By David Futrelle
Mr. Rogers, who passed away in 2003, is having a strange but heartwarming posthumous comeback. A kindly father figure for generations of preschoolers, Rogers was recently the subject of a documentary that made grownups weep. Tom Hanks is playing him in a forthcoming feature film. He was even hailed as something of a bisexual icon after old comments of his acknowledging he was attracted to men as well as women resurfaced.
Some people aren’t so happy about Mr. Rogers’ return to the spotlight — among them Daily Wire video host Andrew Klavan, who recently denounced Rogers as the poster boy for the sort of “metrosexual wimpiness” that Klavan thinks is destroying masculinity. It’s John Wayne, not Fred Rogers, who Klavan thinks is the true epitome of manliness.
Now, Mr. Rogers was no metrosexual; his fashion sense was almost defiantly bland, and he wore a variation on the same outfit every single day, as Klavan is certainly aware. Klavan calls him a “metrosexual” only because he knows that he would be pilloried for saying the word I suspect he really wants to use: a three-letter slur starting with “f” and ending with “g.”
Klavan would rather that the boys and men of America look up to a sort of Rambo-ized version of Jesus Christ himself — whom Klavan describes as
a steely man of integrity who was willing to sacrifice everything to say what needed to be said, and do what needed to be done.
Among regular humans, it was John Wayne who apparently came closest to Klavan’s platonic ideal of the “real man.” The world is a dangerous place, Klavam warns, and we’re in desperate need of “tough” men with guns to protect us all from evil. “If you really want to have a beautiful day in the neighborhood,” Klavan declares, “call John Wayne and tell him to bring his guns.”
I don’t know about you, but I’d feel a lot more comfortable in a neighborhood full of Mr. Rogerses than I would in one patrolled continually by John Wayne wannabes with assault rifles. We don’t need protection by these sorts of guys; we need protection from them.
Indeed, the sort of toxic masculinity that Klavan celebrates is one of the greatest dangers the world faces today. Here in the US, our terrible, illegitimate president is the worst sort of toxic male, a perpetual overcompensator whose own masculinity is so fragile and broken than he pardons literal war criminals to make himself look tough to the troops and retweets photoshopped pictures of himself reimagined as Rocky.
It’s no wonder so many people are holding up Mr. Rogers’ gentle masculinity as a sort of antidote to this gross macho bullshit. Mr. Rogers was the father who didn’t get angry, the one who returned home every day at the same time, replacing his jacket with a cardigan and his dress shoes with sneakers in a ritual designed to be reassuring to small children in its everyday sameness.
Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was easy to mock, and I did my share of mocking once I passed out of its core demographic. But when I was a very little kid I was enthralled — reassured by Mr. Rogers, delighted by Henrietta Pussycat and her habit of working “meow meow” into everything she said, entranced by Lady Aberlin. (I think I had a little crush.)
I have no desire to go back and watch the show now; I’d be the fist to admit that, as Klavan sneers, it’s “intolerable” to watch “unless you happen to be a 3-year-old.” It’s too earnest, too wholesome for my cynical middle-aged self.
But when I was a little kid I watched it religiously — and I’d like to think that for all of my cynical crankiness a little of Mr. Rogers’ gentleness rubbed off on me.
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OT:
I have many things that I want to say about Frozen II, but this is the most important:
Kristoff finally gets a full song, and not just the song, but the entire sequence, is an eighties power ballad.
With a backing chorus of reindeer.
It. Is. GLORIOUS.
On Topic:
Kristoff in Frozen II will no doubt drive members of the manosphere up the wall with his non-toxic, non-fragile masculinity.
He spends the entire movie supporting Anna, including recognizing when he needs to put his own wants on the back burner.
At one point, he even responds to Anna have done something that hurt his feelings with “My love is not fragile.”
@Allandrel
I look forward to seeing their meltdown (pun intended) over this.
I hate going to movie theaters so I probably won’t see this one in theaters, but if it appears on streaming I might check it out.
@Surplus
All depends on latitude and location, but three or five months, it’s all disgusting white shit. *wry grin*
didn’t Fox news declare the 1st one harmful to boys because Kristoff wasn’t some knight in armor who saved the princesses?
Speaking of Frozen II, is Kristen Bell as likeable as she appears to be, or has she done some problematic shit that I’m unaware of?
