1968: the rebuttal

It's been argued on these pages before that the late 1960s were a better time, a time of great music, awesome muscle cars, and Australian cricketers you didn't want to punch. If, albeit, fucking terrible beer. In the defence of modern times, however, some of the worldviews exhibited by polite society in 1968 are, shall we say, endearingly archaic. Some are lost to progress. Some remain as conservative government policy. And others live on in childrens' books, reprinted in unmodified form since their first edition...

You probably had this book as a five year old. You probably scrawled all over it like my five year old. The amazing thing is, it's EXACTLY AS IT WAS WHEN YOU WERE A KID. And, seemingly, since its first publication in 1968.

Which is a little, erm, Scarry. And here's why:

The broader economic and societal message is, by modern US standards, almost communist...

...while the gender politics are, shall we say, a bit fucken 1968.

Still, while the depictions of indigenous peoples are fairly average, at least they're less offensive than the fucking NFL.

And Sergeant Murphy has clearly never been on deployment with the Ferguson PD, which is a good thing.

However, there's one last panel which confirms, once and for all, that this is a book from, and of, a distant, archaic time in human history:

The Doctor is OUT.