An open letter to Charles M. Blow

Dude, shut up.
(No, no, I mean the title of your book. You spelled it wrong.)

Dear Mr. Blow,

Thank you for bringing it to everyone's attention that the Looney Tunes character Pepe le Pew, aside from being named after a white supremacist frog, "adds to rape culture." Rape culture is obviously bad, even worse than Chinese people eating with chopsticks, and we all admire you for calling it out when you see it.

You know what else adds to rape culture? Pornography.

I look forward to a series of righteously indignant tweets on the subject.

Best regards,

William James Tychonievich

A familiar face

Over at Winking Back from the Dark, I relate a striking coincidence -- or perhaps an instance of subconscious telepathy or precognition.

Dante in the wood

Gustave Doré, Dante in the Gloomy Wood

I think I may have mentioned a time or two the awe in which I hold the late Allen Mandelbaum, who might be called in two sense a "translator of genius." He translated geniuses, and he was himself a genius. (Can a mere translator, who adapts someone else's work, be a genius? Yes, just as much as a classical musician who performs works composed by others. Think of Mandelbaum as the Glenn Gould of translation. Interpreting the tongues of angels is one of the canonical gifts of the Spirit.) I've read roughly a zillion English translations of Dante, and they fall into two categories: Mandelbaum, and everyone else. He's also a very strong contender for the title of best English translator of Virgil. Oh, and Homer, too. You know, the three greatest writers who ever lived, and who wrote in three different languages. We won't see another translator like Mandelbaum for a very long time.

Today I picked up Whitley Strieber's Communion for the umpteenth time. It opens with an epigraph from Mandelbaum's Dante, the first lines of the Inferno:

When I had journeyed half of our life's way,

I found myself within a shadowed forest,

for I had lost the path that does not stray.

Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was,

that savage forest, dense and difficult,

which even in recall renews my fear:

so bitter -- death is hardly more severe!

But to retell the good discovered there,

I'll also tell the other things I saw.

I myself once had a go at translating those lines while experimenting with a new rhyme scheme -- a rhyme scheme which I recently revisited, modified, and used to compose a prayer to St. Joan of Arc. First the opening of the Inferno, then Joan of Arc.

This evening I was listening to some music on YouTube. I started with Ween, whose album The Mollusk I've been playing a lot lately, but then I suddenly wanted to listen to "Joan of Arc" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark -- a song I had discovered only recently, when it was recommended by some of my readers.

When it was over, YouTube decided that the next thing I wanted to listen to was "I'll Find My Way Home" by Jon and Vangelis (Jon Anderson of Yes, and Vangelis, the Chariots of Fire guy). I'd never heard it before and wasn't quite sure what I thought of it at first, but I soon realized that the lyrics were (not explicitly, but still pretty obviously) about Dante in the wood -- first Joan of Arc, then the opening of the Inferno.

Jon and Vangelis:

You ask me where to begin

Am I so lost in my sin

You ask me where did I fall

I'll say I can't tell you when

Inferno, Canto I:

I cannot say how I had entered

the wood; I was so full of sleep just at

the point where I abandoned the true path.

Jon and Vangelis:

My sun shall rise in the east

So shall my heart be at peace

And if you're asking me when

I'll say it starts at the end
You know your will to be free
Is matched with love secretly

Inferno, Canto I:

The time was the beginning of the morning;

the sun was rising now in fellowship

with the same stars that had escorted it 

when Divine Love first moved those things of beauty;

so that the hour and the gentle season

gave me good cause for hopefulness

Jon and Vangelis:

Your friend is close by your side

And speaks in far ancient tongue

Inferno, Canto I: The ancient Roman poet Virgil appears and serves as Dante's guide (too many lines to quote). And as I listened, although the song itself was new to me, it felt familiar because it was after all just my old friend Dante, speaking his ancient tongue close by my side.

After the Jon and Vangelis song, YouTube played another song I'd never heard before, "The Voice" by Ultravox, which begins thus:

Native these words seem to me

All speech directed to me

I've heard them once before

I know that feeling

Ultravox coming right after Vangelis is a further coincidence, since I had recently read a post by Vox Day called "The new Chariots of Fire." 

Read a banned book -- no, not that one!

The American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom has been doing Banned Books Week every year since the 1980s.

Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools. It brings together the entire book community — librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.

