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The movie Blazing Saddles debuted when I was a junior in high school, and the only thing I remember from that time is everyone talking about the campfire scene after all the cowboys had eaten beans.

Of course, this satirical spaghetti-Western film is so, so, so much more. According to Hollywood lore, it was one of the few movies of the 1970s to touch on racism. Sheriff Bart is Black and the people of Rock Ridge are aghast when the governor sends him to work in their town.

For years Ive watched Blazing Saddles whenever I find it on TV. Every time I laugh at the one-liners many racist and sexist and I think, Theres no way you could make this movie today.

Years later, director Mel Brooks addressed that very issue in an interview. I could barely make it then! he said.

Brooks wrote the script with Black comedian Richard Pryor, who insisted on the use of the N-word. All these years later, viewers are now warned about the language.

Culture wars, anyone? Cancel culture? Are we too sensitive or are we righting past wrongs?

I go back and forth on the issue.

Sometimes its just plain ignorance. I still remember the Rocky Mountain News editor who was horrified that I used the word Oriental in a story to describe a slain woman. Lynn! she said. The word is Asian.

Other times, its an attempt by someone to prove theyre not politically correct. A couple of years ago, I said, Happy holidays! to someone. Im not a liberal, the caller snapped. I say Merry Christmas.

The latest example of cancel culture, of course, involves Dr. Seuss.

Did you hear theyre banning Dr. Seuss books because some people think the books are racist? my brother-in-law asked.

Thats terrible, I responded. This political correctness has got to stop.

Then I found out it wasnt true.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises chose to no longer publish six books that included caricatures of people of African, Asian and Arab descent. I havent read one of Theodor Geisel's books in decades but I dont recall ever looking at them and thinking, Are you kidding? But times change and I cringed when I recently saw the images critics referred to.

Geisels stepdaughter, Lark Grey Dimond-Cates, told the New York Post there wasnt a racist bone in that mans body, but also said suspending publication of the six titles was a wise decision. The Guardian reported, The controversy left many perplexed, since the decision was made by Dr. Seuss Enterprises and not as a result of public pressure that has preceded other such decisions.

Enter Fox News.

As clever columnist Mike Littwin of The Colorado Sun wrote: Dr. Seuss was not canceled in a box. He was not canceled with a fox. Thing One and Thing Two: Whatever you might hear on FoxNews, Seuss wasnt canceled with gall. His publisher withdrew six books with racist imagery, thats all.

My friend Deb Goeken once owned early editions of the Nancy Drew books, which included racial stereotypes. Over the years the language changed when the publishers republished editions about the young detective.

Cancel culture has also hit the food world. Long beloved and familiar brand names are gone or are going. That includes Aunt Jemima, Mrs. Buttersworth, Eskimo Pie and Uncle Bens.

Many of the announcements regarding new names and new packaging for these products were made in the wake of riots following the death of George Floyd, a Black man. His death in May 2020 at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement.

"The Mrs. Butterworth's brand, including its syrup packaging, is intended to evoke the images of a loving grandmother," Conagra said in a statement at the time. "We stand in solidarity with our Black and Brown communities and we can see that our packaging may be interpreted in a way that is wholly inconsistent with our values."

I never thought of those brand images as being racist, but when I googled Who is Aunt Jemima? the section People Also Search For popped up. It featured a photo of actor LeVar Burton with an iron collar around his neck. Kunta Kinte reads the tagline. Kunta Kinte, who was kidnapped from Africa and sold into slavery, is the main character in the book Roots. I was in shock.

How could that happen if Aunt Jemima has nothing to do with slavery?

A conservative recently posted this on Facebook: So, if the Redskins cant be red, and Aunt Jemima cant be on the syrup, what do we call the White House (for the next four years)?

I read it to my brother-in-law, who pointed out that cosmetic companies also havent been immune to the Black Lives Movement. I looked it up.

News reports show Johnson & Johnson will no longer sell two skin-lightening lotions. L'Oreal is removing the words "white," "fair" and "light" from its skin products. Nivea's parent company is removing "whitening" and "fair" from products and marketing. Unilever is renaming it's popular Fair & Lovely cream to Glow & Lovely.

Lets get back to Blazing Saddles. Pryor was to play the sheriff but the studio refused to insure him, so Pryor recruited actor Cleavon Little.

Brooks thought there was too much of the N-word, but Pryor disagreed.

Richard said, No, we are writing a story of racial prejudice. Thats the word, the only word. Its profound, its real, and the more we use it from the rednecks, the more the victory of the black sheriff will resonate, Brooks recalled, in an interview.

