McElligot's Pool
"Young man," laughed the farmer, "You're sort of a fool! You'll never catch fish in McElligot's Pool!" "Hmmm" answered Marco, "It may be you're right. I've been here three hours without one single bite. There might be no fish, but again, well, there might!" A boy imagines the rare and wonderful fish he might catch in McElligot's pool.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
9mentions
8people
2021–2026years
11% recommend89% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I love reading the Zoo and McElligot's Pool to my kids. I'd love it even more without the offensive illustrations as they don't add anything to the stories. If they'd publish a version with some updated illustrations, I'd buy it immediately. Taking them off the market means I can either use the questionable version or none at all. Not sure this is the desired solution.
- In 2021 the company that holds the rights to Dr. Seuss books, founded by his family after his death, announced that they would stop printing several of his books because they judged them to be racist against nonwhites: https://apnews.com/article/dr-seuss-books-racist-images-d8ed... . This isn't a government ban on the content of the books, but rather the legitimate copyright owner refusing to print them for their own ideological reasons.
Once the books go out of copyright they will no longer be able to legally prevent anyone else from printing the books, and copyright law doesn't prevent people from legally reselling their already-purchased copies of books. But if you go onto Amazon right now and look at prices, you'll find that a copy of one of the Dr. Seuss books that the rights-holder refuses to print more copies of, such as McElligot's Pool, costs over 100 dollars; whereas a Dr. Seuss book that the rights-holders haven't judged as racist, such as The Cat in the Hat, costs about $5.
- > Had you ever heard of these six books before today? Have you ever read them?
Yes, I own McElligot's Pool and I particularly remember borrowing On Beyond Zebra from the library for its imaginary alphabet.
The offensive material in Pool appears to be the "Eskimo fish" (the word "Eskimo" apparently being derogatory), and in Zebra, somewhat obscurely, a "Nazzim of Bazzim" riding a camel called a "Spazzim".
> We've been sanitising kids books for decades now.
I don't really have a problem with that, but they aren't being sanitized are they? They're just not being sold at all.
- "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street”
“If I Ran the Zoo”
“McElligot’s Pool”
“On Beyond Zebra!”
“Scrambled Eggs Super!”
“The Cat’s Quizzer”
because the books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.
We have truly entered the age of infinite bullshit.
- But it does violate their own practical policies:
> After the announcement, one woman said she listed two titles, “On Beyond Zebra!” and “McElligot’s Pool,” for sale on eBay on Wednesday. Later that day, she said, she received an email from eBay explaining that “On Beyond Zebra!” had been removed from sale because it violated eBay’s “offensive material policy.” The second title was pulled Thursday morning, she said.
As in, the usual über vague policies that give the interpreter of the rules carte blanche to deem whatever he will a violation of the “rules”, — the typical prætence of rule of law, for what is really rule of men.
> Will they apply the logic here to all categories of goods for sale? T-shirts? Political buttons? Historical political pamphlets? Current political pamphlets or campaign material? How about baseball team merchandise that has racist mascots? (Why haven’t they?) Merchandise of companies where the CEO may have bigoted views?
Logic? If ever there will be a consistent thought process, it will be based on analysing profits and on nothing more, not on the actual qualities of the work removed, and most often it is not even about profit, but about gut feeling and arbitrary bandwagons and standards of being offended.
> How about books that have words in them that discuss race, or in any way describe an unflattering picture of a certain group? Or scientific studies that may come to race-based findings?
If ever they become notorious enough that they end up on advertiser's networks blacklists, and thus hurt their profits, then yes.
Consider the situation with TVTropes that implemented it's “content policy” to ban certain content in 2012 for advertisement reasons. The policy itself speaks of content, but in implementation, only matter notorious enough to end up on advertiser's blacklists was removed. So Kodomono Zikan, a work infamous, but actually quite mild when one takes the time to read it, is banned from being mentioned there, but less infamous works such as Prisma Ilya which go far further in serializing minors can freely be featured there, as they never became popular enough to be featured on advertiser's blacklists.
If ever a company have any rational thought process, it shall be in the pursuit of profit; morality is never a rational objective.
- > Will they apply the logic here to all categories of goods for sale? T-shirts? Political buttons? Historical political pamphlets? Current political pamphlets or campaign material? How about baseball team merchandise that has racist mascots? (Why haven’t they?) Merchandise of companies where the CEO may have bigoted views?
I don't disagree. One thing that I think worth considering is that the seller is clearly making an attempt at a form of profiteering. I don't pretend to know if eBay intends to continue to restrict sales of these titles for all time. I certainly find it in poor taste that the seller wanted to use the moment to make a quick buck.
I just searched 'ebay nazi memorabilia' and found an iron cross. No swastikas. Not sure the extent of their ToS cause I don't use eBay so I'm not reading them.
From the article:
> After the announcement, one woman said she listed two titles, “On Beyond Zebra!” and “McElligot’s Pool,” for sale on eBay on Wednesday. Later that day, she said, she received an email from eBay explaining that “On Beyond Zebra!” had been removed from sale because it violated eBay’s “offensive material policy.” The second title was pulled Thursday morning, she said.
Sure, some sports fans were very opposed to changing team names. Childhood memories and nostalgia are even more effective knee-jerk reactionary topics.
Had eBay said that they were temporarily banning the sale of these titles, I think they could have prevented sellers from profiting off a big news story about racism without much negative publicity. They could then quietly lift the ban after the next big thing had refocused everyone's attention and this was forgot.
That said, I'm divided. I'm anti-racist. I prefer free speech and free expression. I believe POS Klansman have a right to say ignorant garbage. But I also support "no shirt, no shoes, no service." Put another way, my business has a right not to peddle your wares.
Related
The Lorax
2 recommend · 7
Alice in Wonderland
31 recommend · 112
A Tangled Tale
2 recommend · 3
Yertle the turtle
4 recommend · 11
The butter battle book
5 recommend · 9
Green Eggs and Ham
11 recommend · 38
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
5 recommend · 23