It publishes lists of banned or challenged books, encourages people to read them, and encourages libraries to prominently display collections of these books near the entrance, with an ironic "warning" that some people consider them highly dangerous. Because to hell with censorship, right?

So these guys are definitely going to come out with a strong statement supporting Dr. Seuss and condemning the evil jackasses who want to cancel him for daring to celebrate diversity -- right? Right, guys?

Here's the stunning and brave anti-censorship statement the ALA OIF saw fit to release.

How libraries approach the Dr. Seuss books is going to differ, said OIF Director Deborah Caldwell-Stone, based on individual guidelines for collection curation and community demand for certain books. https://t.co/rJdEQJGmr2

— ALA OIF (@OIF) March 3, 2021

Wow, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, way to let these shitbirds have it with both barrels. Nice to have someone standing up for the freedom to read.

⁂

In case you haven't figured it out yet, no content-neutral "anti-censorship" movement actually exists. "Supporting banned books" means supporting the sort of books that usually get banned. Any guesses as to what sort those are? Well, the ALA has prepared a helpful infographic.

See "racism" there in the word cloud showing the reasons for book challenges? You might need a magnifying glass. Oh, and be sure to zoom in and read the yellow light-bulb thing in the lower right corner.

The "censorship" these people oppose is, overwhelmingly, opposition to the sexual revolution and to the glorification of sexual neuroses. That's it. That's what they stand for. They want children to be exposed (against their parents' wishes; see the third green square) to LPGABBQ propaganda -- not, Moloch forbid, to the obscenity of a Qing-era Chinaman wearing traditional clothing and eating rice with chopsticks! When they say they support books "some consider unorthodox or unpopular," they mean unpopular among benighted proles. (What, you didn't think "unorthodox" meant heretical, did you? They obviously don't support crimespeak!) They speak power to truth, not the reverse. They deserve no one's support.

Mo Willems: People who live in glass houses . . .

Obligatory one-eye photo. Illuminati confirmed!

Mo Willems is one of the ringleaders of the movement to cancel Dr. Seuss.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — A Massachusetts museum dedicated to Dr. Seuss has replaced a mural that included a stereotype of a Chinese man.

The mural unveiled Tuesday includes illustrations from several of Dr. Seuss’ books. The original mural in the entryway of the Springfield museum featured illustrations from the author’s first children’s book, “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” which included the stereotype that some found racist.

The original mural became the center of controversy when children’s authors Mike Curato, Lisa Yee and Mo Willems said they would boycott an event at the museum because of the “jarring racial stereotype.”

Well, two can play at this game!

What the AP didn't tell you is that Mo Willems is the author of a collection of racist cartoons called You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons -- published in 2006, not 1937! The cover shows an Indian man with a big black mustache, hairy arms, and a stubble-covered chin; and an Indian woman with a sari, a nose piercing, and a dot on her forehead. How is this different from "a Chinaman who eats with sticks"?

And here he hurtfully stereotypes Sikhs as rippers-off of tourists, insensitively depicts a Christian devil and angel as Sikhs, and shows by his use of the Mexican term gringo in an Indian context that all Brown cultures are the same to him.

The Sikh turban is a symbol of holiness and spirituality, a "crown which the person wears every morning with a commitment to the Almighty that he/she will stand for justice and equality." Willems casually puts it on a cartoon devil with horns and a tail.

He also lets us know that the Chinese are lazy, grovel before "superior" Westerners, and (like Dr. Seuss's objectionable Chinaman) have lines for eyes!

Sorry, Mo, what was that you were saying about the mote in Dr. Seuss's eye again?

Diversity is offensive

You've probably heard that some of Dr. Seuss's books have recently been "canceled" -- will no longer be published -- because of they supposedly "portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong." This sort of thing is hardly news these days, and I'm certainly giving it several orders of magnitude more attention than it deserves -- but, well, I've certainly never let that stop me from posting anything!

One of these libri non grati (the only one I shall bother to discuss; life is, in the last analysis, short) is And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, originally published in 1937. Its crime is the inclusion of "a Chinaman who eats with sticks" among the other improbable things (a zebra, a brass band, the mayor, a man with a ten-foot beard, etc.) the main character imagines seeing on that street. This was apparently deemed offensive even back in 1978, when Seuss amended it to "a Chinese man" and altered the illustration slightly. Now even this bowdlerized version is deemed "problematic," so the whole book has been junked.

