“Dr. Seuss is racist” viral posts have been around for years and years, usually based off his war-time propaganda posters, and a little bit off of his pre-Seuss career as a cartoonist, so I doubt that was the major concern. If they were going for that, they definitely Streisanded themselves, since pulling the books put them (and the problematic imagery therein) front in center for a lot of people who otherwise wouldn’t have seen them. But I don’t think it’s outrageously unlikely that the Seuss estate simply reached a tipping point where “preserving Theodore Geisel’s legacy” finally lost out over “we’re marketing these books as appropriate for toddlers, maybe we shouldn’t do that with the couple books that have blatant racial caricatures in them.”
It is, in fact, exactly the same problem - people using bogus complaints about “woke” to distract the population from the heinous bullshit they’re inflicting on this country. The reason Maher (and by extension, you) get so much pushback in this thread is because you are (unintentionally in your case, not so sure about Maher) feeding that distracting narrative by taking complaints like “Woke mobs banned Dr. Seuss” seriously.
Uh, seems that you are using a trumpian debating technique, no I’m not talking about the idiocy of not helping with the fires, I was referring to the “amazing” coincidence that the fire chief in LA is a woman. (A woke DEI appointment, wouldn’t you know?)
Not my problem when guys like Maher are willfully ignoring what is going on when claiming to know what woke is. or to be more precise, it is really naive nowadays for Maher to ignore how the right wing has been using “woke” all these years.
Well, you tell me if it is a valid frustration, so far, every item that has come to the front here in other discussions is actually based on a dishonest framework that comes from the right wing also, and it is repeated with very little awareness by middle of the road guys, unaware (?) that the right wing is playing Maher and others like a fiddle.
Or right wing trolls pretending to be. Either way, they are being stupid if they tailor their opinions around what some extremists think.
It’s like looking at the antics of the most deranged animal right advocates and deciding that it’s okay to be cruel to animals to spite those people. It’s just as bad if not worse.
I love the idea that Maher is basing his politics on his reaction to ‘’‘left wing’‘’ people on fucking Twitter.
And I have no reason to think that isn’t true.
Yeah, saying “crazy far left people have bad, illiberal ideas - therefore I will become a conservative” is stupid.
Saying “those crazy far left people have bad, illiberal ideas. Therefore I will stick to my liberal, center left values” is good.
Saying “right wing people are unhinged therefore I will go as far left as possible” is also stupid.
You can point and laugh at the antics of the most deranged animal rights advocates, and then maintain your position that animals should be treated humanely, and that the guy down the street who tortures them should go to jail.
As far as I can tell, the rampant wokeism (wokism?) the right is upset about includes things like Black people or transgender being represented in media or having jobs in the public sector…or really anywhere. How many of them would give a shit about pronouns were it not for rightwing trolls getting all butt hurt about them? I think it’s ridiculous that someone out there thinks master bedroom is an offensive term, but, hey, language changes. That’s just how the euphemism treadmill works, but it’s nothing to get upset about. I do think Maher has bought in to the propaganda. I do think Queers for Palestine is hilarious though.
Maher “fuck you woke kids” copy paste. Nothing different and nothing deeper. Maher’s been milking this cash cow non-stop for the past decade. He never even needs to go near reality (video of him struggling to define “woke” and instead bloviates about a made-up Lincoln controversy).
Just milk the cow, and yell about the kids to old people.
Edit: To tell you the truth it reminds me a lot about right-wng populist talk radio. Its all Moral Panic, fear mongering, and scapegoating of young progressives. He knows his words don’t matter to his audience, as long as his tone is snide and he rallies his audience against a hyperbolic straw-man image of young progressives.
Bill Maher is however pushing back against “woke” in general, and if he hears something is done because “woke” he’s against it. Even when he hasn’t bothered to actually look for himself what the issue is. (For example, obviously racist caricatures from Dr. Seuss a long time ago.)
He’s defending the torturers here (to continue the metaphor). Maher is making stupid conclusions and picking the right wing side here. There is nothing center-left about defending racism. His only defense is that he’s “only a comedian”.
False. The queue was a Manchu custom. The Manchu were a completely different ethnic group from the Chinese, speaking a completely unrelated language. The Manchu Qing dynasty imposed wearing the queue on the Chinese, who hated it. The 1911 Chinese Revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty, all the Chinese guys cut off their queues, and it became immediately obsolete and anachronistic for anything post-1911.
Apparently Maher has many soulmates in what the Financial Times calls “corporate America.” In a recent article they note the celebrations going on in the face of Trump’s victory: no more woke!
Here’s the excerpt:
Wonderful to be “liberated,” eh? I’m guessing these same guys would enjoy Maher’s special (which I haven’t seen, but your excerpts are no doubt representative).
Sure, but “divide” makes it sounds like a both sides thing. Are there examples of democrats saying that red states should be denied help following a natural disaster?
Regarding the Dr. Seuss book, that particular book treated certain ethnic groups as animals in their zoo, including said “Chinaman”, and the wollygog Black Africans, also shown in the image posted by @crowmanyclouds in post 745. Maybe putting people in zoos isn’t the best image to convey in 2025.
Getting upset over “master bedroom” seems weird, but then so does freaking out about “main bedroom”. How about “parents’ bedroom”, because that’s what it typically is? Or “biggest bedroom”? Or “the one with its own bedroom”?
Because frankly kids don’t know it as the “master bedroom”, and adults only use that in real estate transactions. Main bedroom is perfectly accurate, and a lot more direct and sensible.
Bill Maher is still stuck thinking being “politically incorrect” is cool. He stopped being funny to me about the time that show was canceled, and my few exposures since just reiterate that position. He’s a grumpy old man who thinks he’s a hip, exciting trendsetter. He thinks he’s George Clooney, but he’s just your goofy neighbor down the street.
That’s an interesting bit of historical perspective, and I thank you for it. But the Dr, Seuss cartoons (sorry for misspelling his name earlier) reflected the common perceptions at the time, not necessarily the reality. During the war era that followed, caricatures of the enemy were frequent and merciless.
But then there’s this:
The Dr Seuss Museum in Massachusetts has become embroiled in an escalating fight over an 80-year-old Seuss illustration of an Asian man, which culminated at the weekend in the local mayor condemning complaints about the picture as “political correctness at its worst”. Dr Seuss racism row escalates over illustration of Chinese man | Dr Seuss | The Guardian
You don’t even have to watch the special. The relevant quote is one I already posted:
I know when people hear the word “woke” it triggers them and I understand that. It started out as a great thing – alert to injustice – we’re all for that. But words migrate. I can’t control that. And now it’s been taken over by stupid white people.
Right. You can no longer be “crippled”. You can no longer even be “disabled”. I don’t even know any more what the fuck you’re supposed to be called, although I’ve heard “differently-abled”. And they go to work in “accessible buildings” and live in “affordable housing”.
By those standards, I live in unaffordable housing which I can somehow afford, and manage to access many public buildings even if they’re somehow deemed “not accessible”.
No, I am not unsympathetic to the plight of the needy. I do my share of contributing to worthy charities and doing everything else I can within my means to help my fellow citizens. But fuck this bullshit with reforming the language.
