Shelf Life — Scott Dickensheets: Dr. Seuss not up to snuff as war-era editorial cartoonist

Friday, Aug. 13, 1999 | 9:04 a.m.

As chronicled in an eye-opening book forthcoming from The New Press, "Dr. Seuss Goes to War" ($25), Theodor Geisel spent the World War II years turning out strident drawings for the liberal New York daily PM. Of German extraction himself, Seuss hammered the Axis, as well as anyone he thought insufficiently hostile toward it. Favorite targets included Fatherland apologist Charles Lindberg and various international Nazi appeasers.

It's unsettling to flip through these pages and see Adolf Hitler, now the universally acknowledged face of evil, rendered in the same whimsical style as Sam I Am. Geisel obviously dipped his pen in bile, but his kids-book style nonetheless cartoonizes Hitler, imparts to him an air of buffoonishness that doesn't square with our grim knowledge of his crimes. In fairness, Geisel drew most of these images early in the war, before the full horrors of Auschwitz had become clear. (His style has a similar effect on Tojo, making him look like the Grinch Who Stole the Pacific.)

Ultimately, the cartoons are interesting only for the alternate glimpse they provide of their creator. Had Geisel gone on to become, say, Dr. Seuss, a kindly but anonymous obstetrician in Whoville, Vermont, or ol' "Doc" Seuss, town drunk, no one would have exhumed these drawings.

They're heavy-handed, mostly lacking in political or creative subtlety, and -- particularly unfortunate in cartoons -- aren't amusing. A typical example, from September, 1941: Under the caption, "Spreading the Lovely Goebbels Stuff," a man labeled "Lindbergh" is shoveling refuse off of a "Nazi Anti-Semite Stink Wagon."

Another: "What This Country Needs is a Good Mental Insecticide," Seuss fumes, drawing Uncle Sam spritzing poison into a citizen's ear, blowing out a "racial prejudice bug."

They are the correct sentiments, of course, but Seuss wields them like a 2-by-4; I ache from being beaten over the head. And he didn't always heed his own lessons. His drawings of Japanese-Americans are flagrantly stereotypical, all squinty eyes and buck teeth, and there's an undeniable undercurrent of racism in his feeling that Americans of Japanese descent were untrustworthy. Then again, that's easy to say with 55 years of hindsight.

"Dr. Seuss and war: The two just don't seem to go together," the book tells us. The book is right.

Two shortish items

Red Rock Review reviewed, briefly: Opened latest issue of Red Rock Review, published by Community College of Southern Nevada. Saw poem that begins, "Even in the shadow of Casinosaurus ..." Closed latest issue of Red Rock Review.

Talk talked about, at slightly greater length: I brought my copy of Talk magazine's debut issue home in the same bag with the latest Vanity Fair. I expected them to claw each other to perfumed ribbons -- they've been seen as natural enemies since well before Talk hit the stands (Talk Editor Tina Brown used to helm VF).

It didn't work out that way. The media whizzes who, as Dr. Seuss might say, "puzzed and puzzed 'til their puzzlers were sore" about Talk's incarnation, simply assumed it would be glitz-obsessed. All Tina Brown publications have been. Surprisingly, it's not.

It does have its share of famous faces -- a spread of JFK Jr. childhood photos, Gwyneth Paltrow in a leather bikini, the famous Hillary Clinton confessional -- but the bulk of Talk's conversation is carried on without unboldfaced names.

The difference between Talk and Vanity Fair -- which is glitz-obsessed, the legacy of Brown's editorship -- is neatly encapsulated in their true crime stories. Vanity Fair's, naturally, involves a Du Pont heiress and a $25 million fortune. Talk's is about the serial murder of 200 young women in Juarez, Mexico. It's also an incisive look at how the factories that produce cheap goods for American market dominate Juarez workers; there, as here at Shelf Life, penurious employment is destiny.

Looking back

At the end of 1984 Esquire magazine published "The Register," a 514-page special issue highlighting "The Best of the New Generation" in such fields as entertainment, the arts, business, social policy and politics. Each section has info capsules on two dozen or so notables, with expanded profiles on a select few.

It's been 15 years; let's check the accuracy of Esquire's crystal ball, shall we?

From the vantage point of now, some selections seem ridiculously obvious. Under Business and Industry: William Gates. Daring choice, that. Almost as risky as this one in Entertainment, Sports and Style: Steven Spielberg. Since he'd already made "Jaws," "E.T" and two Indiana Jones films, I imagine the children and pets of Esquire editors could have called that one.

Naturally, some choices didn't pan out. William Hurt, for instance. There's no way the editors could have forseen "Lost in Space."

The biggest surprise comes -- no surprise -- in politics. Here are some of the "best of the new generation": Henry Cisneros, Al Gore, Lani Guinier, Federico Pena, Robert Reich -- all future fixtures in Clinton White House, or, in Guinier's case, a would-be fixture in Clinton White House.

And yes, the editors chose Bill and Hillary Clinton, too.

So now I'm dialing Esquire to see just how Clinton and Co.'s legal/ethical problems fit into the definition of "best of the new generation" -- Oh my God! Flee, everyone, flee! It's a rampaging Casinosaurus! Aaaghghgh ...