{"id":3072,"date":"2009-05-14T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2009-05-14T16:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/?p=3072"},"modified":"2009-05-13T05:43:45","modified_gmt":"2009-05-13T09:43:45","slug":"dont-you-be-his-neighbor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/?p=3072","title":{"rendered":"Don’t<\/i> You Be His Neighbor."},"content":{"rendered":"

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Beloved as the Emmy Award-winning Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood<\/em> has been for decades\u2014my sis couldn’t get enough of the show when we were kids\u2014and rightly honored as creator Fred Rogers, above, was in his lifetime\u2014he died in 2003\u2014ya gotta admit that there’s something just a little…odd about his persona.<\/p>\n

I mean, think about it: Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood<\/em> is a show where, ostensibly, kids, unaccompanied by adults, go to the house of a single, middle-aged man, who is there, alone, on his lunch hour.<\/p>\n

A guy whose middle name is McFeely<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That Rogers’ intentions were, of course, so honorable only makes writer\/scholar\/media critic\/co-sponsor of my recent Iowa lecture Kembrew McLeod<\/a>‘s disassembly of the TV host’s airy monologues<\/a> just that more wicked. By isolating Rogers’ trademark, singsong platitudes (“I’m glad you’re my friend…I like you very much”), and adhering them to droning drum tracks, a kind of loopy hypnosis takes over…certainly Rogers’ nefarious intent. It’s long (9:15), but worth staying with to the final utterance.<\/p>\n

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video<\/em><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beloved as the Emmy Award-winning Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood has been for decades\u2014my sis couldn’t get enough of the show when we were kids\u2014and rightly honored as creator Fred Rogers, above, was in his lifetime\u2014he died in 2003\u2014ya gotta admit that there’s something just a little…odd about his persona. I mean, think about it: Mister Rogers’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[45,42,50,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3072"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3072"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3576,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3072\/revisions\/3576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}