Faux News: "Mr. Rogers ruined a generation." (SWF inside)

[Qwerty 42]

FOX News asks: Did Mr. Rogers destroy an entire generation?
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Friday July 6, 2007

Fox News hosts initially got a laugh out of recent allegations by a professor at Louisiana State University that tv personality Mr. Rogers produced a generation of kids who believe that "you're special just for being who you are" and therefore feel no need to work hard.

However, a follow-up segment reported more ominously that "the signs of narcissism in this society have been growing for 25 years," before quoting readers' letters blaming parents and Dr. Spock as well as Mr. Rogers.

A recent study suggested that 30% more college students display narcissistic attitudes today than when the study began in 1982. Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, which was broadcast nationally from 1968 to 2001, was at its peak of popularity in 1985-86.

Fox then brought up the same claims yet again, asking stress expert and WNBC "lifestyle contributor" Dr. Georgia Witkin, "Do you believe his philosophy destroyed a generation?" Witkin giggled before responding that it "didn't hurt many people, but it didn't help either."

The following video is from Fox's Fox & Friends, broadcast on July 6.

Now, to be fair, most of the anchors think it's absurd, but at least one agreed with it. Now, as much as generational apathy is a problem, it seems patently absurd to blame it on Mr. Rogers, for god's sake.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Careful, after he died they named an asteroid after Mr. Rogers... you don't want that sucker coming back to earth.

[Qwerty 42]

Well, there was going to be a SWF: could someone remove the title?

[Flagg]

To be fair, there are a bunch of narcissistic douchebags who don't think they should have to work for what they want. Whether or not it's higher in percentage now than before, I couldn't tell you. And even if it were I doubt you could lay it solely at the feet of the 'self esteem' movement.

[Edi]

More bullshit where they do not even attempt to establish a cause and effect relationship between the correlation of the show and narcissistic behavior. We have the same problem with kids here and nobody's even fucking heard of Mr. Rogers.

[Isolder74]

Mr. Rogers? The guy who told kids to work at being a good citizen and work to improve their neiborhoods that used picture picture to show job after job and work place after workplace.

Were they watching the same show i was or am I crazy?

edit: This is like saying Reading Rainbow didn't try to get kids to read books!

[Kanastrous]

I grew up on Mister Rogers and when I was a little kid I always assumed at the beginning of the show that he was coming home from work. I grew up with the whole model that adults coming home are usually coming from work because there's shit to do and part of being an adult is going out and doing it.

[Plekhanov]

This whole attack is just bizzare coming from a 'news' channel which aggressively pushes the notion that you should go with 'your gut' over evidence and expert opinion and which accuses those who oppose such inanity as 'eliteist'.

What greater form of narcissism could there be then fetishising self inflicted ignorance and attacking those who try to overcome it?

[Redleader34]

Isn't this OLD? I mean they did this when he died.

[Covenant]

What a pile of pigshit. First off:

Don Chance, a finance professor at Louisiana State University, says it dawned on him last spring. The semester was ending, and as usual, students were making a pilgrimage to his office, asking for the extra points needed to lift their grades to A's.

"They felt so entitled," he recalls, "and it just hit me. We can blame Mr. Rogers."

I something hilarious about a finance professor encountering, with bafflement, feelings of entitlement from other people, and then blaming it on Mr. Goddamned Rogers. If there is an industry, and therefore a student base, more suffused with feelings of entitlement than politics, then it must be finance. I want them to publish this story next to the ones about CEOs whining and blaming those mean old normal people for why they're quitting. Mr. Rogers has a nice retort for Mr. Whiny Finance Professor:

"What do you think it is that drives people to want far more than they could ever use or need? I frankly think it's insecurity."

Oh, wait, I meant this one.

"I get angry when I think that justice hasn't been served. And to me, justice is taking care of those who aren't able to take care of themselves. So that's the kind of thing that can get up my ire."

These people sat their kids in front of Mr. Rogers but never watched it, which is too bad, it would have done them some good. The 80's were certainly not suffering from an excess of Depression-era pragmatism. They probably have more problems with absentee parenting than the words of a nice man who told people to be nice to each other, don't let people beat you down, and not to be wasteful.

Ignoring the issue of self-esteem entirely, like the author has, how are they judging these attitudes? These three questions, at least how the articles said:

The standardized inventory, known as the NPI, asks for responses to such statements as "If I ruled the world, it would be a better place," "I think I am a special person" and "I can live my life any way I want to."

