Oh, do I have so many choice colorful words I would love to yell at in Vietnamese.
My man Rodger’s was antifash you imbecile
I wonder if McCain is dishonest, stupid, or both. I think both, but stupid is the dominant mechanism here. I think she’s too idiotic to grasp that all things have a political context and subtext, even when it’s not an explicit “vote for XYZ”. But maybe she gets that and is just being dishonest for clout.
Either way I hope she goes away and never impacts the world again.
As a rich girl, why would she watch Mr Rogers? Didn’t he testify before Congress about not cutting off PBS finding? That says enough about his politics.
Of course, Fred Rogers had political affiliations and views, but he did not communicate them through his show. In fact, he was careful to limit his political ideology, given his dedication to helping children develop.
I believe this quote from McCain reiterates that sentiment. The fact that this post is framing her statement as something disingenuous is very telling about how this community has changed. How are we any different from the politicians we criticize when we do the exact same thing to support our own narratives?
This is, frankly, kind of gross.
Yeah, Mr. Rogers never did anything political
/s
You are absolutely correct that was a political push he was trying to do. The key thing in terms of kids he never did anything like “you should vote for capitalism or Democrats or whatever when you grow up”
For the kids his show was solely about how to treat other people and themselves as they grow. My kids do still watch his show, at least when they want something relaxing to go to sleep with which is good enough for me.
This isn’t to say he was perfect but I would be so insanely happy if we lived in a world with most people living close to the level he did in caring for others.
What’s funny is that she’s right. He wasn’t political. He was just a normal decent person. He didn’t talk about Republicans (which I believe he himself was) or Democrats. So in that sense, yeah, he wasn’t political.
Really? But he was such a normal decent person? I assumed he was liberal or progressive or socialist because he valued empathy and niceness. He did not look down on people for their race, class, religion or abilities. He valued education. He genuinely cared for people.
The lesson I take from this is republicans used to not be sociopaths
In the 80s and 90s it was possible to have faith in the country. That the current administration was just a bad actor and we’d get it right next time. That we all kinda wanted the same thing, a functioning government and to lead our lives happily and privately.
Maybe it was true then. Maybe Fox News actually did poison the well, and people who once were rational are no longer so. Fear and hate blight rationality and the media cycle feeds on it. The more angry we are, the more we engage with social media. The more ads we’re served.
It’s wild that we’ll have to explain around campfires and cook stoves in the aftermath to whatever generation follows us that this was all in pursuit of ad revenue.
Politics in the US used to be divided along a lot more lines than just socially progressive vs socially conservative. You had a lot of people voting in ways that would surprise people these days, which was totally normal and reasonable, as the reaction to hearing people voted differently to you wasn’t outrage like it is now. It’s really hard to go back to that though, as now it’s been sorted down pretty much exclusively one very emotional axis being the whole identity of the parties, everyone infers a lot more about people based on who they vote for.
This bitch is doing wonders for the perceptions of her gender… /S
May 1st, 1969. Fred Rodgers testifies before the Senate in favor of PBS Funding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKy7ljRr0AA
Mr. Rodgers would be disappointed in you.
Its always amazing how selective this is. Should business people also shutup about politics? Should they be prevented from lobbying and donating to political campaigns?
Guess which party’s supreme court picks fucked that up?
Business people should not be celebrities, so people should only listen as it pertains to their company or their industry.
Wealthy donors are clearly one of the causes of our current mess and need to be fixed
Fred was woke as fuck
the most radical thing about this in it’s context is that in the moment there is no discussion about this being a radical act. in the moment, on the show, Fred Rogers simply says “isn’t it nice to soak your feet after a long day” and then him and the mailman (i forget his name) just soak their feet and speak as equals about how their day is going and how nice it feels to be neighborly to each other.
the most radical acts of defiance don’t look like defiance at all. they look like a friend being a friend. ultimately, that’s all solidarity is. a willingness to make friends with people who are different from you
Folks see this or Uhura/Chekov on Star Trek and completely lack the contextual understanding behind just how woke (For the time) it is.
See parallels w/AIDS fears & Princess Di shaking hands? But contrasts of course
I was thinking of this moment
Man, I wish we lived in a world where being kind and treating everyone equally wasn’t somehow political.
