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Perhaps you missed the subtitle: With his unconventional take on children’s television, Mr. Rogers helped redefine the male role model. The point of the piece:

Perhaps you missed the subtitle: With his unconventional take on children’s television, Mr. Rogers helped redefine the male role model. The point of the piece: Mr. Rogers provides a model of maleness and masculinity that works especially well for boys and men who feel scared, alienated, or attacked by society. This model, rooted in love, contrasts with other models for that subpopulation that ground out in anger or hate. In other words, the very thesis of the piece is that there is a salient relationship between incels/mysogyny and Mr. Rogers: the latter provides an alternative to the former.

ManFromUranus 8y ago
Mr Rogers came about in a homogeneous high-trust society. IMO that's not what todays society is. Today I would say we we have a multicultural polarized low-trust society, so Mr Rodgers model for masculinity does not apply today.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  Mr. Rogers started broadcasting in 1968, the same year MLK was assassinated. Mister Rogers Neighborhood was airing during the LA riots, during the Attica riots, during the height of Vietnam, during 9/11, during Watergate, etc. Issues of racial resentment and hatred were dealt with, head on, by Mr. Rogers in Mister Rogers Neighborhood. The television series continued until 2001, a year when the cultural and racial makeup of the USA was very similar to what it is today. The core message remained the same.
  - ManFromUranus 8y ago
    Well none of those issues were resolved sadly, IMO it's as bad as it ever was.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Mr Rogers came about in a homogeneous high-trust society. No, he didn't. The United States was neither homogeneous nor high-trust in 1968. In fact, it was about as far from that as it ever has been in the post-WWII period, present situation not excluded.
  - ManFromUranus 8y ago
    Oh so Mr. Rodgers winked into existence in 1968? I suspect that instead that he was born much earlier than that, and he lived and grew up in a very different USA than the one you live in now, and even a different USA from the one in which he began broadcasting in 1968.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Oh so Mr. Rodgers winked into existence in 1968? No, and neither did the intense social, political, and racial divisions in the US that were present in 1968.
      - ManFromUranus 8y ago
        You didn't address my point, but I'll address yours: Could those social, political and racial divisions be addressed by living in different polities?
        dragonwriter 8y ago
        > You didn't address my point, I addressed what you said. If you had a point beyond that, it wasn't apparent. > but I'll address yours: No, you won't, even though my point was exactly what I said. > Could those social, political and racial divisions be addressed by living in different polities? That's not really germane to what I said, either on its own or in its context as a response to your claim about change since some time relevant to Mr. Rogers origins. It seems to be more a passive aggressive way of making a separatist point that your use of white nationalist code throughout the year has been trying to dance around rather than actually responding to any point of mine. But, I will respond to it: (1) No, the divisions are to multidimensional and evolving for separar polities to be a viable solution; and, in any case, separate polities just shift internal conflict to external conflict, they don't resolve conflict except when the conflict is primarily about a desire for separate polities. (2) While there have been occasional bits of retrograde, the broad course over time does that they can be, and largely are being, addressed without separate polities.
- obelix_ 8y ago
  I don't know about trust being the root. But the argument can be made that society is very different. And the Fred Rogers model won't have much of an impact given the environment of hyper stimulation/24x7 distraction that consumption culture creates. Fred Rogers was critical of it even back then. Since then, consumption culture has exploded, objectification of women, violence, escapism whether it is in games, drugs or your social media, news streams is at an all time high. For a Fred Rogers type message to get through the volume dial on all this other stuff has to be dialed down. Otherwise the very valuable message gets lost in the noise.
  - danbolt 8y ago
    I'd be curious to read any studies on child psychology with respect to how children would respond to something like Fred Rogers today. As in, would a child today be disinterested in the slow pace of that format and want to consume other media?
- tptacek 8y ago
  "Low-trust" "multicultural" "society" is race-war code language, isn't it? People that don't read a lot of reactionary stuff might try to engage directly with the words "low-trust" and spark a whole unproductive discussion about what it is we "trust" or "don't trust" about people, but that's not the purpose the words actually serve in that sentence, right? "Low-trust" is a way of saying "things were better when we were mostly white Europeans, with other cultures marginalized". If that wasn't your intention, you'd probably want to know that putting the words "low-trust" and "multicultural" into assertions about American life constitutes a reactionary/neo-supremacist trope.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - Apocryphon 8y ago
    It's almost as if he was virtue signaling.
  - ManFromUranus 8y ago
    >"Low-trust" "multicultural" "society" is race-war code language, isn't it? Says you, they're just words. If you don't agree you can go ahead and disagree. I won't comment about your rhetoric other than to say it's functionally ad-hominem. Calling something a trope is a also a pretty easy way to hand-wave away anything you don't want to think about. >and spark a whole unproductive discussion about what it is we "trust" or "don't trust" about people I would say that trust has not improved, I would say that race relations have not improved (probably deteriorated). Even you can probably agree with that? Mr. Rodgers prescriptions for life are lovely but impractical, and they haven't helped society at all I would say.
    - pvg 8y ago
      I won't comment about your rhetoric other than to say it's functionally ad-hominem. Wait, how? It's specifically about your language, not you. If, hypothetically, he'd taken a little scroll through your older comments and happened to, purely hypothetically, run across some stuff about how slaves had room and board and the persistent racist oppression of white males and then jumped to a conclusion and called you a racist, that would be ad hominem. But that's totally not what happened.
sitkack 8y ago
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ManFromUranus 8y ago

