Word: cohenable
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...book author (200 million copies in print; take that, J.K. Rowling), will be in prose. Ted Geisel's centenary - the Seussentennial, his publishers call it - is being celebrated with a U.S. postage stamp in his honor, a cross-country caravan of books and playlets and (my favorite) Charles D. Cohen's "The Seuss the Whole Seuss and Nothing But the Seuss: A Visual Biography of Theodor Seuss Geisel." It's a trove of Seussiana, with special attention to Geisel's formative years in college and in the Manhattan magazine and advertising business. Indeed, Cohen seems to have...
...That's fine with me. I missed the Seuss books when I was a lad; my literary companions Babar, Bugs Bunny and the Little Prince (and a lot of junk that I have elevated to the pop-cultural Pantheon in this column). I'm glad that Cohen has honored Geisel as a full-service wit: the humor-magazine work, the political cartoons, his cunning ad campaigns and Ted's creation of one of the most enduring, least endearing antiheroes in Hollywood cartoon history. What follows comes from studying the Cohen book, rerunning my favorites from Geisel's mid-period film...
...Geisel PM cartoons that Cohen reproduces enlist the Seuss menagerie in a dirty holy war. One panel has both a Hortonish elephant ("G.O.P.") and an "isolation ostrich: smiling indulgently at their "baby" - a squalling hybrid label a "GOPstrich" - as the elephant says, "He's a noisy little-so-and-so, but, sweetheart, he's all ours!" A serpent with swastikas snakes across the Atlantic while a figure marked Lindbergh pats its head, declaring, "'Tis Roosevelt, Not Hitler, that the World Should Really Fear." Seuss' mascot for America, an eagle with an Uncle Sam beard and striped top hat, sits...
...tape-recorder reels emblazoned with swastikas. "Booby Traps" (Clampett, January 44) has SNAFU cozying up to a lifesize doll; X-ray vision reveals her buttocks and boobs to be round bombs. The message: "If you are a boob, you will be trapped." (Geisel's authorship here is doubted by Cohen, accepted by others. But the cartoon is so funny it'd be a shame to attribute it to someone else...
...Cohen draws a distinction between the traditional anti-Jewish doctrine of the Catholic church, which condemns the Jews who killed Jesus, with the anti-Semitic hatred of other Jews because of their ancestors. He said Vatican II tried to end only the latter...