Mister Rogers's Enduring Wisdom - The Atlantic

Mister Rogers's Enduring Wisdom - The Atlantic

"It was the summer of 2018, and so it was the summer of Fred. It was also the summer of incivility--the summer when the very idea of civility was up for debate--and one night, in Tampa, Florida, the two converged.

"It was the summer of Fred because of the release of Morgan Neville's beautiful documentary about him, Won't You Be My Neighbor?, which became the highest-grossing biographical documentary ever. It was the summer of incivility because some progressive activists had decided that civility was a luxury we could no longer afford, an instrument of an intolerable status quo....

"Then, on June 22, Florida's attorney general, Pam Bondi, attended a showing of Won't You Be My Neighbor? in downtown Tampa, and was confronted by protesters who condemned her for her legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act and her silence in the face of the administration's family separations at the southern border. They yelled at her and called her a 'horrible person,' and when I spoke with her a year later, she told me that they'd tried to stop her from entering the theater, shouted in her face with such vehemence that she was flecked with spit, and bullied her boyfriend in an attempt to provoke a fight. She watched the movie, but she was 'shaking the whole time,' and when she was on her way out of the theater they accosted her again, videotaping her as she attempted to go to her car. On the tape, a woman is heard yelling: 'Would Mister Rogers take children away from their parents? Would Mister Rogers take away health insurance? ... What would Mister Rogers think about you and your legacy in Florida, taking away health insurance from people with preexisting conditions? Pam Bondi, shame on you!'

"...But even more obvious is what his position would have been regarding the civility debate. Fred was a man with a vision, and his vision was of the public square, a place full of strangers, transformed by love and kindness into something like a neighborhood. That vision depended on civility, on strangers feeling welcome in the public square, and so civility couldn't be debatable. It couldn't be subject to politics but rather had to be the very basis of politics, along with everything else worthwhile....

"What he would have thought of Pam Bondi's politics is one thing; what he would have thought of Pam Bondi is quite another, because he prayed for the strength to think the same way about everyone. She is special; there has never been anyone exactly like her, and there never will be anyone exactly like her ever again; God loves her exactly as she is. He repeated this over and over, and that his name was invoked as a cudgel by activists who probably shed tears over the documentary has haunted me since I first saw the video from Tampa. It isn't that he is revered but not followed so much as he is revered because he is not followed--because remembering him as a nice man is easier than thinking of him as a demanding one. He spoke most clearly through his example, but our culture consoles itself with the simple fact that he once existed. There is no use asking further questions of him, only of ourselves. We know what Mister Rogers would do, but even now we don't know what to do with the lessons of Mister Rogers.

"...How would Fred Rogers have responded to Twitter? He would have signed up for an account, @ZZZ143, #YouAreSpecial; he was not one to back away from the fray. But Twitter is a platform consecrated to the eternal pie fight--to the purposes of protest, complaint, and particularly punishment--where nobody is special and nobody is invulnerable. Who would have been Fred's first troll? Who would have taken it upon themselves to 'school' Fred, to 'call him out,' to 'educate' him? Who would have told him that his faith in us was misplaced, and informed him--and us--that Mister Rogers was wrong?"