Bedtime story moons GOP

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August 13, 12:26 PM

by Diane Petryk Bloom, Children's Book Examiner

 

 

Goodnight Bush

The new book is on display on the checkout desk at the Community Bookstore in Park Slope Brooklyn. Patrons see it, said bookseller Lima McCabe, and exclaim, "I loved this as a child!"

Then, of course, they start thumbing through it. Quickly they see it is a searing condemnation of the Bush years using phrases like "contractor beheading…innocent bloodshedding."   Their second exclamation, whether appalled or amused, is usually, according to bookseller Walter Petryk,  "Boy are they going to get sued!"

But of course they aren't, he says, informing me that parody is protected under the First Amendment. 

  Well, not so fast my son. Yes, the First Amendment of the Constitution would appear to protect satire and parody and "fair use" as a form of free speech and expression. But it can, and has, been challenged. And sometimes the challengers win.

 In 1995 Penguin Books published The Cat NOT in the Hat! by "Dr. Juice." According to Wikipedia, the book told the story of O.J. Simpson, the "cat" giving his perspective on his murder trial ordeal in Seuss-like verses: "A man this famous/Never hires/Lawyers like/Jacoby Meyers/When you're accused of a killing scheme/You need to build a real Dream Team" and "One knife?/Two knife?/Red knife/Dead wife." Dr. Seuss' widow, Audrey Geisel, sued Penguin Books, arguing that the work infringed the copyright to her husband's work and the court agreed. Penguin Books was enjoined from from distributing the book.

 Indeed, a  parody, Wikipedia says,  is a work created to mock, comment on, or poke fun at an original work, its subject, or author, by means of humorous or satiric imitation. The author of the Penguin book was obviously after O.J., not Seuss. In a similar way, Origen and Golan  clearly want to bash Bush, not Margaret Wise Brown, author of Goodnight Moon.

 Although they explain at the end of their claimed parody, that the original, published in 1947, did have inconsistencies: "Books on shelves change from page to page, someone steals the drying socks, and the mailbox in the painting of the cow jumping over the moon sometimes disappears."

The authors say this is similar to the past eight years in the United States. "Under Bush," they say, "the nation we thought we knew was distorted into something almost unrecognizable, leaving us feeling strangely out of place in our own  home –America."

 "Goodnight Constitution…Goodnight Evolution…"

 Symbolic yes. The country hypnotized into submission like the child lulled to sleep.  

Cheney sits in the rocker and whispers 'hush' with a double-barreled shotgun across his lap and rabbit slippers on his feet.

Parody or not, well-timed to "moon" GOP delegates.

For many, the Republican National Convention is the first tangible sign that they will be able to say  "Goodnight Bush" after saying "Good Grief" for so many years. 

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