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Happy Birthday, King Friday XIII: An Appreciation Of Fred Rogers (Again)

 My childhood was pretty rough and dramatic. I can just leave it there. If there was one person who is the opposite of rough and dramatic, it's Mister Rogers. You can find any clip that you want from the show; he consistently affirms and validates the feelings of the small children in his audience. Even when I was much older, I would check in sometimes, because I knew that I would feel valued. He didn't even know me, but honestly, he did. It's more than nostalgia, for so many of us. It is the memory of being loved, even from a distance.

He was a mainline Protestant, back when that still meant something. And I didn't know as a kid that in fact he was a minister, but I should have guessed. There is something about godly people that you can't fake or fabricate. There are church people, and there are godly people. Church people are a roll of the dice; godly people live by a power that is not their own. When they leave, their lives of genuine kindness and empathy leave marks on the world. These are the stories that other people tell long after they are gone. I used to watch such a person on my TV most afternoons as a kid. It's why the videos still fly around the Internet, of his testimony in 1969 before the Congress, of him asking money for public television. It's why movies are made about him, nearly 20 years after he is gone. I took a shot at Tom Hanks yesterday, but the truth is, there is no one more venerable in Hollywood right now than Tom Hanks. Hanks had to play Mister Rogers, because we don't have any movie star with anywhere near the empathy and goodwill he can generate. It's not the best casting, and I haven't even seen the movie, but again, who else could play Fred Rogers?

I've seen the clip of him accepting his Emmy award, and he used the moment to make all those high-powered actors and actresses uncomfortable, by making them meditate for a solid minute on those who had loved them, and sacrificed for them. It didn't surprise me, or even choke me up, because of course he did that. He did that all the time. It seems he lived a life of thankfulness, and the best compliment I can give is that he taught so many of us--including me--to do the same thing.

Thanks, Mister Rogers.

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TGWWS said…
Hear hear.
5:25 PM
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