Thread by @ellievhall

I think a lot about what Mr. Rogers said and did when he accepted his Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1997 Emmys:

As @TomJunod so beautifully put it in @esquire's November 1998 issue:

web.archive.org/web/2003030118…

In his final broadcast, Mr. Rogers said:

"I know how tough it is some days to look with hope and confidence on the months and years ahead. But I would like to tell you what I often told you when you were much younger. I like you just the way you are."

So many of us on here grew up with Mr. Rogers / Mister Rogers. (I know I did.)

He wouldn't want us to politicize him. He loved all of us, just the way we are. There are no politics in his neighborhood.

Wow, this blew up. To clarify — I think there’s a big difference between doing THE RIGHT THING and politics.

Mr. Rogers used his show to oppose segregation and multiple wars. His moral compass was not guided by political party or affiliation.

Every subtle (or not that subtle) “political” / “radical” thing he did on his show was because he truly believed that it was the right thing to do, not because he was following a political party’s marching orders.

This story gets into that: salon.com/2018/06/21/new…

When I say Mr. Rogers wouldn’t want us to politicize him, I mean that I don’t think he would want himself to be aligned with a certain political party.

He was a registered Republican but in his show, and on occasion publicly, he was clearly against the party’s policies/actions.

The current American political climate is incredibly partisan and polarizing (the whole reason we're here is that a comparison to Mr. Rogers was made as a dig at a presidential candidate!).

Mr. Rogers did what he thought was right. That's not apolitical — it's nonpartisan.

TL;DR of what I tried and failed to say in my original tweet: Mr. Rogers' neighborhood was political, but not partisan.