{"id":60637,"date":"2013-09-26T17:26:53","date_gmt":"2013-09-26T21:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=60637"},"modified":"2013-09-26T18:53:14","modified_gmt":"2013-09-26T22:53:14","slug":"doctored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/09\/26\/doctored\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctored"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"green-eggs-and-hamlarge\"<\/a><\/p>\n

During the bedtime-story portion of his twenty-one-hours-and-nineteen-minutes-long speech on the floor of Congress, Senator Ted Cruz, in an episode that has already achieved notoriety, read Dr. Seuss\u2019s Green Eggs and Ham<\/i> as his two daughters watched at home in their pajamas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will credit my father,\u201d Senator Cruz said. \u201cHe invented green eggs and ham.\u201d Cruz\u2019s father, the senator remembered, would add food coloring to eggs or mix spinach into them to get the green color.<\/p>\n

But not even Dr. Seuss would say that he invented green eggs and ham. It was a bet with his publisher that led Theodor Seuss Geisel to write the book. Bennett Cerf wagered $50 that Geisel could not write a book with only fifty words.<\/p>\n

And yet by repeating forty-nine monosyllabic words and a single polysyllabic word (anywhere<\/em>), Geisel assembled a book with 681 words total that would become his most popular book ever, selling tens of millions of copies. Geisel claimed that Cerf never paid him the $50, but Green Eggs and Ham<\/i> was one of the many Beginner Books that made the author and his publishing house millions of dollars.<\/p>\n

Part of Dr. Seuss\u2019s midcentury success came from federal education reform that dedicated money to stocking school libraries and promoting early education. \u201cChildren\u2019s lit,\u201d according to critic Louis Menand, \u201cwas a Cold War growth industry, right alongside Boeing, Northrop, and Dow Chemical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Seuss, in particular, was very much of his time, and Menand offers a convincing read<\/a> of The Cat in the Hat<\/i> as an allegory for the problems of feminism, communism, and juvenile delinquency. <\/p>\n

The moral of Green Eggs and Ham<\/i>, though, seemed straightforward until last night. The narrator, Sam, claims for the first half of the book\u2019s pages that \u201cI do not like green eggs and ham,\u201d but then, after trying them, says for the second half, \u201cI like green eggs and ham!\u201d<\/p>\n

Senator Cruz claimed that Sam could be an allegory for Americans and healthcare. \u201cLet me say more broadly to everyone,\u201d he said, \u201cGreen Eggs and Ham<\/i> has some applicability, as curious as it might sound to Obamacare, because three-and-a-half years ago, President Obama and Senate Democrats told the American people, Just try Obamacare. Just try it.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Cruz, \u201cthe difference with Green Eggs and Ham<\/i> is when Americans tried it, they discovered they did not like green eggs and ham \u2026 They did not like Obamacare in a box, with a fox, in a house, or with a mouse.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Cruz isn\u2019t the first to quote Dr. Seuss on the floor of the Senate (senators John Kerry, Harry Reid, and Joe Lieberman have all quoted him, too), and many other exegetes disagreed with his reading of the children\u2019s book and the American public.<\/p>\n

If you missed Senator Cruz\u2019s reading, it is archived in video form<\/a> and will join the many other mentions of Dr. Seuss in the Congressional Record.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the bedtime-story portion of his twenty-one-hours-and-nineteen-minutes-long speech on the floor of Congress, Senator Ted Cruz, in an episode that has already achieved notoriety, read Dr. Seuss\u2019s Green Eggs and Ham as his two daughters watched at home in their pajamas. \u201cI will credit my father,\u201d Senator Cruz said. \u201cHe invented green eggs and ham.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":383,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[11936,5869,2426,11934,11937],"class_list":["post-60637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-bennett-cerf","tag-dr-seuss","tag-politics","tag-ted-cruz","tag-theodor-seuss-geisel"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDoctored by Casey N. 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