Books, Arts & Manners: Gone with the Wimp

See Mr. Rogers. See Mr. Rogers run. See Mr. Rogers run at the mouth. It is mid-afternoon on public television channels across the country; the wimping hour—half-hour, actually —is at hand. At this time of day, while housewives are engrossed by soaps and game shows, while their teenage offspring are out shooting baskets or dope, and while most of us are still at the office, millions of preschool and grade-school kids pay their daily television visit to Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

As neighborhoods go, I suppose it could be worse. It is virtually crime- and pollution-free, and, since most of the puppets and humanoids inhabiting it exude androgyny, nary an X-rated note jars the afternoon airwaves. For the average, semi-cretinous American kid uninterested in reading or writing, the place is as safe as it is insipid. Few adults have ever visited it; having spent a week there, I now understand why. Like its creator, Mr. Rogers (who, as Phyllis says of the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe, can most charitably be described as “a very clean old gentleman”), the neighborhood that provides the backdrop for one of television’s longest-running kiddie shows is cloyingly wholesome, mildly instructional, and overpoweringly dull.

AB

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Aram Bakshian Jr.

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See Mr. Rogers. See Mr. Rogers run. See Mr. Rogers run at the mouth. It is mid-afternoon on public television channels across the country; the wimping hour—half-hour, actually —is at hand. At this time of day, while housewives are engrossed by soaps and game shows, while their teenage offspring are out shooting baskets or dope, and while most of us are still at the office, millions of preschool and grade-school kids pay their daily television visit to Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

As neighborhoods go, I suppose it could be worse. It is virtually crime- and pollution-free, and, since most of the puppets and humanoids inhabiting it exude androgyny, nary an X-rated note jars the afternoon airwaves. For the average, semi-cretinous American kid uninterested in reading or writing, the place is as safe as it is insipid. Few adults have ever visited it; having spent a week there, I now understand why. Like its creator, Mr. Rogers (who, as Phyllis says of the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe, can most charitably be described as “a very clean old gentleman”), the neighborhood that provides the backdrop for one of television’s longest-running kiddie shows is cloyingly wholesome, mildly instructional, and overpoweringly dull.