Acceptance, kindness, respect, and love

This afternoon I went to see the movie Won’t You Be My Neighbor? With a title like that it can only be a documentary of Fred Rogers, of the famous Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. And indeed it is.

We see how Rogers gets into television before going off to seminary, then getting back into TV to start his show. We meet the puppets, Daniel (sometimes Rogers’ alter-ego, able to say things the adult can’t), King Friday, and the rest. And we see how Rogers interacts with kids.

After Robert Kennedy’s assassination Daniel asks what that word means. When the space shuttle blows up with a teacher on board Rogers takes up the issue. When Superman becomes popular and kids are hurt playing with Superman capes he tackles the difference between real and make-believe. Public Television barely gets started when a senator wants to defund it and Rogers’ testimony convinces him otherwise. He helped kids cope and made sure he could continue to do that.

One of the recurring characters of the TV series was Officer Clemmons, a black police officer. At a time when black children were being chased out of public swimming pools Rogers invited Officer Clemmons to share his wading pool (only big enough for their feet) and share a towel when they were done. In this movie we learn another aspect of Officer Clemmons – Francois Clemmons, who played the officer, is gay. And in the early 1970s that could not be mentioned on air. Clemmons married, which was a disaster. A while later (perhaps a few years later) Rogers sang a song while Clemmons was there, the song was about I love you as you are. Clemmons realized a man is telling me he loves me, which his father and step father never did, and he loves me knowing I’m gay and he’s okay with that, he loves the gay part too.

Back to the way he treated kids. He respected them. He cared about them. He focused on the child in front of him. And he listened to what the child had to say.

I didn’t watch the show growing up, partly because by the time it would have been available where I lived I would have been in high school or college. I did see an occasional episode over the years, such as when he visited a musician in the neighborhood. Even so, I heard of his reputation – which was considerable.

Fred Rogers and his display of acceptance and kindness is something sorely needed at a time when the leader of the country practices cruelty and his party and voters approve. This was mentioned briefly – what would Rogers say and do about today? I’ll paraphrase a line near the end (only because I can’t remember the original wording) – Don’t ask what Mister Rogers would do. Ask what you will do.