Horton Hears a Baby

Ask Jay #14

QUESTION:  My family went to go see “Horton Hears a Who” this weekend and when we were walking out this woman handed my kids these cartoony brochures.  I thought that was a little weird, but after she walked away I realized they were Pro-Life Pamphlets.  Apparently in the movie Horton says, “a person is a person, no matter how small”, and the Pro-Lifers are using it to advertise for their cause.  What’s up with that? – Simply Simpatico is Sacramento

I have to admit that it’s kind of an interesting point for them to raise, you know, drawing comparisons between an elephant trying to protect these helpless “who’s” and trying to get people to protect helpless fetuses (It’s no laughing matter, but for some reason the word fetuses sounds like someone sneezing).  However, I think they might be a little mixed up in the type of people that are targeted in this campaign. 

Look at it this way; their whole purpose is to prevent unborn children from being aborted, correct?  And they’re doing so at a children’s movie, unless Harvard added “Green Eggs and Ham” to the curriculum Dr. Suess is still a children’s storyteller.  These are not the brightest Pro-Lifer’s in the box.  I figure they’re at least a couple years past the time when those parents were at the ‘decision’ stage.  They made their choices and they’re sitting next to a couple of them with a big-ass box of popcorn that cost as much as some cars (or how much it takes for them to gas up the minivan).  That’s like trying to sell Boy Jorge T-shirts or parachute pants.  Not only is the time for that decision past, everyone’s glad they’re past it.

Since when did Dr. Suess become something more than a wacky kid’s writer?  I mean, if he was that tied into the abortion debate than I need to dig out those childhood books and reexamine them for hidden messages.  What if the printer’s screwed up and “Green Eggs and ham” was originally supposed to be “Red Eggs and Ham” (an exploration of the peasant dietary deprivations in Communist Russia).  I don’t even want to touch on the religious and political interpretations of “One Fish, Two Fish.  Red Fish, Blue Fish”.

Well, maybe the Pro-Lifer’s are thinking that because he is Dr. Suess, he has a physician’s inspiration about mental and physical wellbeing.  HE NEVER EVEN GOT HIS DOCTORATE!!!  Look it up on Wikipedia.  I swear to all that’s holy/unholy, Dr. Suess is a fraud!  In 1927 he went to Lincoln College in Oxford to get a Doctorate in literature, and dropped out after meeting the woman that he would later marry. 

Do you think you should be taking advice from an imaginary talking-elephant dreamed up by a lying college drop-out?  He also promotes sexual promiscuity, “If you never did, you should. These things are fun, and fun is good.”  Besides, I can’t in good conscience take anything Jim Carey says seriously.
Ask Jay

p.s. One more fun quote I found researching this piece: “And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed! Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed.”