After a sneak preview of the film, the studio chairman ordered Brooks to eliminate, among other things, all uses of the N-word and flatulence sound effects. Brooks ignored him and Blazing Saddles went on to become the top grossing movie of 1974.

The film features an all-star cast, including Brooks, Harvey Korman, Gene Wilder and the amazing Madeline Kahn. She plays Lili Von Shtupp, the dance hall singer who lisps through the film and lusts after the sheriff. At one point she sings, "Hewe I stand, the goddess of desire. Set men on fire. I have this powah. Morning, noon, and night is dwink and dancing Some quick womancing. And then a showah.

Shtupp, by the way, is one of Brooks contributions to the film. Brooks is Jewish and schtupp is Yiddish for doing the deed. Mike Littwin turned me on to that delicious factoid.

Blazing Saddles fans went slightly berserk last year when what is called a trigger warning was displayed on the movie, warning of racist comments and such.

New York Post columnist Kyle Smith had a field day.

Ridiculous, unnecessary trigger warnings are getting plastered all over everything. Realtors are afraid to use the term master bedroom. But HBO Max seems to think we all live in kindergarten. What kind of melonhead doesnt realize the purpose of the slurs in Blazing Saddles is to make the racists look bad? he asked.

In this case, the culture wars have gone overboard.

As Lili Von Shtupp would say, Its twue, its twue.

Read the original here:
BARTELS | In the culture wars, common sense is a casualty - coloradopolitics.com

Michael Thompson knew his godfather as Uncle Ted.

But to many, many others, Theodor Seuss Geisel was best known by his pen name, Dr. Seuss.

Thompson, who now lives in Redwood City, said he was around 3 years old when Geisel dedicated his book "If I Ran the Zoo" to him.

That book is one of the six that the Seuss estate, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, announced on March 2 that it has decided to stop selling. "These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong," Dr. Seuss Enterprises said.

Specifically, some illustrations of Asian and Black people in those books are considered to be crude racial stereotypes. The other books that will cease to be published and licensed are "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street," "McElligots Pool," "On Beyond Zebra!," "Scrambled Eggs Super!" and "The Cats Quizzer," the announcement said.

The announcement has triggered an uproar. Some have decried it as an example of "cancel culture" run amok while others have argued that Seuss came from a culture that was white supremacist, and that children's books today should not just avoid containing harmful racial stereotypes, but should better represent positive protagonists from different races.

In the meantime, some of the titles to cease publication have skyrocketed in demand and price. Amazon now lists copies of "If I Ran the Zoo" selling between $500 and $800.

In an interview with this publication, Thompson shared his memories of the late children's author and how he's feeling about the Seuss estate's decision to no longer publish the author's book dedicated to him.

"I'm sad I can no longer wander into a bookstore and take a copy off the shelf and see my name there, but that's OK," he said.

Thompson said he has fond memories of his godfather.

His parents were friends with Geisel and his first wife in Manhattan before the couple moved to La Jolla, and the two families maintained a long-term friendship despite the distance.

Geisel would regularly visit New York City to meet with his editors and publishers at Random House, and one evening while out at dinner, Thompson recalled Geisel criticizing the publishing house's books for early readers. Geisel had said at the time that he believed he could come up with better stories using limited vocabularies, and that's how Seuss' foray into writing "Beginner Books," which would come to include his famous "The Cat in the Hat" book began, Thompson said.

As a child, Thompson also recalled Geisel saying his full name Michael Gordon Tackaberry Thompson and telling him that it "scans." Thompson didn't know what that meant at the time, but later learned that the term applies to how the stresses of each syllable are distributed a relevant observation by someone so well known for his rhyming abilities.

His godfather encouraged him to travel by land. As a college student, Thompson said he took a trip to California to visit friends and made a stop at the Geisels' home. His godfather asked him how he planned to return to New York City and Thompson replied that he planned to fly.

"He said, 'Hmm, you know, you don't really get a sense of the United States just by flying over it. Let's see if we can't set you up with something better,'" Thompson remembered Geisel telling him.

So Geisel called his travel agent and booked Thompson a seat on the train from Seattle to Chicago, and then Thompson flew the rest of the way home.

"I'll never forget that trip," he said. "That was the kind of person he was. I just knew him as a kind, loving and obviously immensely talented person."

"He's had a big impact on my life and I'm grateful that I knew him," he added.

While Thompson can reminisce fondly of his godfather, he can also see the point the Seuss estate is making by discontinuing to publish or license certain books.

His godfather did do propaganda work during World War II, and as was not uncommon during that time period, he said, "it was very anti-Japanese propaganda."

One 2019 study found that only 2% of the human characters depicted in 50 Dr. Seuss children's books were characters of color. They were all male and were "only presented in subservient, exotified or dehumanized roles," the study stated.

