Awesome / Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

• Mister Rogers defending PBS to the United States Senate.
  Speaker John Pastore (D-RI): I think it's wonderful. I think it's wonderful... Looks like you just earned the twenty million dollars.
  • His defense of PBS was in response to proposed budget cuts. The outcome after his speech? Budget increase. Yes, that's right... Fred Rogers persuaded the United States Congress to spend more money on educational programming that brought in close to zero corporate profit. No matter what party's in charge, that is impressive.
  • The US Senate was debating a reduced $10 million grant for PBS. Fred Rogers came before them and spent six minutes describing his TV show and quoting from a song he wrote about dealing with emotions. The United States Senate doubled the grant.
  • This was after 2 days of PBS very nearly losing the case.
  • Wanna add more into it? John Pastore was a very strict Speaker who wasn't swayed at all when it came to Communications, something the Won't You Be My Neighbor documentary emphasized. And Rogers was able to sway him.
• He also defended home recording and was later recognized as one of the most prominent witnesses. That's right, people! Recording TV shows would've been made illegal if Mister Rogers hadn't intervened and set the greedy straight! He was even quoted in the footnotes of the Supreme Court case in which it was decided.
• Among other honors, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. Combined with the above two examples, this means he made his mark on all three branches of the US government.
• He has an asteroid named after him.
• Also, almost all PBS Kids apps with licensed characters on the Apple App Store are not available outside the US and UK. Of the two that are available internationally, one of them is a Mr. Rogers App. Those behind it definitely respect Mr. Rogers' core message.
• One of the show's great early moments is during right after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Namely, in "The Neighborhood of Make-Believe" sequence when Daniel Tiger asked Lady Aberlin, "What does assassination mean?" Only Fred Rogers would have dared to take on a such unthinkable subject on children's television in the The '60s and then give a meaningful answer.
• Through a bizarre twist of fate, Mister Rogers was the inspiration for Night of the Living Dead (1968). A young George A. Romero was behind the camera when Mister Rogers got a tonsillectomy, and the experience was so squicky that it got him interested in horror. The story doesn't end there! When the movie was finished, Romero showed Rogers an advanced screening of the movie. What did the most gentle man who ever lived think of this bloody horror film? He thought it was fun!
• Rogers was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1963 and instead of assigning him to a church, the Presbytery told him, essentially, "Keep doing what you do on television."
• When he went up to accept his lifetime achievement Emmy, he asked the entire crowd: "...ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are. Ten seconds of silence." And they complied. The write up from Esquire said it best:
  "[...] early this year, when television handed him its highest honor, he responded by telling television— gently, of course— to just shut up for once, and television listened. He had already won his third Daytime Emmy, and now he went onstage to accept Emmy's Lifetime Achievement Award, and there, in front of all the soap-opera stars and talk-show sinceratrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, 'All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are... Ten seconds of silence.' And then he lifted his wrist, and looked at the audience, and looked at his watch, and said softly, 'I'll watch the time,' and there was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realized that he wasn't kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he asked... and so they did. One second, two seconds, three seconds... and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier, and Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said, 'May God be with you' to all his vanquished children."
• PBS Digital Studios made this awesome video: The Garden of Your Mind. And now the "B-side", Sing Together.
• It's been often written he was a tough person to interview as he would connect to the interviewer on a personal level. Watch as he turns Joan Rivers, who in her prime was a tough, whip-smart, sharp-tongued comedienne and feminist icon, into a wide-eyed eight-year-old talking to a long admired teacher. Twice.
• Fred Rogers retained both his dignity and his sense of wonder. He did an experiment with Bill Nye.
• Mister Rogers is so loved that on 4chan, yes, that 4chan, one of the most puerile, mean-spirited and downright insane places on the Internet, it is a bannable offence to speak badly about him.
• When Mister Rogers appeared on the Arsenio Hall Show, Hall presented him with one of his own jackets as a gift. Rogers, to the delight of Hall and the crowd, put the jacket on right then and there, and wore it through the duration of the segment.
