by Noah
I know this whole Dr. Seuss thing is a distraction that the Repugs are taking full advantage of. Hell, the other day, the domestic terrorism advocates at FOX "News" did 31 segments on the subject. 31 in 1 day! That 1 an hour with 7 left over for 2 in one hour in prime time! Practically All Seuss All The Time! You can guess how many daily segments about the 1/6 attempted coup. If there's even an oblique reference to 1/6, it's about what heros Fled Cruz and Adolf Hawley are. It's been like that in the Nazi media every day since the story broke, so at this point, there's no additional harm in me adding in my 2 cents.
Yeah, I know what your thinkin'. The right has seized on this Dr. Seuss thing as a way to divert the country's attention from their treason and the fact that they don't want any COVID relief helping the country and its working people, not to mention their furious mission to increase voter suppression. They even accuse the Dems of "cancelling" the six Dr. Seuss books and whine about "cancel culture" when the Dems had nothing to do with it. Hasbro, the company that makes and sells the books did it all by themselves without any pressure from the democratic politicians the righty wingnuts love to go on about. I suspect that what really bothers people like Tiki Torch Carlson, the Murdochs, the Mercers, Ronna Romney McDaniel and the rest of America's white supremacist element is the fact that six childrens books that contain expressions of racism will no longer be available on the open market. Republicans love to complain about what they see as indoctrination of children but not when it's indoctrination they approve of. When that happens, they scream like they are now.
Sooo, since the Republicans are so addicted to conspiracies, I thought I'd come up with one of my own and it's a hell of a lot more likely scenario. I spent a lot of time in my professional career marketing music. In fact, in one way or another, I was always marketing music and, let me tell you; marketing movies and books ain't much different. Here tis: Imagine you're a marketeer at Hasbro and you're looking at a sales sheet that tells you which of your Dr. Seuss books are selling and which are not. In fact you even have six titles at the bottom of the list that are just gathering dust in your warehouses and clogging up the works. Shelf room in warehouses costs money, quite a bit of money. Maybe the public just doesn't want those books for whatever reason. Hey, I thought republicans always want to leave things up to "market forces." Maybe those books just aren't that good or maybe enough of the public doesn't want their kids reading those particular six titles. Times have changed, at least for some of us but not the people who want the country to go back to the 1950s or the 1850s.
Ah, but how do you change those market forces at least as to how they affect those six loss leaders that are clogging up your shelves? How do you draw attention to those six titles, sell them, and be done with them? You could remainder them or you could heavily discount them but you've no doubt already tried that and you still have too many. The six titles are deader than whoever's buried in Grant's tomb.
Answer: It's like dealing with children. Tell them they can't have something and watch them increase their curiosity and want it more. Damn! It's almost too simple. You know at least half the country is race obsessed in a bad way and needlessly paranoid about their position in the changing demographics of our society. As a marketeer, you suspect the demographics changes and changes in social awareness are why those six titles don't sell but any good marketeer comes up with a novel idea from time to time. What to do? How about you tap into that traditional conservative anger and paranoia by not just throwing the books away but telling the sickos they can't have them and they can't have them for reasons of race. You may even leak it out that pressure groups are complaining (complaining about the titles that are long forgotten) whether they really are or not. Bingo! There ya go. Tucker Tiki Torch loses his shit about it on the telly nightly and now those six books are among the very top sellers in the country. Marketing alchemy. Turning outdated shit into gold. It's found money for Hasbro. Problem solved. Same kind of thing happened with that country singer Morgan Wallen. He was banned from country radio because he publicly used the N-word or whatever, Republicans screamed "Cancel Culture! Cancel Culture!" and boom, Morgan shot to the top of the charts because every racist out there suddenly wanted to stream his "music" or buy his record. Now the nation's white supremacists can all read those six books while listening to a racist sing to them. All they need now is a racist beer.