Thompson said he's come to think about the situation as something like a #MeToo reckoning in recent years at his former boarding school. As he described it, a previously well-liked headmaster was found to not have taken appropriate measures when a teacher was rumored to have sexually abused a student. In response, the school erased the headmaster from public recognition.

"My feeling was, while it made me very sad, if by taking that action, one or more victims might feel that they had been listened to or heard, or apologized to, then it's probably worth it."

"If there were aspects of Ted's books that caused offense to people today which they probably do then this is probably OK."

It might be an easier attitude for him to simply say that Dr. Seuss Enterprises is overreacting, but, he said, "I don't think that's an honest view. We have been so insensitive to so many people for so many years, we have a long way to go before we overreact."

"I don't think it's enough to say that when they did these things, there was nothing wrong with them," he added.

Still, he said, there will be some loss, especially of the pride he used to get from being able to point out his name in a Dr. Seuss book. One time, he said, he went into Linden Tree Books in Los Altos, a local children's bookstore, and mentioned that Dr. Seuss was his godfather.

"They just about swooned," he said. "Who doesn't take some joy and happiness from that?"

Of his godfather's literary creations, he added, "I think they're wonderful, and how widespread they've been is a testament to that. The rhyming is so amazing, and a fun aspect of the way he told the stories," he said. "But the flip side is, if it made parents or children uncomfortable, or made them angry or hurt or something, then maybe their time is past."

Editor's Note: A previous version of this story inaccurately indicated that Dr. Seuss was Thompson's uncle. While he called the author "Uncle Ted," they were not related.

Go here to read the rest:
Dr. Seuss' godson weighs in on the 'culture wars' uproar over decision to stop publishing several books - Pleasanton Weekly

The statue of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, stands over his grave in Health Sciences Park in Memphis, Tennessee, August 17, 2017. (Karen Pulfer Focht/Reuters)

A few weeks ago, I posted here on the Corner about how masterfully Governor Bill Lee has managed the removal of a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest from the Tennessee state capitol. Forrest, the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, is an example of someone who really should be canceled by a civilized society. No amount of Cancel Culture Comes For Nathan Bedford Forrest headlines would have me clutching my pearls and fretting over the immanence of a totalitarian police state. We should cancel him proudly, just as General Lovell H. Rousseau did when he sent Forrest and his men running for the hills like a bunch of frightened little girls at the Third Battle of Murfreesboro.

But it seems as if a few of Tennessees state senators disagree. Because less than two weeks after the states historical commission voted to remove the bust of Forrest, these senators have drafted a bill that would remove all 29 members of the commission and replace them with twelve new members. Under the proposed changes, the governor would have less authority over who sits on the commission. Evidently, some state senators were sorry to see Forrests likeness go from the state capitol, and theyre unhappy with the leading role Governor Lee took in making it happen. Senator Janice Bowling of Tullahoma basically confessed as much. In our culture today it seems there is a desire to cancel history, cancel culture, cancel narratives that are just based on fact, she said. I think that thats a dangerous precedent.

What a damnably cynical ploy. As if removing Forrests bust from a place of reverence and veneration will cast aspersions on the fact of his existence, or suddenly disappear all of the primary documents relating his deeds to posterity! Judging from the above statement, youd think that William Tecumseh Sherman had risen from the dead two weeks ago, donned Thanoss infinity gauntlet and wiped all memory of Forrest from the historical record, just as he wiped Forrests pretend country from the face of the earth a century and a half ago.

We need to get better at having direct and honest conversations about the ethical boundaries of our culture. If we could do that, we would rob bad actors of their ability to reach for lofty-sounding, fake process arguments. Theyd have to argue straight out why Confederate generals shouldnt be canceled. Our present discourse is far too focused on the fact of cancellation rather than the criteria. We need to talk about substance rather than process. Im sure if we put our heads together and tried some public moral reasoning for a change we could come up with a way of canceling the Klan without canceling Dr. Seuss. The question isnt whether or not were going to have a cancel culture, its what were going to cancel peoplefor.

Read more from the original source:
A Cynical Ploy in the Cancel-Culture Wars - National Review

In the past week, the police was deployed as an instrument in Boris Johnsons increasingly authoritarian agenda, argues Maheen Behrana

Strongman politics is firmly embedded in British politics, as the past week has confirmed.

Shocking scenes at the Clapham Common vigil held for Sarah Everard last weekend reveal the shaky foundations of Britains notion of policing by consent. As Londoners took to the streets the following day to protest the use of excessive force by police, the country looked on in bewilderment as police officers stood guarding a statue of Sir Winston Churchill something that was neither the focus of protestors nor the locus of a particular safety threat.