@Moggie: As far as I can tell, from Wikipedia at least, she hasn’t done anything problematic. She supported Obama, appears to be pro-union, is vocally pro-vaccine, and is something of an animal rights activist.
@Gaebolga:
She loves you. Our cat does the armpit thing to my husband.
@Hambeast:
I totally understand your hatred for Black Friday. I don’t think it’s as bad as it once was, now that so many people shop online.
I remember, as a child, going to a mall in New Jersey on Black Friday. Probably 1980. It was so packed, I believe this mall must have exceeded its maximum occupancy. It was impossible to stretch out your arm without touching another shopper.
@Gaebolga
Apparently some cats really like the smell of certain armpits. Different people have different odors, so yours must be particularly interesting to her. The huffing is probably just her sniffing with her mouth open to use the scent organs in there.
As for the hair licking, that’s a completely normal social behavior. Cats are especially prone to grooming the areas that a fellow cat can’t reach with its own tongue. I caught my own cats giving one another simultaneous tongue facials yesterday afternoon, for example. So your cat is just treating you like another cat.
Awhile ago, I read an article written by a man who’d grown up on a reservation, with a white town nearby. He said that he’d been told that, when filming Hollywood westerns, the Native Americans who’d been cast as extras were routinely told “just talk in your Indian jabber” for background noise. He explained that this resulted in a stark contrast between the two movie theatres – John Wayne’s westerns were serious, heroic dramas in the white town’s movie house, while on the reservation, just a couple of miles away and where everyone could speak the Lakota that was often used by the movie extras, John Wayne’s movies were laugh riots, as they could understand the extras, who were routinely saying things like:
“Look at John Wayne. He couldn’t ride a horse if his life depended on it – he’s barely able to stay in the saddle for five minutes!!”
and
“I wonder what craft services are going to give us for lunch today – I hope it’s not those horrible sandwiches we had yesterday!”
@Rahu
My dad and I have always watched old westerns together. We watch the ones he watched as a young boy like gunsmoke and some one where the guy where’s a mask. I forget the name. Something bandit or the mask ranger or something. Anyways. Like a couple months ago I was home for a visit and we were sitting there watching it and it had a scene where the good guy was pretending to be a bad guy and the bad guys wanted him to shoot his body. So he tells his body he’s going to shoot past him and for him to act like he got hit.
The line was “I told him in the Indian language to pretend like he was hit by the bullet”
and I was like “really, all those languages, at once huh” and my dad laughed and went
” the ranger is very diverse” and I just laughed with him at how it has not aged well.
Hi Gaebolga, my cat would rub her head all over my mother’s hair IF my mother had recently had her hair dyed. So it is possible that your cat finds something you put on your hair sometimes to be extra appealing.
I wonder whether there’s a market for shampoo containing essence of catnip?
@Rahu
That’s interesting. It reminds me of how the film Borat is much more funny if you understand Hebrew, because all of the parts where he appears to be speaking Kazakh he is actually saying (mostly humorous) things in Hebrew.-
Re: Black Friday vs. Online orders, I hate online shopping. I deliver the mail and all of those online orders are just… The worst. My route is so huge and over burdened that even with help doing packages I’m out until after six some days. (With a 7am start.). Consumerism as a whole is out of control, be it Black Friday madness or Cyber Monday insanity.
@Rahu – I heard something like that in Reel Injun. I don’t know if it was about John Wayne specifically, though. I need to watch it again.
Black Friday has been a thing in Canada for the past few years. It’s weird because we have Thanksgiving weeks earlier.
Also, hello! I haven’t commented here for a while because of work being busy, but it’s starting to wind down (good thing for me it’s a tutoring centre and not a store – it must be a headache to work in a store this time of year).
Re: Black Friday
I’ll cop to doing a little online shopping this Black Friday, but only on myself. As technically adept as I am, I’ve actually resisted getting a smartphone for years due to a combination of price and not wanting to talk to people. But now the benefits outweigh the costs, so I pulled the trigger on an iPhone XR. Now I can finally determine if the buses are on time so I’m not sitting in the cold for 30 minutes.
I also bought a hand exerciser from Amazon. Getting back into learning how to play guitar and this time I’m going to get barre chords. I’m actually pretty proud of myself: this weekend I finally played an F chord successfully. Granted, I had to really angle my hand to find the strength in the index finger to barre the first fret, but it’ll get easier with practice.
