Friday, June 6

Mr. Fred Rogers

The best part of YouTube for me is when I can use it the same way I use Google searches — find little nuggets of what I see as historical video. Saw some great Bob Dylan interviews from the 60s the other day, really cool. Occasionally, someone will throw something up with Jim Henson and Frank Oz – always on board to check those out.

This video is from 1969. It features a young Fred Rogers appearing in front of the United States Senate Subcommittee on Communications, but mainly the chairman – John O. Pastore. The video seems too perfect to be real, while you can see that Mr. Rogers is a bit nervous, he has a will to push through and get his message across. Chairman Pastore comes off as a cranky stodgy old villain, and you almost expect him to exclaim “Bah Humbug” at some point. Mr. Rogers must not have been established on a National level yet, because Pastore didn’t know anything about him. Mr. Rogers was there to plead to the committee to not cut funding for educational programming on PBS. I’ll leave it at that, hope you find it as inspiring as I did.



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