I thought that that the HM books might be satire, too, but--stipulating that I can't read the author's mind and perhaps the books actually did start out as a joke--the Conservative world is taking the books seriously.
How do the "Help! Mom!" books compare to the Democratic rebuttal "Why Mommy is a Democrat"? They're both heavy-handed propaganda directed at children, and I think it's deeply wrong to try and enlist children in their parent's culture war. It's also irresistable, and "getting 'em when they're young" has been the strategy of religious and political movements since the beginning of time.
The message of both sets of books is a mixture of loyalty toward and pride in one's own side, and disapproval and censure of the other. The mixture is strikingly not the same: The Conservative version, not surprisingly, lays on the anti-Liberal message with a bulldozer, and seems to focus primarily on instilling fear and hatred of Liberals in the young Conservative mind. The message is very specifically targeted at Liberals as a group, and that obsessive focus is one of the disturbing similarities I found to the Nazi children's books. Change the name from "Liberal" to "Jew", and I'm hard-pressed to see any essential difference.
The Democratic book is, as you say, much gentler in both its visuals and its tone, and the samples I can read don't mention Republicans by name. The identity of the enemy is conveyed somewhat subtly, through an image of an elephant stalking a homeless person (an adult would have to interpret that symbol for the child), and in the background of one image a pair of stereotypically uncaring rich folk walk past a homeless person asking for change. Democrats are portrayed as cute and cuddly squirrels (I wonder if they anticipated what Republicans could make of that?), the Republican-archetypes as ugly older humans.
They're both, as I said, propaganda directed at children, so I don't think much of either. That said, I would hope that most people would agree that raising children on fear and hatred is a very, very bad idea, and that to do so is to deliberately inflict on our society yet more generations of conflict. The "Help! Mom!" books are without a doubt vehicles for indoctrinating children with fear and hatred, and so I think that they are far more damaging to children and to us.
Flame » in reply to I see what you mean.
re: I see what you mean.
The whole thread (71 posts)
- The Proletariat is Winning at UPS.
- more graphic examples
- The Winger Inquisition strikes again
- Actually, I see it more as a lame Diego Rivera mural.
- Ummm...