Good Man

Last night my wife dragged me to see Won’t You Be My Neighbor, the recently released documentary about Fred Rogers and his iconic childrens’ show. By the closing credits I was damn glad she did. While I was not an avid Mr. Rogers fan before, my kids came along in the Barney (God help us) and Wiggles era, I sure am now.

Fred Rogers was a gift to us all, and like most good things was taken for granted when he was here. His show was as important as it was simple and straightforward, an enlightened alternative to the swamp of inane and often violent childrens’ programming. And while Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood was easy pickings for parody and cheap shots, the documentary fleshes out an American treasure, the leader of a group of extraordinarily dedicated individuals, who produced magic day in and day out from 1968 to 2001.

Roger’s message was at its heart a Christian one… children are created by God, and each is special. We are born with nothing to prove, our existence is enough to be a blessing to the world. And while Rogers was at the forefront of social progress, for example bringing in from the start a black man as a regular in the neighborhood, and actually explaining the assassination of Robert Kennedy to his young audience, his mission was to take pressure off of kids through relentless empathy and understanding.

He became one of the faces of PBS after ensuring funding early on with heartfelt Senate testimony. Incredibly, right wing critics would later target Rogers as PBS was added to Fox/AM’s ever expanding list of grievances. Watching clips of Brian Kilmeade going after Rogers for telling kids they are special “and don’t have to earn their position in life” has to be seen to be believed.

But ultimately what Won’t You Be My Neighbor leaves one with is both a deep appreciation of a man committed to an idea…a good and necessary idea, and regret, at least for me, that we didn’t appreciate him enough before he died of stomach cancer in 2003. Certainly nobody has filled those blue boat sneakers he changed into each day for 33 years since.

When Dances With Wolves hit theaters in the early 90s, I loved it, saw it three different times with three different dates. It struck me as an indisputable good. A few weeks later I was at a party and was introduced to some guy, the boyfriend of my girl’s best friend. I brought up Wolves and before I could declare how much I liked it, this guy blathered it was the worst flick he had ever seen. Phoney, bleeding-heart liberal blah blah blah. The other people in the group glanced at each other and came to silent agreement about how much of an AHole the guy was, much to the embarrassment of his girlfriend. For years after that, I would often give new acquaintances the Dances With Wolves test to screen for vexatious types.

With the cleavage that now runs through our national life, and the trauma tribal cues frequently cause, perhaps it’s time for a simple Mr. Rogers test to clarify who among us portends decency. Anybody given to gratuitously dissing Fred Rogers doesn’t have much to offer; that’s a profile I can rely on.

Fred Rogers offered everything sorely wanting these days, particularly in high places of our public sector. Kindness, selflessness, tolerance and simple decency pervaded his wonderful enterprise. The documentary is told through the eyes of the people who loved him, those lucky enough to be regular parts of his life. They all understand how special he was and lovingly reflect the lessons he taught, usually by personal example. What he gave us was a gift. The glaring absence today of what he embodied punctuates the crisis we face. There are far worse aspirations we can pursue than working at being better neighbors. BC