eBay deciding to kill third-party sales. I know it is unfashionable to read the fine articles, but you could at least spend the time to read the Slashdot headline.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
It was caused by the publisher deciding to stop printing the titles.
Re:Let the Book Burning Begin (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it was caused by eBay being a bunch of illiberal, book-burning, virtue-signaling hypocrites. You can find an enormous variety of explicitly racist, hateful, and violence-encouraging stuff on eBay. But you cannot find Dr. Seuss books, because reasons.
Re:Let the Book Burning Begin (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, a simple search for "racist collectibles" turns up a ton of items that Ebay clearly has no problem with. I'm cool with them removing the Seuss stuff but they need to get rid of all that other crap as well. Otherwise they should leave it alone and not cherry pick what they think is offensive.
Re:Let the Book Burning Begin (Score:4, Informative)
Any private business or individual should be free to decide what they want to do with their business or life. It is perfectly within the publisher's right to decide to cease publishing certain material. That is perfectly consistent with the ideas and principles of a free market.
However ...
1) One single company or individual making a personal choice is not "the free market deciding." The free market is an abstract concept referring to many companies and individuals making many individual choices, by definition. "Consistent with" is not the same thing as "equivalent to."
2) It is not a contradiction to support and advocate for a free market while also exercising your right to freedom of expression to express discontent when a company does something you dislike. In fact, that is also consistent with a free market - since the only defining criteria for a "free" market is one that is absent from *government* interference. This is basically me saying the same thing as "The first amendment only protects you from government going after your speech. A private company doesn't have to give you a platform." In a free market you are free to boycott, to protest and to use your own resources to privately voice discontent when a company acts in a way that you disapprove of to your heart's content.
The Social Justice cult of Woke strikes again (Score:5, Informative)
Next up, Where the Wild Things Are [wikipedia.org] is getting banned for being insensitive to Furries. The Snowman [wikipedia.org] being banned for being racist to Caucasians.
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All I see are private companies doing what they think is in their best interests. That's the free market at work! Isn't the threat of consumer backlash exactly what you libertarians always claim will magically keep companies from selling us tainted food or poisoning rivers in lieu of government regulations?
You want Big Government to force The Dr. Seuss Foundation to print old books that no one wants to buy, and you want big government to force eBay to sell them! You'd have lost your shit if anyone
The questionable items will betemporarily replaced (Score:2)
By the VHS tape of that Beavis and Butthead episode where they play softball with a bullfrog.
Neither of the leads were harmed during the making of that classic episode.
No more common stories (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm reminded of the ST:TNG episode "Darmok", about a society that communicated through stories that were commonly known. If you didn't know the stories, you could not understand the people.
We are rapidly moving to a point where all of our shared stories are becoming forbidden knowledge, because "someone" was offended by what happened in the past. Not to mention the apparent need to re-define words so that, if you read the stories of the past, your understanding of them is clouded so you think the "correct thing" about what was said.
The negative stereotypes reported in the Dr. Seuss stories apparently took years of study to find. Otherwise, you would think people would have figured it out decades ago.
I think they did figure it out decades ago (Score:3, Insightful)
The Asian stuff kind of got ignored because we don't beat up on Asians like we do with blacks. It's become an issue probably because there's been a raise in hate crime against Asians due to a certain well k
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Now do the political party that supported slavery, Jim Crow, "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever", and a literal KKK member in Congress. When are you going to demand that we banish them from polite society?
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Sure, the word is bad. The sentiment is bad. It's one thing for a publisher to stop printing an unpopular racist book. But why would a financial transaction company care about the contents of books people buy and sell? Are "Gone with the Wind" or "Huckleberry Finn" or "Mein Kampf" blocked on ebay? Can I sell a book on ebay if it says that the earth is flat, or that the 2020 election was stolen?
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If only black people would stop using that word too, and openly on video where it's apparently cool.. Unless you're not black, then it's automatically horribly offensive. Now that is the actual dictionary definition of racial discrimination.
