THE CAROLINA TIMES - SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2016-3
The ‘radical’ legacy of television’s Mister Rogers
By Peter Smith
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
LATROBE, Pa. (AP) - When he died in 2003, Fred Rogers was described in many
headlines as gentle, beloved, kind and - of course - neighborly.
But how about radical? Counter-cultural? Trouble-maker?
Scholars and others are using such adjectives as they assess the legacy of the late
creator and host of the long-running “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood”
For all his much-parodied gentle voice and manner, the Latrobe native actually
worked from a steely social conscience. He used his program, with its non-threatening
benign puppets, songs and conversation, to raise provocative topics such as war, peace,
race, gender and poverty with his audience of preschoolers and their parents - patiently
guiding them across the minefields of late 20th century political and social change.
Rogers was no “meek and mild pushover,” wrote Michael Long, author of the recent
book, “Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers”
Rogers was “a quiet but strong American prophet who, with roots in progressive
spirituality, invited us to make the world into a counter-cultural neighborhood of love,”
said Mr. Long, a professor of religious studies and peace and conflict studies at Eliza
bethtown (Pa.) College.
An early example could be seen on a recent afternoon in a classroom at the Fred Rog
ers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media on the campus of St. Vincent Col
lege in Latrobe. The center was formed to carry on his legacy, and that includes learning
to be bold advocates when needed, said its co-director, Junlei Li.
Li, a professor of psychological science, is teaching a seminar this semester titled,
“What Would Fred Rogers Do?”.
Many of the students had watched “Mister Rogers” as preschoolers. Now as adults,
they have been studying such broadcasts in an intensive course that blends psychol
ogy, child development and - apropos for a show produced by an ordained Presbyterian
minister - theology.
For a recent class, the students viewed an archived “Neighborhood” program. The
black-and-white video and the characters’ hairstyles reflected its 1968 vintage, but the
onscreen conflicts seemed to arise straight out of today’s newscasts with their high-
definition anxiety.
The puppet King Friday XIII was posting border guards, installing barbed-wire fenc
es and drafting passersby to keep out the those fomenting social change.
“Down with the changers!” he proclaimed. “Because we’re on top!”
The episode aired when other television programs were bringing the Vietnam War
into American living rooms, and when “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” had just gone
into national distribution from its Pittsburgh production base. It was part of weeklong
series on conflict, change and distrust.
King Friday’s declaration of national emergency to preserve the status quo “is a po
litical statement,” said Li. “It’s not a plot line merely to entertain children. It’s the idea
that when we resist change, it’s because we want to maintain our position”
To underscore the episode’s relevance, Li interspersed news clips of the current presi
dential campaign, with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s pledge to
bar Muslim immigrants and wall off migrants from Mexico.
In the end, the neighborhood was saved, but only through the bold civil disobedience
of King Friday’s subjects.
“People who want change are often equated to troublemakers,” said Li.
“I know it’s odd to say it, but my understanding of Fred Rogers’ legacy is that he
was a troublemaker in the same tradition as Dr. Martin Luther King or Bobby Kennedy
or Dr. Hanna-Attisha (the pediatrician-hero of the Flint, Mich., water crisis), who saw
something they thought was wrong and decided to take action. Fred had the opposite
style. He didn’t go on matches, he was not confrontational, but nevertheless he had a
ground on which he stood and he wanted to do something about it”
Rogers used his program in many other ways to navigate the minefield of late 20th
century social transformation.
He wore an apron and ironed clothes on a mid-day broadcast set in a house, when
most men would have been at work, modeling a revolution in gender roles. The puppet
Lady Elaine Fairchilde anchored a newscast long before Barbara Walters did, and she
rocketed into space a decade before Sally Ride broke the glass stratosphere.
Rogers even referred to God as female in a prayer, which wasn’t lost on writers of
protest letters.
Rogers and regular cast member Francois Clemmons, an African-American, dipped
their bare feet in a wading pool on a 1969 broadcast, when bitter conflicts over legally
segregated swimming pools were still a recent memory.
When politicians in the 1980s spoke of welfare recipients as lazy and unworthy of
government help, Rogers portrayed hard-working parents who still couldn’t afford all
that their children wanted or needed.
Rogers broadcast public-service announcements on helping children deal with news
of war and other tragedy, and he advocated for legislation that would allow at least one
parent in a military family to remain with his or her children rather than be deployed.
To be sure, some of Rogers’ cast members thought he was too cautious at times, ac
cording to Long.
Betty Aberlin, who portrayed Lady Aberlin on the show, publicly expressed her dis
appointment in 1991 that in the run-up to the Persian Gulf War, Rogers didn’t re-run an
anti-war segment from 1983.
Clemmons was disappointed that Rogers never pursued his idea for depicting an
inter-racial romance on screen.