Why the changes in 1978? Okay, I guess Chinaman had somehow become offensive and was replaced with the more up-to-date Chinese man, even though the change messes up the rhythm a bit. (Did you know that technically "Chinese" is a racial epithet, which I'm pretty sure is bad, while "Chinaman" is a much less hurtful-sounding racial substantive? Not that anyone asked us grammarians. It's also still more common than the PC alternative, unlike other passé demonyms.)

But, setting the vocabulary to one side, why the changes to the illustration? The Chinese haven't worn queues (a style forced on them by their Manchu overlords) since the revolution of 1912, so that's just more updating -- but why is his skin now white instead of yellow?

Was it offensive to show him with yellow skin? Is it insulting to say or show that Chinese people aren't white -- you know, because white is the best skin color, and not having white skin is bad? Is that the logic here? Because I'm not sure what other explanation there can be.

Anyway, after those changes -- now that the gentleman from China is a proper post-revolutionary queueless one in whiteface -- what's the objection? Maybe the New York Times can explain it to us.

In “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” a character described as “a Chinaman” has lines for eyes, wears a pointed hat, and carries chopsticks and a bowl of rice. (Editions published in the 1970s changed the reference from “a Chinaman” to “a Chinese man.”)

Okay, lines for eyes. First of all, you might have noticed that the (non-Chinese) "big magician doing tricks" also has lines for eyes, as do most of the people on this page, because Seuss has drawn them as if they all have their eyes closed. But supposing he had drawn the person of Chinese ethnicity with less-round eyes than the other characters, why would that be offensive? Chinese people do in fact have epicanthic folds that make their eyes look narrower than those of Europeans -- is that bad? Is it ugly? Are European-looking eyes the best sort of eyes, so that to portray anyone with any other sort is an insult?

(Ironically, most of the Chinese women I know do think it's better to have round eyes and pale skin. Eyelid jobs are the most popular form of cosmetic surgery among the Chinese, and there's even a saying, 一白遮三醜, "one white covers three uglies.")

Pointed hat. Such hats really are worn by some Chinese (and other Asian) people, and I often see them even in modern-day Taiwan. Is there something shameful about wearing non-European headgear?

Chopsticks and a bowl of rice. I know it may come as a shock, but nearly every Chinese person I know eats rice from a bowl with chopsticks every single day. Is that a barbaric thing to eat? A barbaric way of eating it? Something to be ashamed of?

Look again at Seuss's Chinaman. Has he been made to look ugly? Sinister? Uncivilized? Animal-like? Does he have anything of the Yellow Menace about him? Is there anything at all negative in the way he has been portrayed? No, he simply looks different from the white characters -- a member of a different race and a different culture, wearing different clothes, eating different food in a different way. You know, diversity. That's what was found offensive.

If Mulberry Street were written today, the parade would feature people of a variety of skin colors, and perhaps sensitively subtle hints of other physical racial differences (nothing cartoonish, of course! Seuss's four-color palette would have to go), but these racial differences would not be allowed to correlate with any visible differences in culture, clothing, profession, or lifestyle. Perhaps the magician or one of the aldermen would happen to be Chinese, say, or black, but would be otherwise indistinguishable from a white magician or alderman. Oh, and at least one person would be in a wheelchair. This kind of superficial diversity is laudable. Failing that, the second best option -- as seen in Seuss's non-canceled books -- is for everyone to be white. Any diversity beyond the cosmetic, though? That's offensive, man.

⁂

By the way, these are the three jackasses responsible for starting the campaign to make sure all Dr. Seuss characters are white. I know they're functionally just interchangeable pseudopods of the Blob, but it's worth keeping in mind that they do in fact have names, faces, and moral agency.

Mike Curato, Lisa Yee, and Mo Willems hate the Chinese.

My sister and the Maid on adjacent lines of text

Kevin McCall recently posted "Some thoughts on psychics," which begins by citing my own old post "The influence of adjacent lines of text."

In Kevin’s post, I found this:

The reference is to Tycho Brahe, the astronomer, but it's also an abbreviation of my own surname. I have recently received several email messages about my sister's portrait of Joan of Arc -- whom my correspondent usually refers to by her title "the Maid."

Note added: Kevin's post also mentions' Swedenborg's clairvoyant vision of "a fire in Stockholm." The stock in Stockholm means "stake, pole," so this is another nod to St. Joan.