Context matters (Score:2)
Still available on Ebay: (Score:5, Informative)
Over 30,000 listings for actual bad-guys-in-WWII memorabilia, including action figures.
(circumspect language to avoid a filter that makes sure you can not see certain words)
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(circumspect language to avoid a filter that makes sure you can not see certain words)
Oh you mean the not see filter -- the one that makes sure we do not see the word that they want us to not see.
It sure is a heil of a filter!
Really? (Score:2)
No one is forcing anyone to buy them so is just seeing them for sale so disturbing to some people that they have to be removed? That's just crazy.
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You still don't get it.
This is about the free market. Random House just wanted to purge some crap from their back catalog and score some easy publicity. eBay is reacting because they don't like being known as the hot place to buy racist children's books.
See, the market knows that catering to racists is a losing proposition. Normal people avoid racist garbage, the people who buy it, and, most importantly, the companies that make it and the places that sell it.
We don't want your racist trash. We don't gi
Well, that backfired. (Score:2)
"As a High Ranking Member of Dr. Seuss: We Own the Rights to Him Inc, I'm uncomfortable with the thought of Dr. Seuss being seen as a racist - let's pull a few of his books from publication so hopefully they won't accidentally cause a fuss and taint his legacy".
"Hm, yes, I agree, that could be bad for us. Shall we quietly delete the offending books from the catalog?"
"No, let's announce what we're doing to the media. I'm sure this won't turn into one of those weeks-long moral panic shitstorms."
But what's really scandalous... (Score:3)
Dr. Seuss's The Pocket Book of Boners [wikipedia.org].
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The twelve-year-old part of me kept giggling as I read that short Wikipedia entry - even knowing what the word meant in context.
SIX of 46 (Score:2)
Not 46 books, 6 books. Sloppy summary.
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EXACTLY. It's SIX (6). Not all of them. Sloppy summary.
This is what it is (Score:3)
If literature offends, it must be destroyed.
Cn anyone tell me exactly why we must destroy anything considered offensive? And where does it end? Remember how we cheered on the scientists who raced to preserve AGW information during the early yers of the Trump administration? It didn't fit with the Republican's ideology. So the scientists were sving it from destruction. Oddly enough, a Doctor Who quote comes to mind.
" You just want cruelty to beget cruelty. You're not superior to people who were cruel to you. You're just a whole bunch of new cruel people"
Oh the money you'll make! (Score:3)
Time to check those childhood closets friends, as books like "If I ran the Zoo" are going for over $500 [amazon.com] on Amazon from used book sellers.
Back in my day... (Score:2)
Or... (Score:2)
If people are actually offended, as opposed to being told they are offended, do not buy the books.
That and I think this bollocks is all about saviour syndrome, from people who donâ(TM)t want or need a saviour.
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No one was buying the books. That's why Random House decided to stop printing them.
Then you and your racist buddies threw a fit like a spoiled toddler.
The only people triggered here are the racist shit-bags.
Kimmel Is Right (Score:5, Insightful)
Jimmy said "this is how you get Trump reelected", and he's right. Keep going after meaningless "microaggressions", and many are going to turn on you. You keep taking offense where none was given, and expect to be praised for it, while all you're doing is making enemies.
Woke is the new religion (Score:5, Interesting)
Wokeness is the new religion. If we go back in time a little ways in the United States, 50 years will do, a much larger percentage of the population were religious. Specifically, of the Christian faith. One of the main functions of religion within society is to codify and propagate morality. Things like loving your neighbor, not coveting another man's wife, doing unto others as you'd have them do to you, etc. So in the recent past, a large portion of the population attempted to live by these kinds of morals, and also try to instill them in others.
