Let’s be honest, you knew this was coming. What we’re referring to here is a New York Times October 7th headline: “Do Works by Men Toppled by #MeToo Belong in the Classroom?” The Times wonders, “should they be canceled — banished from public engagement like some of their creators?”
Well, the fever is spreading, and the targets are no longer just males accused of sexual misbehavior. In Topeka, Kansas, the city’s main public library has removed every Dr. Seuss book from its children’s collection. According to Willard Dwenz, Chief Librarian, it has been recently documented “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that in 1978 Theodor Geisel punched a cat in the face in his home. The feline, a Persian named Sprinkles, had scratched Geisel’s left arm, but only slightly. Geisel proceeded to hit Sprinkles so hard with a right hook that he fractured her tiny nose. Sprinkles never fully regained her sense of smell, and was on anti-depression medication for the rest of her life.
Says Dwenz: “After reviewing a videotape of the incident, there was no way we could justify keeping his books on our shelves. This man, the author of “The Cat in the Hat,” was an abuser of kittens, for God’s sake!”
Or consider Rachel Carson, the acclaimed environmental activist who authored “Silent Spring” and “The Sea Around Us.” Last month it was revealed that Ms. Carson did not separate paper from plastic when recycling, and thought nothing of tossing hamburger wrappers, half-filled soda cups, and mangled French fries out of her car window when traveling the pristine roads of coastal Maine.
Responding to this discovery, Bates, Colby, and Bowdoin — all prestigious Maine colleges — announced that they will no longer allow professors to assign Carson’s books in their courses. In a strongly worded joint statement released on October 10th, the Presidents of the three schools asserted, “it is clear that Rachel Carson was a trash whore whose reprehensible behavior betrayed the ideals she so eloquently wrote about. She is dead to us as a legitimate commentator on the state of our planet.”
This just in: The days of “Pride and Prejudice” and “Little Women” may be numbered. You don’t want to know what University Life recently learned about Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott. You’ve got to trust us on this one. Imagine the worst possible scenario, and then quintuple its depravity. That wouldn’t begin to describe what these women did…..and then bragged about.
It is not for us to forgive them.