On March 2 — the late Theodor Seuss Geisel’s 117th birthday — Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced that, some time last year, it ceased publishing/licensing six of the popular author’s children’s books which “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.”

Cue woke approval, deplorable outrage, investor interest, and low-information reader fear, all of which are good for business.

As I write this on March 9, Dr. Seuss titles constitute ten of Amazon’s top 25 “Best Sellers in Children’s Books.”

On eBay, sellers have copies of And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street on offer for as much as $1,105.76 (“Buy It Now”), with auction bids on other copies running as high as $143.50.

Some “woke” readers approve of the decision, and are rewarding it by buying non-discontinued titles.

Some “deplorable” readers disapprove of the decision, and want to get their hands on the discontinued titles. Ditto some collectors/re-sellers who see an opportunity to profit from current and future scarcity.

And, of course, some low-information readers (or parents) read only the headlines and fear that if they don’t snatch up The Cat in the Hat now they might not be able to find it later (if you’re among them, relax; it’s not among the casualties).

Do the owners of Dr. Seuss Enterprises really, truly, deep down feel that the discontinued titles might damage young minds? Well, maybe.

But the more likely motive for this move, it seems to me, is the bottom line. With one terse announcement and zero investment in advertising (that came in the form of free media coverage, friendly and unfriendly), the company has successfully created a run from all directions on its products.

New young readers for a book collection beloved by every generation since the Baby Boom. New viewers for its old cartoon specials, later live-action movies, and current Netflix series. New visitors (when the pandemic ends) to its traveling mall “Dr. Seuss Experience.”

And hey, more power to them! “Cancel culture” and “anti-cancel culture” are lemons. They tend to put sour expressions on everyone’s face for one reason or another and often for not much reason at all. Why NOT turn them into lemonade?

If you’re drinking that lemonade, might I suggest a tall, cool glass of The Sneetches and Other Stories? The solutions to some of the very problems that gave rise to this episode are in there for those willing to learn. Also, it’s a great book.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Dr. Seuss monetizes the culture wars,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Richmond, North Carolina Observer, 03/09./21
• “Dr. Seuss monetized cancel culture,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Greenville, North Carolina Reflector [web and print], 03/10/21
• “Dr. Seuss monetized cancel culture,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Martin County, North Carolina Enterprise [web and print], 03/10/21
• “Dr. Seuss monetized cancel culture,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Bertie County, North Carolina Daily Advance [web and print], (03/10/21)
• “Dr. Seuss Monetizes the Culture Wars,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 03/10/21
• “Dr. Seuss Monetizes the Culture Wars,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 03/12/21
• “Dr. Seuss monetizes America’s culture wars,” by Thomas L. Knapp, El Reno, Oklahoma Tribune [web and print], 03/12/21
• “Dr. Seuss Monetizes the Culture Wars,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 03/12/21
• “Thomas Knapp: Dr. Seuss monetizes the culture wars,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Claremont, New Hampshire Eagle Times, 03/13/21
• “After controversy, Dr. Seuss books raking in the cash,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Kingsport, Tennessee Times News, 03/15/21
• “Dr. Seuss monetizes the culture wars,” by Thomas L. Knapp, New Rockford, North Dakota Transcript, 03/15/21
• “Dr. Seuss and lemonade,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Orangeburg, South Carolina Times and Democrat, 03/16/21

“Look, I hope everybody’s realized by now, these masks make a difference,” said President Joe Biden in response to the lifting of mask mandates in Texas and Mississippi.  “[T]he last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking that [as vaccines roll out], everything’s fine, take off your mask, forget it. It still matters.”

Biden’s statement abandons “the science” in at least two ways.

Firstly, Neanderthals appear to have been about as smart as their Cro-Magnon counterparts (our most direct ancestors, although many humans have some Neanderthal ancestry as well).

More importantly, published, peer-reviewed scientific studies have yet to demonstrate any significant impact of masks on the spread of viral disease. “The science” doesn’t say that “masks make a difference.”

It’s important to remember that correlation and causation are not the same thing and that there can be many factors involved, but let’s look at some raw information:

America’s two  most “locked-down and masked-up” states — New Jersey  and New York — are also the two hardest-hit. They’ve  suffered, respectively, 264 and 245 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 population.

