The ideas here come from Won't You Be My Neighbor (2018).
I have written about that movie twice before, but there was something I hadn't gotten to yet: conservatives bashing on him.
It's been a while since I have seen the film, but there were various conservative commentators (was one Limbaugh? possibly) blaming him for all of the weaklings that had grown up watching him.
Mr. Rogers may just be the anti-dominator culture personification, so people who want to rule through creating a hierarchy where we are all looking down on each other and accepting poor treatment of ourselves as long as we get to pay it downward to someone else... yeah, they're totally going to hate him. Maybe I can't remember the details now because they are all too much alike to stand out.
I saw the movie during the first Trump presidency, so that was going to resonate. However, the other thing that I wanted to get to was that it's kind of an old complaint.
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers." -- Socrates
I remember seeing this quote in Dear Abby. I guess it would have been in the 80s. I believe it was a response to complaints about "kids these days", making the point that despairing of the rising generation is nothing new.
Actually, the quote is questionable. It got cited a lot in the '60s after being used in a book from 1953, but that caused scholars to try and track it down and they couldn't.
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/respectfully-quoted/socrates-469399-b-c/
As it was, even then it was attributed to Socrates by Plato, who was fairly comfortable putting words in Socrates' mouth.
That particular quote may not matter so much on its own; it's popularity was a result of lots of complaints about the youth of the 60s by the generation before them. That is a longstanding tradition.
(This is not a great page, but you can find more quotes here: https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-about-the-younger-generation/)
I suppose some of it is a generation gap and some of it is ordinary change, but we have to be honest with ourselves about what is happening. Sometimes the issue may be balance or lack of thought.
I have developed a great appreciation for Fred Rogers. To the extent I get annoyed with anything in relation to him now, it's when adults retreat to "Look for the helpers."
That's for children. When you're grown, sure, look around and take encouragement from people doing good, but also, become a helper! Children need to know that there are people who will try and make things better, but actually making that be true is on the adults.
In fact, there may be people whose understanding stopped at "I like you just the way you are," without understanding that it goes for everyone else too, and that -- even though we will make mistakes and people should still love us despite that -- we still have a responsibility to be kind.
I'm just saying that for people who only got the first part of the message and stayed trapped there, it's not Mr. Rogers' fault.
Related posts:
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/10/what-mr-rogers-said.html
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