In a normal democracy it isn’t, but fascists aren’t democratic people. By definition.
they’re also barely people
dehumanization is the easy and wrong way out. it’s human to have the capacity for infinite cruelty. change the material circumstances and you too might be cruel.
Right on. It’s so deeply human that no other animal has been observed to be as cruel as we are to each other and our environment.
You’ll lose that opinion real fast if you learn about chimps, dolphins, or even lions.
No chimp has performed a holocaust. I don’t know about the dolphins though; who knows what goes on beneath the waves…
Chimps massacre and cannibalize rival tribes on the regular.
He’s nice and not racist. Pfff woke.
I don’t. Politics is the greatest strength of the human species. Ants and wolves and elephants are pretty political compared to snakes or rats, but humans are the most political animal by several orders of magnitude. It’s their capacity for political organising that made the Pyramids, and Bioshock, and put a man on the moon, and created Avatar
Lol I feel like our greatest strength could be defined in a better way, particularly considering what “politics” has gotten us in pretty much every single civilization… Collapse
Politics also made all those civilisations.
When a society all agrees not to eat all the potatoes now, but to plant some underground and wait for them to grow more potatoes, that’s politics.
When an artist and a programmer agree to divide responsibilities and make a video game together, that’s politics.
When a discord moderator decides to force everyone to agree to a no politics rule, that’s politics.
When a Cheeto gets people murdered in the streets, that’s politics
We can do this all day bro, I get what you are saying but I’m going to respectfully disagree. Yes politics are cool when you define them as “human cooperation” but that’s a really broad and wide definition that fails to capture a shitload of nuance. So yeah. If you just say “cooperation is cool” I guess you’re right. Not exactly deep though and one could argue that tools, ingenuity, love, the desire to explore and adventure, the thirst for knowledge, all off those other things drove the good parts of society… Not politics. So I am going to respectfully disagree.
I’m not saying politics is all good, but politics gives humans the power to make all those nice things you said mean something. Tools only get passed on to the next generation because of schools and apprenticeships; political organisation of knowledge. Ingenuity only has a lasting effect because of education politics, and the political organisation of philosophy and science. Climbing Mount Everest and landing on the moon would be difficult or impossible without politics to make supply chains and organise expedition parties. Knowledge would die in a generation if not for our politics, like it does with octopodes, an animal just as smart as humans, but apolitical.
And I think love is an inherently political emotion. Apolitical animals like octopodes or lizards don’t have an evolutionary reason to develop love, except perhaps sexual love for reproduction. Look at seahorses and how political and loving they are in comparison. Or penguins. So very political, so very loving. They care for their partners and children for a long time. Love is what binds them together and lets them do all those politics. Compare with eagles, whose most advanced political organisation is “get off my lawn”. Their lack of love makes them less political.
I get your point but Bioshock and Avatar seem pretty out of place in that list
The pyramids were a technological triumph that has made a farce of conspiracy theorists
Bioshock is an artistic triumph that has made a farce of fascism
The Moon missions were an anthropic triumph that made a farce out of the relentless hostility of space
Avatar was an artistic triumph that made a farce out of cinema.
That’s just a list of four random things I like
That kind of was the point — he taught values without turning childhood into a debate. That’s why he still resonates.
She should really shut the fuck up about wokeness right now. He father hated Trump. She has openly called out Trump.
Enough with the distractions.
No, love. He did something far more important than entertain them. He raised them to be decent people. Apparently you didn’t pay attention, but even Mr. Rogers can only do so much, and you were evidently always beyond help.
Presbyterians don’t have canonized saints but if they did, The Reverend Fred Rogers would almost certainly be #1 on the list. He believed in the importance of teaching kids to love their neighbors and themselves. And he found an incredibly effective way to do it that basically no one else has been able to match.
Too bad Meghan McCain was apparently watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on mute the entire time.
the bit that I always am happy to know is that through his entire show, he never appeared to be outwardly religious.
he said be kind, because it’s good to do, not because god said.
he said love one another, because it’s wonderful to be loved back, not because it was in some book.
that he was able to preach without the stigma of religion gave the enormous reach across cultures that his program had.
Ms. Rachel is doing a good job. Plus, she’s getting lots of hate for it
He really embodied all that is good in us.