For the last number of decades the percentage of religious people has been declining in the United States. Yet, for people who are very empathetic and are strongly led by their conscience (yes, that is a trait that varies in intensity across the population), they have a strong desire to be moral and try to instill morals on others, but they do not have any codified set of morals to go by. We now have these very nebulous things floating out there, like racism is bad, emotionally hurting a person because of their sexual preference is bad, harming our environment is bad, preventing people coming into our country because of their citizenship is bad, etc.
Because these things are not codified to the extent that morals are in various established religions, there are no rules, guidance or leaders to help delineate all the nuances and shades of gray in these sorts of things. People interpret these loose sets of items I described above with various levels of zealousness, depending on the amount of emotions that are invoked or their personal experiences as victim.
So to sum up all I've said, organized religions are being replaced with being "woke", which is such a nebulous and non-codified set of morals that it cannot be applied in any kind of universal or consistent manner. Because of that we will see more and more irrational, inconsistent, unfair and, eventually, dangerous behavior manifest over time. Essentially there is a "religion vacuum" which is being filled by being "woke".
Moral Panic (Score:5, Interesting)
The National Post explains: Here are the 'wrong' illustrations that got six Dr. Seuss books cancelled. [nationalpost.com]
Ebay won't sell you a book with Eskimo Fish (that's racist!!!) [thequint.com] but they do offer several Alabama Coon Jiggers [ebay.com].
In the same week that the copyright holder stopped publishing six Seuss books, and eBay banned their sale, Amazon revised an icon [news.com.au] because some people imaged that it was really a H*tler face. Democrats insisted that a CPAC stage designed by Democrats [foxnews.com] was secret N*zi symbolism.
In the 1980's American Christians imaged there was a Satan worshipper hiding under every rock. Known as the Satanic Panic [vox.com], it is characterized variously as mass hysteria [wikipedia.org] or moral panic [wikipedia.org]. That propensity for paranoid groupthink expresses itself in active generations today as the conviction that racism is everywhere; in a drawing of a fish resembling an Inuit, in a stage, in a cardboard box icon. Thirty years from now, a generation hence, now will be known as the time of the Great Racism Panic.
The root cause for the outbreak of unhinged cancel culture is that western society has become too tolerant. See the Paradox of tolerance [wikipedia.org]:
In other words, cancel cancel culture.
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Democrats insisted that a CPAC stage designed by Democrats was secret N*zi symbolism.
Wrong. It's not secret. They literally put it on their [later day] uniforms. And CPAC is a thinly disguised celebration of white nationalism [huffpost.com]. (Can't trash the Jews too much while we're funding them as a means of keeping Islam from dominating the middle east...)
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Only by morons.
A list of people and things Donald Trump tried to get canceled before he railed against 'cancel culture' [cnn.com]
You are the dumbest people on the planet.
"Cancel culture" is just the free market in action.
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Re:Wokeness is cancer (Score:4, Interesting)
It's important that we learn from mistakes of the past and grow as a society. I don't agree with silencing the past but I'm also not a fan of continuing to make the same mistakes. Acknowledge when something was wrong, make improvements, move on.
Re:Wokeness is cancer (Score:4, Insightful)
Traditional values of family - oh you mean banning gay marriage? Not having affairs? No divorces? Two guys who get married and want to adopt a child from foster care, they are sure as heck giving that kid a better change in life than what they had in foster care! Why should you or I care what they do? The GOP hasn't been financially conservative since before Reagan. And those values... please, the GOP are bending over backwards to kiss the ass of one of the most immoral public figures we've ever dealt with. No one can claim moral superiority while following that guy. Rule of law - assuming all people of color are criminals.. got it!
We need more independent representatives that are not slaves to the party. 98% of our elected representatives really only serve about 30% of the population. Many of us want fiscal responsibility and social reform.. our only choice shouldn't be all in on either side.
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Here it is folks! The average racist tool! Too stupid to realize that they're engaging in 'cancel culture' by calling to 'cancel' ebay for engaging in 'cancel culture'!
Watch! Soon, he'll cry about freedom and the free market while simultaneously calling for big government to step in a force people and businesses to conform to his ideals!