Meanwhile, Florida — where there’s no statewide mask mandate and where local authorities are forbidden by state law to enforce mandates on individuals with arrests and fines — is in far better shape at 146 deaths per 100,000 population.

Texas, which has been slightly more authoritarian on COVID-19 than Florida, is also in slightly worse shape than Florida (but in far better shape than New York or New Jersey) at 155 deaths per 100,000 population.

Missouri, which seemed ultra-casual about masking when I visited last August for my mother’s funeral (she caught COVID-19 in a locked-down, masked-up nursing home) is doing even better than Florida at 140 deaths per 100,000 population.

Like I said, correlation is not causation. There could be many reasons for those differences, including but not limited to climate, population density, prevalent disease strain, etc.

But for the same reason, what there is NOT is anything approaching certainty that masks in general, or mask mandates in particular, save lives. If there’s a plausible conclusion to be drawn at all, it’s that they don’t.

This time last year, the US Surgeon General Jerome Adams was scolding Americans to stop buying up masks, while National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci was telling 60 Minutes, “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask …. wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet. But it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is.”

Adams and Fauci were right back then, before politics pushed them away from the truth.

In the future, the most interesting topic related to COVID-19 will probably be not the disease itself, but the question of how an initially voluntary and seemingly commonsense measure snowballed  into a fad driven by politically cultivated mass hysteria, then into what can only be described as a government establishment of religion.

The Cult of the Sacred Mask is disintegrating. Joe Biden should resign its ceremonial papacy and focus on merely being president.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Mask Mandates: Pope Joe versus ‘The Science,'” by Thomas L. Knapp, Anchorage, Alaska Press, 03/08/21
• “Mask Mandates: Pope Joe versus ‘The Science,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 03/10/21
• “Mask mandates: Pope Joe versus ‘The Science,’” by Thomas L. Knapp, Havasu City, Arizona News-Herald, 03/12/21

Paul Krugman believes he’s discovered a flaw in the work of a fellow Nobel laureate economist. The late Milton Friedman, Krugman writes, was under the mistaken impression “that more choice is always a good thing” due to taking for granted that “people have more or less unlimited capacity to do due diligence on every aspect of their lives,” but was unaware that “in the real world, too much choice can be a big problem” (“Too Much Choice Is Hurting America,” New York Times, March 1).

A closer look at Free to Choose makes clear that Friedman’s take on The Power of Choice (another Friedman title) is more sophisticated than the sheer boosterism suggested by a cursory name-check. Friedman contends that the free-market price of a commodity “transmits only the important information and only to the people who need to know.” It is precisely because it avoids “clogging the ‘in’ baskets” of producers that it allows them to focus on satisfying consumer needs.

Krugman implies that the author of Free to Choose would have no problem with people being forced to choose between flavors of mandatory programs such as Medicare Advantage. The real Milton Friedman’s argument for a negative income tax as an alternative to welfare bureaucracies was that “replacing the ragbag of specific programs with a single comprehensive program” would be more effective.

Meanwhile, if you’re among the employees who “have to decide how to invest your 401(k)” pensions, or micromanage your health insurance, you lack access to options crowded out by government policies discouraging the creation of simpler programs not tied to employers.

As Roderick Long noted in 1994, “the market creates uniformity when customers need it, and diversity when they need that instead,” not foreseeing how quickly DVDs would date his example of how “video cassettes come with lots of different kinds of movies” but not “in fifty different shapes and sizes.”

Long suggests that free competition might bring similar innovation in areas where legal monopolies are deemed inevitable or “natural” (Friedman himself wasn’t confident enough in the power of choice to fully endorse “[Friedrich] Hayek’s proposals for removing any legal obstacles to the development of private competitive money”). That approach could send waste and confusion in political economy to join Betamax — and subsequent also-ran home video formats such as Digital Video Express and HD DVD — into the dustbin of history.

New Yorker Joel Schlosberg is a contributing editor at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Not Free Enough to Choose” by Joel Schlosberg, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 03/05/21