• The pure kindness, warmth, and love that the man exuded throughout his life is awesome in itself, as is the respect and appreciation he garnered from the world because of it.
• The Ku Klux Klan thought it would be a good idea to seduce children to their hateful ideology by using an impersonator of Mr. Rogers espousing bigoted messages. When Mr. Rogers found out, he took them straight to court. It took exactly one day for the judge to rule in Rogers' favor. As Rogers himself stated, "I am hardly a suing person, and yet that just got my goat."
• Way before, a certain group of people known on the internet for their constant attacks on soldiers and the LGBT community made their own attack on Mr. Rogers. While most people would be infuriated for their usual shtick and Insane Troll Logic reasoning as they are attacking them..for Mr. Rogers? They attacked him because he was too nice. The fact that they themselves couldn't think of anything else shows how truly a hero Fred Rogers was that even they couldn't find a reason to say bad things about him.
• Rotten.com is/was a repository of the worst of humanity (they liked to say that a popular article of theirs would be something along the lines of "Man Bites Dog"), their article of Mr. Rogers is like a love letter to the man.
• As mentioned above he convinced Congress to give money, helped changed the mind of the Supreme Court and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Some say the President awarded the Medal before Mr. Rogers came after him. Mr. Rogers: 3, Federal Government: 0.
• Just two weeks after the last episode aired, the 9/11 attacks happened. It felt like the true end of an era, one of general trustworthiness and unity. But not long after, he came back with a special message.
• The trailer for Won't You Be My Neighbor, a documentary about the show directed by Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom), was posted on his birthday and within two days was the Number 1 video trending on YouTube and racked up over 2 million views. The film proceeded to be among the rare documentaries to garner major mainstream attention and box office success.
  • The documentary's director later admitted that it started out as an effort to finally dig up all the dirt on Rogers he was sure had to be there, as no one could possibly be that genuinely good a person. But after months of searching, he finally had to admit there simply wasn't any, and turned the film into a celebration of just how good a person Rogers was.
• There was a time Mister Rogers was brought on an episode of Candid Camera. The way the prank he was set up for worked like this: they would bring a hotel guest into their room, and everything looked perfectly fine, except there was no TV in the room. The employee (actually host Peter Funt) would then inform the guest that they didn't have enough TVs for the whole hotel and that they had to move this one into another room. Every other victim on the show was absolutely flabbergasted and raised a stink over the lack of a TV. Mister Rogers? He just calmly told Peter that he was fine with it and didn't watch TV anyway. Peter later went on to tell him of all the people they brought on for this prank, Mister Rogers was the only person who they couldn't break!
• The famously shameless and taboo-defying Joan Rivers was finally defeated when she interviewed Rogers, declaring within seconds “Every time you talk, I feel like I’m eight years old. I can’t ask you something like ‘Do you fool around?’”
• The release of the trailer for his Sony produced biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood revealing they actually went and got Tom Hanks to play Mr Rogers. The news trended on Twitter as well as being broken on every major source and within hours of being released on Sony's Youtube it also had nearly 2.5 million views as well nearly 50,000 likes vs less than 1000 dislikes. The resounding support for the casting also overlaps with Heartwarming Moments.
• Mister Rogers was known to be against consumerism, and the one time he collaborated with a corporate giant he had full creative control over said collaboration. One year, during his show's first run, Hallmark wanted Rogers to create a Christmas display for its Midtown Manhattan location. Rogers submitted what can essentially be summed up as equal parts his personal middle finger to consumerism and his version of a Charlie Brown Christmas tree: a simple green tree, about as big as a child, inside clear glass casing, with no decorations whatsoever save for a simple plaque saying, "I like you just the way you are." The best part of it is that Hallmark accepted his simplistic design. Yet another overlap with Heartwarming Moments, and one that plainly demonstrates the awesomeness of simplicity.
• One from a certain viewpoint: one episode of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood has him talking to Lou Ferrigno, in full costume as The Incredible Hulk. To an adult, it's two actors discussing their trade. To a child, it's Mr. Rogers, shaking hands with the Hulk, showing no fear.