No, Dr. Seuss isn’t being “cancelled”

The cancel culture straw man has well and truly jumped the shark

If you personally make a decision about what you want to do with a piece of your own property, is that “cancel culture gone mad?” That’s what the perpetual fury generation machine of the right is claiming right now in response to recent news that six different Dr. Seuss books will no longer be published. So let’s take a thirty second look at how this isn’t “cancel culture gone mad” by any stretch of the imagination whatsoever.

The people who have made the decision that six out of the more than 60 books written by Theodore Geisel will no longer be published going forward are the owners of those books, who are choosing to make what they personally believe is an ethical choice with their own property after profiting on that intellectual property for nearly eight decades. No one and nothing is “getting cancelled.” The people who own a property are making an independent decision about what they want to do with their own property. If this is “cancel culture run amok,” then if you freely and individually of your own volition decide that it’s time to retire your car and take it off the road, it means that some nebulous “they” on the left are cancelling you. Or for another analogy, we can look back at Jon Stewart’s decision to leave the Daily Show back in…