Mr Rogers came about in a homogeneous high-trust society. IMO that's not what todays society is. Today I would say we we have a multicultural polarized low-trust society, so Mr Rodgers model for masculinity does not apply today.

throwawayjava 8y ago
Mr. Rogers started broadcasting in 1968, the same year MLK was assassinated. Mister Rogers Neighborhood was airing during the LA riots, during the Attica riots, during the height of Vietnam, during 9/11, during Watergate, etc. Issues of racial resentment and hatred were dealt with, head on, by Mr. Rogers in Mister Rogers Neighborhood. The television series continued until 2001, a year when the cultural and racial makeup of the USA was very similar to what it is today. The core message remained the same.
- ManFromUranus 8y ago
  Well none of those issues were resolved sadly, IMO it's as bad as it ever was.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Mr Rogers came about in a homogeneous high-trust society. No, he didn't. The United States was neither homogeneous nor high-trust in 1968. In fact, it was about as far from that as it ever has been in the post-WWII period, present situation not excluded.
- ManFromUranus 8y ago
  Oh so Mr. Rodgers winked into existence in 1968? I suspect that instead that he was born much earlier than that, and he lived and grew up in a very different USA than the one you live in now, and even a different USA from the one in which he began broadcasting in 1968.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Oh so Mr. Rodgers winked into existence in 1968? No, and neither did the intense social, political, and racial divisions in the US that were present in 1968.
    - ManFromUranus 8y ago
      You didn't address my point, but I'll address yours: Could those social, political and racial divisions be addressed by living in different polities?
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > You didn't address my point, I addressed what you said. If you had a point beyond that, it wasn't apparent. > but I'll address yours: No, you won't, even though my point was exactly what I said. > Could those social, political and racial divisions be addressed by living in different polities? That's not really germane to what I said, either on its own or in its context as a response to your claim about change since some time relevant to Mr. Rogers origins. It seems to be more a passive aggressive way of making a separatist point that your use of white nationalist code throughout the year has been trying to dance around rather than actually responding to any point of mine. But, I will respond to it: (1) No, the divisions are to multidimensional and evolving for separar polities to be a viable solution; and, in any case, separate polities just shift internal conflict to external conflict, they don't resolve conflict except when the conflict is primarily about a desire for separate polities. (2) While there have been occasional bits of retrograde, the broad course over time does that they can be, and largely are being, addressed without separate polities.
obelix_ 8y ago
I don't know about trust being the root. But the argument can be made that society is very different. And the Fred Rogers model won't have much of an impact given the environment of hyper stimulation/24x7 distraction that consumption culture creates. Fred Rogers was critical of it even back then. Since then, consumption culture has exploded, objectification of women, violence, escapism whether it is in games, drugs or your social media, news streams is at an all time high. For a Fred Rogers type message to get through the volume dial on all this other stuff has to be dialed down. Otherwise the very valuable message gets lost in the noise.
- danbolt 8y ago
  I'd be curious to read any studies on child psychology with respect to how children would respond to something like Fred Rogers today. As in, would a child today be disinterested in the slow pace of that format and want to consume other media?
tptacek 8y ago
"Low-trust" "multicultural" "society" is race-war code language, isn't it? People that don't read a lot of reactionary stuff might try to engage directly with the words "low-trust" and spark a whole unproductive discussion about what it is we "trust" or "don't trust" about people, but that's not the purpose the words actually serve in that sentence, right? "Low-trust" is a way of saying "things were better when we were mostly white Europeans, with other cultures marginalized". If that wasn't your intention, you'd probably want to know that putting the words "low-trust" and "multicultural" into assertions about American life constitutes a reactionary/neo-supremacist trope.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Apocryphon 8y ago
  It's almost as if he was virtue signaling.
- ManFromUranus 8y ago
  >"Low-trust" "multicultural" "society" is race-war code language, isn't it? Says you, they're just words. If you don't agree you can go ahead and disagree. I won't comment about your rhetoric other than to say it's functionally ad-hominem. Calling something a trope is a also a pretty easy way to hand-wave away anything you don't want to think about. >and spark a whole unproductive discussion about what it is we "trust" or "don't trust" about people I would say that trust has not improved, I would say that race relations have not improved (probably deteriorated). Even you can probably agree with that? Mr. Rodgers prescriptions for life are lovely but impractical, and they haven't helped society at all I would say.
  - pvg 8y ago
    I won't comment about your rhetoric other than to say it's functionally ad-hominem. Wait, how? It's specifically about your language, not you. If, hypothetically, he'd taken a little scroll through your older comments and happened to, purely hypothetically, run across some stuff about how slaves had room and board and the persistent racist oppression of white males and then jumped to a conclusion and called you a racist, that would be ad hominem. But that's totally not what happened.

sitkack 8y ago

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