The news this week of the death of Michigan’s “Eternal General” Frank Kelley prompted me to remember his visit to Wayland High School as guest speaker for the annual Junior-Senior Banquet.
I personally was in attendance at that event in 1966, admittedly impressed that little old Wayland somehow was able to lure such a VIP to break bread among us.
But what I remember most from that evening was something Kelley, attorney general from 1961 to 1999, said in attempt to make a joke that these days would create a political firestorm.
Mr. Kelley told a joke about a mentally impaired person, with the punch line being the man pointing to his head and saying “kidneys.” I have to acknowledge that the attorney general prefaced the joke by saying perhaps it isn’t good manners to make sport of such unfortunate individuals.
Back then we didn’t have a screaming part of society demanding Kelley step down or at least be censured for making such insensitive remarks. Back then we didn’t have “cancel culture.”
This segues into what I view as one of the most cynical and dastardly attempted manipulation by the hatred culture that I’ve seen, and that’s saying a lot. The not-so “fair and balanced” gas bags at Fox News have been trumpeting their outrage at apparent canceling of the beloved Dr. Seuss series of children’s books because they are thought to be racist or insensitive.
They conveniently have ignored or left out the truth about just who is doing this canceling. It is not libtard snowflake liberals, nor the Biden Administration.
As historian Prof. Heather Cox Richardson pointed out, “Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which is a division of book publishers Random House Children’s Books and Penguin Random House, announced that it would stop printing six of Geisel’s lesser-known works… because of their racist imagery. It will continue to publish the rest of Dr. Seuss’s books, as usual.”
The way Fox News and unfortunately too many of my “friends” on Facebook are putting it, the liberals have canceled anyone’s access to Dr. Seuss. It ain’t so, and the only reason why we’re hearing this is somebody out there wants to find another way to hate libtards and pointed-headed intellectual elites.
It was a business decision made by a corporate board of directors.
The way it stands now, we common everyday folks will no longer be able to buy and read six of more than 100 books Dr. Seuss produced in his long career. But I agree with expertise of former Henika Library Director Lynn Mandaville, who said in her column she generally opposes censorship.
It’s a lot like trying to keep young people from, using marijuana. Don’t forget President Richard Nixon 50 years declared a war on drugs and almost at the same time, a war on smut. We lost.
So I’ll quote broadcaster Paul Harvey here: “Get us out of wars we can’t win.”
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