I was reading my entry from Friday last night, and when I hit the part about the hip-hop version of The Lorax, I remembered something about Dr. Seuss. During World War II, he was quite a hawk, and you can see all his cartoons at the Dr. Seuss Goes To War site. It seems at odds with his better-known later work, The Butter Battle Book.
If the Bad Poets from Friday night had read Seuss’ war ‘toons, would they still have performed The Lorax? Activist politics, whether left or right, often calls for an ideological puritanism; disagree on one tiny detail and you’re out of the club.