(For those interested, I’m playing electric rather than acoustic. Got two entry-level electric guitars: a Squier SE Special Strat and an Epiphone Les Paul Special-II. The former came with the Stop Dreaming, Start Playing starter kit, which I recommend for those interested in getting into guitar. It comes with everything you need and was quite affordable at about $250-$300 Canadian. Epiphone has something similar for their own Les Pauls.)
@Katamount
Did some black Friday online shopping of my own. Got a few things from some clothing sites I like for myself. And a gift for my husband. We share many things in common, one of them being unfortunately is a metal allergy to nickel and other unpure metals. If I ware belts for a couple days, the buckle will leave an uncomfortable buckle shape rash where it lays. My husband unfortunately has to wear a belt everyday, all day, for 16 hour days, in nice wet heat. Needless to say the rash that he gets from it is really gruesome looking. Even after being home for a month and not wearing the belt, the rash was still there. So I got him a belt that matches uniform regulation and but is made out of far more expensive, far better quality metal. That’s the only Christmas gift I could really think of because the man ask for almost nothing. He’s minimalistic and really hard to shop for.
He on the other hand splurged this black Friday. As a Christmas gift to me, he got me a PlayStation so we can play a game he really likes together. (have a slight feeling that this gift was more for him then for me, I’m more of a pc gamer myself. And I don’t game that often anymore). A nice gift anyways.
All my other Holliday shopping was done way before black Friday and I try to shop locally for it. I do a lot of baking for gift to a lot of people. But I do have some nonfood gifts I wanted to give to certain people. my two good friends, parents, brother and his wife, my sister and brother in laws, toy for my nephew. The season of my wallet taking a hit.
@Lainy:
The Lone Ranger? Starring Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels?
Shown here parodying their roles, and the series’ use of the William Tell Overture as a theme tune, in this commercial:
https://youtu.be/-TnPfO8ut-Q
Re: Black Friday
The only thing I bought on Black Friday was the SpiderCapo XXL, which was $10 cheaper than usual. It’s a guitar capo that has 2 features of interest: a) it allows you to selectively capo certain strings and not others and b) it works on 7 and 8 string guitars. I wanted to buy some guitars while they were on sale online, but the good quality ones all still cost too much for my budget.
I hope everyone else enjoys their Black Friday things.
@Katamount
Congrats on getting back into guitar! The strength to make barre chords will come with practice, so keep working at it. Depending on what style of music you plan to play, you may need them to varying degrees. In styles like extreme metal (what I mostly play) it’s not needed often (with the possible exception of deathcore, where drop tunings are common so barring the 3 lowest strings is used a lot) while in styles like folk and pop music it’s more common.
@Moon
Yes that’s it! The Lone Ranger
Can I ask you guys for some marriage advice. Something happened the other day and I’m a little worried. I’m always slightly worried that I’ve made a mistake and ended up with someone who is just really good at hiding their abusive tendencies and that they will come out. I haven’t even been married a month yet and something kind of happened. I would love some advice from people that I trust and I know have more life experience then me. The other day he said something that sounded straight out of the mra and it worries me. He didn’t saying it jokingly either, he meant it. I’ve never seen this side of him before tbh and it worries me.
@Lainy
Are you safe?
@Lainy
I recommend speaking to your spouse about what they said and how it made you feel. I firmly believe that communication is the single most important aspect of any marriage. Human interaction is, at best, a poorly designed engine that we’re constantly throwing sand into. Honest and compassionate communication is the oil that keeps that engine running (somewhat) smoothly.
I hope this advice doesn’t come across as simplistic or banal; I’ve just learned that so many points of conflict in marriage could be readily solved if partners just talked openly with each other.
Cats in Shiny Hats – Yeah, I wish(ed) that were the case but Black Friday was still hell. I really try hard not to order anything this time of year, either because I know the USPS and delivery carriers are buried with work, too, and it lasts a fair few weeks vs. one weekend.
I’d love to do the “small business Saturday” thing, but the local roads and freeways are a nightmare the whole weekend. I had to pop out for groceries on Friday and was nearly sideswiped on the road by someone who was determined to change lanes into my car. The grocery store was pretty deserted, though. They get their rush the week before holidays, though, so no holiday retail respite there!