Welcome back to The David Pakman Show.
The new battle lines in the culture war, at least for the last 48 hours, have become Dr.
Seuss.
Now I'm going to play a bunch of clips for you if you haven't been following the latest
fake scandal.
It is indeed Dr. Seuss, the children's author.
Republicans are claiming that Dr. Seuss has been banned, canceled in particular by a Virginia
school district.
Now, first of all, the story is all based on a claim that's not true.
Read across America Day is a day of reading children's books.
Historically, it had lots of Dr. Seuss material in 2017.
This changed to be more diverse.
In 2019, a study looked at Dr. Seuss's books and found that characters of color are very
underrepresented.
They make up only two percent of the human characters and that almost all of those representations
of minority characters a play on stereotypical tropes and portrayals in particular of Asians.
And that's true.
There's no question about that whatsoever.
Of course, Dr. Seuss books written in a different era, but there is no denying that that is
absolutely the case.
So the Virginia school district, they didn't ban Dr. Seuss.
They didn't burn any books.
They did decide not to connect.
Read Across America day to Dr. Seuss specifically.
Now, some people were happy, some people were not.
But Dr. Seuss wasn't banned.
Dr. Seuss wasn't canceled.
This is now the issue to the right in fighting this council culture war that is totally trumped
up and fabricated.
And they are getting an insane amount of mileage from it yesterday.
This is just a few hours on Fox News.
OK, think about everything that's been going on in the world in the last 24 hours and look
at how much the story was.
Dr. Seuss on Fox News.
Here is Congressman Jason Chaffetz appearing on FOX to express outrage.
Jason?
Jason, where do you come down?
Give us 30 seconds.
Well, I haven't gotten past the assassination of Mr. Potato Head, but that one I still haven't
gotten past.
And now they're trying to take out Dr. Seuss.
Come on, John.
These are these are the icons I grew up with.
Yes.
Fox ran a major segment during this hour called Cancel Culture Comes for Dr. Seuss.
A Fox News reporter asked Biden press secretary Jen Psaki about Dr. Seuss present.
Another question about Dr. Seuss, the only idea that you can bring up Dr. Seuss.
And it is a national read across America day.
It's also Dr. Seuss birthday.
Both former Presidents Obama and Trump mention Dr. Seuss in their read Across America day
proclamations, but President Biden did not.
Why not?
Fox News characterized this portion of the press briefing to stir up even more controversy
by captioning it quote, Biden White House dodges question on Dr. Seuss.
Later in the day, Fox News tried to stir up more controversy by pointing out that Barack
Obama once praised Dr. Seuss.
Let me just quote Barack Obama in 2015 saying, quote, Pretty much all the stuff you need
to know is in Dr. Seuss.
Now, is Barack Obama racist for for quoting Dr. Seuss there and patting him on the back
for the work?
Can I add why?
I don't think so.
One other angle to this.
There are so many kids right now.
We're falling behind in their reading because of this.
And it's a great place to spend the night in the classroom.
And Dr. Seuss, this company could be just spreading that message.
Educate our children, encourage literacy.
Interesting stuff, David.
It's good enough for Barack Obama.
It's good enough for me and the rest of America, I think.
Then they do another segment on Dr. Seuss referring to the demand of Congressman Jim
Jordan to do congressional hearings on Capitol Hill culture vis a vis Dr. Seuss, which is
also with us as well.
And, John, from the political stage, this is this has gotten political right because
Jim Jordan has now stepped in and he's saying that there's a dangerous trend happening with
kanthal culture in this country.
He's now calling on Congress to examine this cancer culture that he says is sweeping America
there.
Everything is political these days, you know, whether it's world culture, whether it's cancel
culture, whether it's extreme on either side here.
But in the morning yesterday, they had a reporter or anchor or I don't know what role she is.
Carly Shimkus reporting that six Dr. Seuss books will no longer be published and have
been canceled.
Now, it is true, but it's Dr. Seuss Enterprises that decided for itself that as a business
decision, these six books contain hurtful, stereotypical portrayals of people.
So they decided for themselves they're not going to publish them anymore.
That's called free market cap and.
Listen, people can complain or praise a company and a company can listen to or ignore those
complaints, but that's free market capitalism news, by the way.
It's not just FOX News, Max.
Also jumping in on the action, they ran a segment called Cancel Cultures Next Target,
Dr. Seuss.
And then over on Fox Business, Stuart Varney running a defiant and principal segment simply
called Dr. Seuss Canceled.
And then lastly.
Well, lastly for us, I could go on all day.
They went on into the night this morning.
They were back on Dr. Seuss.
But lastly for us, Madison Cawthorn, the Trumpy and Republican congressman recently accused
by oodles of women of sexual assault.
He went on Fox News yesterday, not asked about the endless sexual assault allegations against
him, but instead asked about Dr. Seuss.
And here is what he said.
So I'm fired up about this.
I don't know if you are, but my guess is if you had a childhood and you read Dr. Seuss,
you might be President Biden canceling Dr. Seuss in a read Across America proclamation.
This after Loudon County schools there in Virginia said his books are filled with, quote,
Orientalism, anti blackness and white supremacy.
Look, Congressman, these cancelations get more and more outlandish by the day.
When does it stop?
Well, brother, I was going to go to the gym after this hit, but I don't have to now.
I'm already fired up.
That is absurd.
You know, in inside of our Congress, we actually have done a lot.
We've got a lot accomplished.
We have successfully so far renamed a post office here in the 117 Congress.
So you're telling me that the actual priorities of the Democrats is renaming a post office
and now canceling Dr Seuss?
Americans are actually struggling.
They're really tired of this, but they won't stop covering it all day, day in and day out.
It continued into the afternoon, into the evening during the five p.m. show on Fox called
The Five.
The headline story was six Dr. Seuss books pulled over offensive images.
And what this is, is simply what was going.
We discussed that yesterday in detail.
Some people weren't happy with my analysis, but many people were and appreciated it.
They are losing on every issue.
Americans think income inequality is a problem that should be dealt with, Americans are more
in favor of abortion being legal in most cases than ever before.
Most Americans think we should do covid stimulus and do it the way that Joe Biden and Democrats
have proposed.
Most Americans believe gay marriage should be legal.
I'm kind of hopping around economic and cultural issues here.
Most Americans believe that there should be mass wearing for the time being, like I can
go on, but Republicans are statistically on the wrong side of every issue.
So it's Dr. Seuss all day.
And Andrew Cuomo, if they want if they want to do something that's marginally more substantive
in the way that they cover it.
And there is an Andrew Cuomo story and we covered it.
And that's that's not the argument, but that is what is happening on Fox News at this point.
I could have played 10 more clips from yesterday.
I could have played five, four from today.
They will not stop with this issue.
And then soon they'll move on to, you know, maybe back to Joe Biden.
And Joe Biden's relationship is fake.
That was 10 days ago.
They found a new shiny object.
Now, Dr. Seuss question for you.
Do you want me to keep engaging with this false idea of rampant council culture?
Or would you prefer I even start ignoring it as a critique of what the right is doing?
Open to hearing
from you.