During a 21-hour-long speech on the Senate floor on Monday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) read his daughters Green Eggs and Ham as a bedtime story. But apparently the book’s author, Dr. Seuss, would have been “offended.”
Dr. Peter Dreier, Occidental College professor of politics and self-proclaimed ‘Dr. Seuss expert,’ condemned the Texas Senator’s use of the children’s book, as POLITICO reported.
“Not only would he be offended at the misuse of ‘Green Eggs and Ham,’ but he’d be offended at almost everything that Ted Cruz stands for, which is to remove the safety net from poor people, poor and vulnerable people, he’s clearly more power hungry than he is compassionate and he’s a bully,” Dreier told the news publication.
Dreier included Dr. Seuss in his book, “The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame” and added that the author, whose real name is Theodor Geisel, was considered a progressive and spent time as an editorial cartoonist at a left-wing paper. Dreier noted that the point of Green Eggs and Ham is to try new things, something that ‘defund Obamacare’ fighters seem unwilling to do.
Dreier was joined in his criticism of Cruz by fellow academic, Phil Nel, a professor of children’s literature at Kansas State University. Nel, who is also a Seuss scholar accused Cruz himself of being a kind of cartoon character.
“You could imagine him as being in a Dr. Seuss book without really changing much about him, he’s so outlandish,” he argued.
