Let me begin by pointing out the painfully obvious: We are living in odd, tumultuous, relentlessly transgressive times.

As this year closes, we are poised to expect more disturbing revelations, more transgressions. From this strange year, here are two recent, notorious examples. Both emerge from a variety of wondrous play—storytelling—and from the subset of children’s literature. Both thrive on boorish misappropriation. I’ll take them in reverse chronological order.

Franklin the Turtle, Conscripted

The first revolves around the helpful, compassionate, considerate, empathetic Franklin the Turtle—a paragon of welcoming play and fairness—who, in books and television storybooks that branched into video games, has helped kids learn lessons of courage, kindness, and understanding since he first appeared in 1986.

Franklin, somewhere near 4 years old, lives in a close-knit, lively village called “Woodland.” Looking a little like Manitoba, Woodland is populated by his family and a large group of helpful friends of various species.

Alongside them, Franklin has had many adventures during which he learns important lessons in growing up. I’ll mention just a few happy endings.

In one story, Franklin and his pal Bear strive to make ice hockey fun for their hesitant friend Skunk, meanwhile delivering a lesson about patient skills-building. Skating backwards? Wow! In another, a group of friends—Polar Bear, Bird, Duck, and Lion—help Franklin overcome his fear of the dark. (This despite their own worries.) When in another tale, Franklin is so frightened by a thunderstorm that he retreats into his shell, his friend Beaver coaxes him out by patiently explaining lightning and thunder. Owl, wise despite his years, supplies the reassuring scientific details. It’s electricity that causes a giant pop! A rainbow appears at the end! When Franklin starts out excited but uneasy about his first day at school in another story, he finds comfort in learning how his parents will miss him after he boards the bus.

Over the years, author Paulette Bourgeois and illustrator Brenda Clarke finely tuned the Franklin stories upward toward developmental psychology, especially children’s coping mechanisms. So, for Franklin and his circle, mistakes always present learning opportunities, anxieties can be overcome with patience, and friends are ever a source of understanding.

Separating Satire From Travesty

But in a loutish misappropriation, an AI-generated image deployed to social media by the military figure and news media personality elevated to the position of Secretary of Defense (or* *“War”?), Franklin becomes a war criminal. The cover of the fake book in question, Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists, depicted the sweet character grinning in savage glee, perched on a helicopter skid and firing a rocket-propelled grenade into a small boat. The subtitle read, “For Your Christmas Wish-List.” The release of this shocking image coincided with news stories about the killing of shipwrecked survivors clinging to blasted flotsam, a real-time war crime.

The Franklin publishers denounced the “violent,” “unauthorized,” and “denigrating” use of the character’s image. In the widespread backlash that erupted in the United States and Canada, millions drew a line between satire and travesty.

“Operation Charlotte’s Web”

The second instance of travesty stems not so much from vengefulness as from cluelessness. In November 2025, the Department of Homeland Security and its police arm, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, launched a crackdown in the “sanctuary city” of Charlotte, North Carolina. They aimed to sell the operation as an effort to snare the “worst of the worst.”

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In reality, of the individuals detained by masked troopers at grocery stores and places of worship, only a third had any criminal record. (These included traffic infractions.) In that booming metropolis, the majority of those seized had worked construction jobs, in food service, and in landscaping.

The point here is not about hype and overreach, per se, or even sloppy thinking, but, if you will permit, about its framing. Officials called the siege contrived to ensnare migrants “Operation Charlotte’s Web.”

Their moniker isn’t just dim-witted and offensive in the manner of the Franklin the Turtle episode; it is also deeply ironic.

Ironic because the author of the kind and subtle classic children’s novel Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White, was also a sharp public intellectual and essayist who championed the welcoming nature of the American experiment.

Looking ahead to the defeat of Fascist powers and the inevitable displacement that would result, White argued conventionally against the narrow militarist nationalism that had brought the world to war, but also for measures of peaceful international control afterward. “We may soon have to make a choice,” White wrote in a collection of essays, The Wild Flag, “between the special nation to which we pledge our allegiance, and the broad humanity of which we are born a part.” The United States is a “dream come true,” he wrote, an example, a sort of “world-state in miniature.”

Post-war, especially after atomic warfare introduced a frightful new urgency, sentiments like his led to the founding of the United Nations.

Generosity in Charlotte’s Web

Remember the main vibes, compassion and generosity, which carried Charlotte’s Web through to the end. To recap: Fern, the farm girl, rescues the tiniest pig from slaughter, names him Wilbur, and nurtures him toward maturity. Then Charlotte, a spider, a “good writer” in her dying days, rescues her sweet-natured friend Wilbur again from the meat-grinder by weaving, miraculously, words into her web—“radiant,” “terrific,” “some pig,” and “humble.” Fame and humility saved her friend.

Purpose and Meaning

If there are three words that separate today’s media-driven, narcissistic culture from the high-minded, self-sacrificing psychology of World War II eight decades ago, they are surely “compassion,” “fame,” and “humility.”

Mark West, a prolific writer and a professor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, specializes in the study of children’s literature. West notes that “by helping others,” the characters in Charlotte’s Web “gain a sense of purpose and meaning.”

West sorely laments that this of all novels should have been conjured in the performative crackdown, dubbed “Operation Charlotte’s Web,” that took place in his hometown. West concludes that the label runs “completely contrary to the values that White expressed.” As a pointed reminder, West quotes White on the generous American prospect: “Here dwell the world’s emigrants under one law, and that law is Thou shalt not push thy neighbor around.”

In Charlotte’s Web, after all, friends are ever a source of understanding.