More painfully, Rogers insisted that Clemmons, who was gay, keep that secret off
as well as on the screen, which strained but did not break their friendship, Long wrote.
Rogers evolved toward a more accepting attitude, remaining active in Sixth Presbyte
rian Church in Squirrel Hill and supporting its gay-affirming ministries.
For those that Rogers disappointed, it helps to remember he “never depicted himself
as a saint,” said Mr. Long.
And judging by the letters that Long found in the archives of the Fred Rogers Center,
plenty of viewers did understand the edginess of his messages - and didn’t like them.
Members of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church protested Rogers’ funeral, recog
nizing that his mantra of unconditional acceptance challenged their anti-gay hate mes
sage.
Rogers created, hosted and directed his program at WQED in Pittsburgh from its
mid-1960s local premier to its completion after three decades, 900 scripts, 230 songs,
millions of viewers and countless magic trolley rides later.
The St. Vincent students say the course has given them a new appreciation for the
Fred Rogers behind the Mister Rogers they knew in their early years.
“It’s really interesting to look at it and see things I completely missed,” Cara Thom
son, a junior psychology major from Upper St. Clair, said. “I’m like, how did I miss
that?” She said Rogers handled the subject matter appropriately for the children’s age
level and that the messages probably also got to the parents in the room.
Juli Cehula, a sophomore from Uniontown with a psychology major and children’s
studies minor, recalled that watching Mister Rogers each day, donning his trademark
sweater, “was like another friend was coming into my house”
Now she’s impressed with how he communicated with young children on topics like
grief and anger.
“Today everyone’s so guarded and has this shield up and doesn’t want their kids to
hear anything bad,” she said. “But these are issues that children are dealing with”
Student Marla Turk of Painesville, Ohio, recalled how the show helped her bond with
her mother when she was young.
“She would watch it with me and we would discuss it afterward,” said Turk, a second-
year major in mathematics and economics. That, she realizes, was prompted by Mister
Rogers’ open-ended questions such as “What do you think about change?” (asked dur
ing the King Friday episode).
Unlike his students, Li
never watched or heard
of “Mister Rogers” when
growing up in China. But
he was working toward his
doctorate in psychological
science at Carnegie Mellon
University when Rogers
died in 2003 at age 74, and
he began learning about
and appreciating his work.
That led to jobs at the non-
profit Family Communica
tions, which Rogers found
ed, and then at the Fred
Rogers Center.
Li said he’s impressed at
“how cross-cultural he is”
On return trips to China, he
has lectured to rural parents
raising foster children with
special needs, and people
are “invariably moved to
tears” when he shows them
videos of Mister Rogers
singing about how special
MR. ROGERS
(COURTESY PBS
ofability.
Rogers came by his strong social values through serious spiritual exploration. He
earned a degree at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and was ordained a Presbyterian
minister. But “unofficially, he was Quaker” and a “dyed-in-the-wool” pacifist, said Mr.
Long. His often-stated maxim that everyone was special, resembled the Quaker belief
in a divine inner light.
Elizabeth Seamans, a longtime scriptwriter and actor on the “Neighborhood,” knew
Rogers to pray and read his much-underlined Bible every day and to apply Jesus’ meth
od of using parables to teach.
He never preached on broadcasts, and children would never know from it that he was
a minister. But “he considered his television work as his ministry to children,” she said.
Organizers: Moral revival
tour will challenge injustice
(Continued From Front)
redistricting, labor laws, women’s rights, gay rights and the environment. The weekly
demonstrations often involved civil disobedience and led to hundreds of arrests.
It’s now time for people to no longer embrace silence in the face of so much injus
tice, said Forbes, senior minister emeritus at Riverside Church in New York City. The
tour “will remind our nation that even if dreamers’ voices are silenced in death, there
is no power on earth that can kill the dream of justice, peace and compassion,” he said.
It will begin Sunday at Riverside Church. The first revival will be held the follow
ing day, April 4 - the anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr. in 1968 - at Temple Beth Or.
The tour will include direct actions in state capitals on three Mondays in Septem
ber along with actions in Cleveland and Philadelphia after the GOP and Democratic
national conventions in those cities, organizers said in a news release.
In addition to New York and North Carolina, the tour will travel to South Carolina,
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Tennessee, Virginia, Texas, Oklahoma and Washington, D.C.
Moral Monday is the legislative protest piece of the broader Forward Together
movement led by the NAACP. The group has gone to court over North Carolina’s new
voting law and has challenged the state’s redistricting plans. The movement has spread
to several other states.
Barber, who is president of the state chapter of the NAACP, said he’s speaking out
on this tour as a minister and founder of a group called Repairers of the Breach. He is
minister of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro.
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