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Everything could be argued to have two sides. There are still racists who argue that their view is legitimate, but that doesn't mean anyone is obligated to give

Everything could be argued to have two sides. There are still racists who argue that their view is legitimate, but that doesn't mean anyone is obligated to give it an airing. I think Rogers was not polarizing because he delivered his views in a calm, measured and reasoned manner. Polarizing statements are ones deliberately calculated to reduce someone else's view or accusing the other side of something to advance your own views.

mnemonicsloth 9y ago
> Polarizing statements are ones deliberately calculated to reduce someone else's view or accusing the other side of something to advance your own views. But that's exactly what he did. He wanted to reduce the power of racism. He deliberately targeted a receptive audience -- children too young to have internalized the racist worldview. His goal was to advance his own views on tolerance and racial equality. I think you've been blinded by that "calm, measured and reasoned manner" you mention. Yes he was calm and measured and reasoned and, of course, morally right. But that's just the surface. Look underneath, at what he did, at what he said and how he said it, and you'll find he was using the same tricks of persuasion that underlie all political discourse, from Pol Pot to Abraham Lincoln.
- dwringer 9y ago
  If I show someone peanut butter and bread, but I neglect to mention that they can be combined into a peanut butter sandwich, I still don't think I've done anything polarizing. I would not consider that "showing exactly one side of the peanut butter sandwich debate".
  - mnemonicsloth 9y ago
    But suppose peanut butter sandwiches were illegal, and people were fighting and dying in the streets for the right to make them. (That's what it was like in the 1960s and 1970s as far as civil rights were concerned). So depicting a peanut butter sandwich might be illegal. Or it might be like marijuana, where depicting a peanut butter sandwich, while technically legal, is seen as an inducement to commit a crime and so is suppressed by extralegal means. On the other hand, depicting peanut butter and bread but no sandwich... well, obviously, a peanut butter sandwich is what would have come next, if the filmmakers weren't under the thumb of the government. Obviously If sandwiches are contested, then showing them (or not showing them) is political. Civil rights was and is contested; Fred Rogers' presentation of a colorblind little slice of utopia to America's children was political too.
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mnemonicsloth 9y ago

> Polarizing statements are ones deliberately calculated to reduce someone else's view or accusing the other side of something to advance your own views. But that's exactly what he did. He wanted to reduce the power of racism. He deliberately targeted a receptive audience -- children too young to have internalized the racist worldview. His goal was to advance his own views on tolerance and racial equality. I think you've been blinded by that "calm, measured and reasoned manner" you mention. Yes he was calm and measured and reasoned and, of course, morally right. But that's just the surface. Look underneath, at what he did, at what he said and how he said it, and you'll find he was using the same tricks of persuasion that underlie all political discourse, from Pol Pot to Abraham Lincoln.

dwringer 9y ago
If I show someone peanut butter and bread, but I neglect to mention that they can be combined into a peanut butter sandwich, I still don't think I've done anything polarizing. I would not consider that "showing exactly one side of the peanut butter sandwich debate".
- mnemonicsloth 9y ago
  But suppose peanut butter sandwiches were illegal, and people were fighting and dying in the streets for the right to make them. (That's what it was like in the 1960s and 1970s as far as civil rights were concerned). So depicting a peanut butter sandwich might be illegal. Or it might be like marijuana, where depicting a peanut butter sandwich, while technically legal, is seen as an inducement to commit a crime and so is suppressed by extralegal means. On the other hand, depicting peanut butter and bread but no sandwich... well, obviously, a peanut butter sandwich is what would have come next, if the filmmakers weren't under the thumb of the government. Obviously If sandwiches are contested, then showing them (or not showing them) is political. Civil rights was and is contested; Fred Rogers' presentation of a colorblind little slice of utopia to America's children was political too.
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