Thursday, October 4, 2012

today i'm liking the nascent simplicity of mister rogers' what do you do with the mad that you feel

it's always good to revisit the classics, the basics, the fundamentals, the predecessors, the road-pavers.  I mean say what you will, how corny it can sound, but Mister Rogers is an originator, a revolutionary in children's television who approached his show with an innocent creativity, and did so with very limited resources.  In light of last night's presidential debate and Mitt Romney's infamous promise to remove Big Bird from television, i find myself loving this PBS advocating video circulating the internet as a result.  It makes you respect Mister Rogers' genuineness and his evident dedication to understanding children's needs.  It kind of makes me long for days without facebook posts, chain e-mails, digital petition signings, and other kinds of lazy, homogenized activism.  Not to be a curmudgeon or an idealist, I love technology and innovation, but a side effect of the technology age is a lazy society, and you have to really get inspired by the days when people actually wrote up proposals, literally stood up, showed up, and intelligently presented to the government face to face, without any great monetary motivation or care of how it shows on their resume or how civil it makes their internet image appear, but simply an interest for the public education of humanity.

and today i'm liking the simplicity of mister rogers' song, "what do you do with the mad that you feel." Sometimes children just have the ability to articulate things with an innocent clarity that adults often lack.  it's a good question, and after last night's debate, I think it's an appropriate one.