Just days later, the controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which will increase police powers to curb protests and offer extra protection to statues, passed its second reading.

In essence, over the past week, the police have been deployed to the frontline of a phoney culture war not as a passive bystander, but as an aggressive actor.

When we saw the police move in to the centre of Sarah Everards vigil and physically remove protestors, this was not a tactical error. It was a deliberate decision made with the aim of depicting the force as powerful and able to crush dissent. When the same police force decided to guard Churchills statue the very next day, the message was clear: power, tradition and the trappings of British vanity are to be upheld at all costs.

Yet these actions are not just empty gestures they obstruct progress. For example, if the Metropolitan Police were genuinely concerned about COVID-19 safety, it would have allowed the crowds at Clapham Commons to naturally organise and disperse through the night. Pushing into the crowd and stirring up tension had an actively detrimental effect.

The Government has now suggested placing plainclothes police officers in nightclubs to protect women. Once again, this seems to be an attempt to use the police as a symbol of authority, without actually considering the intended outcome keeping women safe. Charities and campaigners very much suggest that it wont.

The police are being used as a vehicle through which the Government can drive forward the narrative that Britain is torn between woke leftists and common-sense ordinary people on the right.

However, in manufacturing and stoking this War on Woke, the Government is dancing with authoritarianism.

This isnt a surprise, given the events of recent years. A 2016 study found that American voters with a propensity for authoritarianism were far more likely to vote for Donald Trump. Such affinities also correlated with a high fear of terrorism with this actually pushing former non-authoritarians into modes of authoritarian thinking. It is therefore no coincidence that Home Secretary Priti Patel recently announced a new state-of-the-art anti-terrorism centre.

Indeed, similar surveys carried out in the UK suggest that pro-authoritarian attitudes are uncomfortably mainstream. A Hansard Society study from 2019 found that 54% of the Brits surveyed felt that the UK should have a strong ruler willing to break the rules.

The actions of the Government and the police over the past week are actively, shamelessly playing to this latent authoritarianism what Hardeep Matharu has called the soft fascism within.

This trend has been seen since Boris Johnson took control of Downing Street in July 2019 and shows no signs of reversing.

Also in the news again this week was Shamima Begum, who left the UK aged 15 to join ISIS in Syria. Her citizenship has been revoked, despite the fact that she now repents of her choice and has essentially been left stateless. This was a rule-breaking decision that might have brought the Government some short-term popularity, but the longer-term consequences for democracy could be highly damaging.

There was also the recent story of a school which finally dropped legal action against a family after sending their daughter home repeatedly for wearing a skirt that was too long. Muslim student Siham Hamud was sent home every day for three weeks on account of her skirt length, something that she had chosen for religious reasons. Not only was her school clearly intolerant of her expression of her religious beliefs, it used the same strongman tactics currently deployed by the Government.

Sending Siham home will have eroded the chances of co-operation between her school and family and severely disrupted her education. Yet, despite these obvious negative consequences, the school opted to appeal to the idea of a culture war benefitting absolutely no one in the process and stalling genuine progress.

Bad leadership is sadly a strategy in itself. The 2019 Hansard Society reports speculated that this could be explained by the way that trust in the political system has been systematically eroded in recent years. When people begin to doubt politicians and to tire of a barrage of failed policies, they turn to alternative modes of governance including authoritarianism.

The events of the past week appear to be the opportunistic endpoint for a nation that has been browbeaten by so many failings that it just wants simple answers. And strong but simple answers that sidestep meaningful reform are something that Johnsons Conservatives are all too happy to provide.

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Strongman Politics and Culture Wars Purposefully Derail All Chances of Progress Byline Times - Byline Times

For author, commentator and Telegraph columnist, Douglas Murray, one country is to blame for global attempts to sanitise history. Ive always been very pro-American in my life, he tells fellow columnists Allison Pearson and Liam Halligans Planet Normal podcast, However in recent years my views of that have started to change, primarily because of the negativity of the American export of its cultural problems to the rest of the world, and an attempt to overlay them onto problems that we may or may not already have.

For Murray, an example of that is the tearing down of statues - an issue on which Frances leader was quick to take a strong stance: Emmanuel Macron was straight out of the gate, saying not one memorial or statue will be brought down in France and we will not be eradicating our culture, Murray notes. The French are totally right about this. I enormously admire them.

You should be able to say no, our history is different from yours.

Listen to Douglas Murray's full interview, as well as analysis of the AstraZeneca vaccine debate, lockdown restrictions and police intervention at the vigil of Sarah Everard, on Planet Normal,a weekly Telegraph podcast with Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan, using the audio player above.

See original here:
The French have rejected the American culture wars. Why can't we? - Telegraph.co.uk