The latest culture-war battle is raging around “Dr. Seuss,” the American children’s author and artist whose whimsical and warm-hearted work has won him a global following. On March 2, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which licenses and publishes his books, announced that it is dropping six of the 60-plus titles because of “hurtful” racial stereotypes. This has been met with an outcry about “cancel culture” and book-banning from conservatives as well as some centrists and liberals worried about “politically correct” excesses. Others counter that there is no “cancellation,” just a corporate decision to stop reprinting books that are jarringly dated due to evolving cultural attitudes (and that will remain widely available even without new editions).
