Fred Rogers

Yesterday I made an impromptu date with my oldest friend. At first we were just going to go to a craft beer bar neither of us had been to, and then my buddy asked if I had seen “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” I didn’t necessarily have this on my radar screen, I was aware of it, but determined it wasn’t a “must see”. She’s a behavioral analyst, so I think there were multiple dimensions that would appeal to her, the mother of four children, and a viewer of the show as a child. I saw the previews and the press coverage and had an idea of what we would be seeing. My first excuse was that I really didn’t feel like crying today…Sure, I watched Mr. Rogers, and some of the fantasy stuff creeped me out as a kid, and the saccharin quality of his communication style also made me a little uncomfortable. I think the strains of my “realist” came out early in my development. I never liked the creepy school photographers. I didn’t really want to live in a fantasy land. Though I did like my puppets, especially Chip, the German Shepherd. I was a child of Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street, Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, and The Muppet Show. I think clever humor had more appeal to me than anything, but before I had that I had Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street.

I was a suburban child of the middle class raised by parents who were from the Bronx. Our priorities were academics, sports, and being good people. And in the seventies we were coming off of the civil rights clashes of the sixties, the Nixon debacle, the Vietnam War, and the energy crisis later in the decade. This is the world that Fred Rogers addressed, rather bravely I might add. And he braved it with the gentle sweetness that was the hallmark of his style, style that was not quintessentially masculine in the American sense of masculinity. He had a natural curiosity and passion for entering the world of children’s minds, for inhabiting their mindset, their logic patterns, and anticipating their fears. He could have been a minister of his own church and chose to hang out in the children’s playroom instead. Put that concept into the traditional expectations of men and women in the workforce, and you can see how out of the ordinary he was, and how he piqued your interest by the choices he made. Who didn’t make jokes about his potential sexuality? Add that to the fact he was a lifelong Republican, and the jokes write themselves. How could this gentle man not be gay or a pedophile one inevitably asks?

He was fierce. He was determined to address the needs of children in their darkest, most uncertain moments, and by default he was also addressing our needs as adults too. He did shows on the most difficult tragedies and challenges, Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, race relations, and later divorce, physical disability. He despised “consumer” culture and toxic masculinity before we even knew that was a thing. He was a lone, male voice, crying out to bridge the gaps in all of societies’ divides. I kept thinking of David Byrne when I watched this film. There was a wildness and revolutionary energy behind this compassionate man, and we need so much more of that especially today. You could see the wild-eyed anger in his eyes when he was particularly angry. You could see the frustrations bubble right up when after his retirement he addressed 9/11. He knew that he needed to provide leadership in a moment when we all needed it, children and adults alike, yet he couldn’t comprehend the evil of the moment himself. As his career was winding to a close, the Fox News mentality was winding up, and they hammered him for “ruining” generations of children by declaring that we are all special and valuable. And here lies the conflict. He was a religious man who wasn’t hitting us on the head with God, who wasn’t blatantly forwarding an “agenda”. He was shining a light on our needs as children and as people, that we are more than just consumers or colors, we are humans who need love. So much of society is about drawing boundaries between the haves and the have-nots, the white and the brown people, the religious and the godless, and Rogers understood that. We are at another of those 1968 moments, Fox is still here, and Fred Rogers isn’t. Which world would you like to inhabit?