Understand, I didn’t actually watch Misterrogers much when I was growing up. In later years, I happened to see his show now and again if my kids happened to have it on. Always seemed very nice, very gentle. So much a part of the culture that Willow Rosenberg’s mother could crab about King Friday dominating the other puppets that everyone would get it.
What I remember is two things: First, many years ago, he was on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. When he came out, yes, he didn’t have the sweater, but his demeanor was exactly the way it was on the TV show. And you realized, this was how he *always* talked. This calm, gentle manner that made you feel like a comfortable five year old, even if you were forty five. And Carson desperately wanted to laugh, because it was just so funny, but he didn’t want to be insulting. So Rogers smiled and said, “You want to laugh, don’t you? It’s okay.” At which point, of course, Carson lost it. Rogers, meantime, was unflappable.
The other thing I remember was years and years ago, I wrote an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times about my fruitless endeavors to get a Cabbage Patch kid for Shana, who was about six at the time. And I mentioned Misterrogers in the context of the piece. So the piece sees print, and the next thing I know, I get a package in the mail from the office of Misterrogers, addressed to Shana, with a signed picture and a Misterrogers T-shirt.
Ðámņ. If only we could have sent *him* in against Saddam. This whole thing would’ve been settled in no time. Actually, now that I recall it, Dana Carvey said his George H.W. Bush and Misterrogers impressions were almost interchangeable.
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