Given this kind of criteria, I'm suprised it has only risen a small amount. The world is a confusing place, I would not be suprised that people think that someone, anyone, especially themselves, could make the world more the way they want it to be. The other two questions are bumfuck insane, yes we're all individuals, and the third screams "return to old-style family values" so I understand why people balk at that. The 50's are dead, people. Attacking individualism isn't going to remove people's feelings of entitlement, but maybe not spoiling them the same way you demand to be spoiled would.

Furthermore, by what metric do they judge someone's willingness to work? According to their surveys, people are quite willing to do what's necessary to get ahead--he claimed a personal doubt about the altruism of people's desire to do community service and charity work--and ignores the fact that more people think it is important to be financially well off than before. So you have kids willing to do more for less, because they are supposed to, and also want to achieve a higher degree of success.

The new report follows a study released by UCLA last month that found that nearly three-quarters of the freshmen it surveyed thought it was important to be "very well-off financially." That compared with 62.5 percent who said the same in 1980 and 42 percent in 1966.

These findings are completely at odds with each other--not individually, mind you. The NPI's findings are legitimate, but don't talk about feelings of apathetic entitlement, just risks to people being unable to form healthy relationships. The other ones, especially the Mr. Rogers stuff, are completely off the rails. You do want kids to feel empowered, you just don't want them to think they're never wrong. Mr. Rogers' show included many times when you were told not to get angry, not to do this, not to do that, and examples of people when they did something wrong. You don't need to bust out the jackboots to follow Mr. Rogers' examples of a kind parental relationship. Nowhere was he telling kids you're never wrong, just that you need to like people for who they are. I think deep, introspective life lessons about needing to grow as a person can wait until they're not watching Mr. Rogers, but it apparently never happened to these parents, who seem willing to blame everyone but themselves for what they let their teenagers get away with.

Also, nowhere is discussed the Me First, Have To Win culture of needing to get an A+ or nothing else matters. Maybe if being special just the way you were was actually the mantra, instead of "You have to be first," kids wouldn't feel bad about becoming electricians or tradesmen or such things. Do we really want to follow the Japanese model of abusive schooling? What idiocy.

[Patrick Degan]

This whole attack is just bizzare coming from a 'news' channel which aggressively pushes the notion that you should go with 'your gut' over evidence and expert opinion and which accuses those who oppose such inanity as 'eliteist'.

What greater form of narcissism could there be then fetishising self inflicted ignorance and attacking those who try to overcome it?

Bizarre? It touches upon the positively insane, the lengths these people are going to in order to knock down every and any perceived icon of "EEEEVUL LIBROOLIZM".

[Qwerty 42]

edit: This is like saying Reading Rainbow didn't try to get kids to read books!

Why should we have had to? He practically read them to us. If anything, we should bring Lavar Burton up on piracy.

[Korvan]

What a pile of pigshit. First off:

Don Chance, a finance professor at Louisiana State University, says it dawned on him last spring. The semester was ending, and as usual, students were making a pilgrimage to his office, asking for the extra points needed to lift their grades to A's.

"They felt so entitled," he recalls, "and it just hit me. We can blame Mr. Rogers."

There's a reason students whine to profs in order to raise their grades and it has nothing to do with Mr. Rogers. They do it because it works. Make enough noise, or come up with a good enough sob story, and poof, you grade is raised to the next level. Hell, I should have done it when I missed the mark to get my scholarship renewed by 2%. Would've saved me from having to work 7-11 night shift that summer.

[Isolder74]

edit: This is like saying Reading Rainbow didn't try to get kids to read books!

Why should we have had to? He practically read them to us. If anything, we should bring Lavar Burton up on piracy.

He read us one book and then at the end showed us three more to interest us in.

I guess we should lock up your mom for every Dr. Seuss book she read you.

[Gil Hamilton]

Wow, talking smack on Mr. Rogers would be fighting words in Pittsburgh. I mean, the streets would come alive and eat them. Mr. Rogers was a great man and his show was all about teaching children to be good people... and videos of crayon factories and stuff. Everyone I know grew up with Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, and it wasn't about giving kids a sense of entitlement.

[Kodiak]

Wow, talking smack on Mr. Rogers would be fighting words in Pittsburgh. I mean, the streets would come alive and eat them. Mr. Rogers was a great man and his show was all about teaching children to be good people... and videos of crayon factories and stuff. Everyone I know grew up with Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, and it wasn't about giving kids a sense of entitlement.

ZOMG! I love the crayon factory episode

He was about teaching kids that there was a world out there they should be interested, and that they were special people. He never gave kids anything but kind words, never taught them they deserved prizes or anything, but just that their imaginations were the only toys they needed for entertainment. He was about putting wholesome programming on the air FOR FREE to anybody that wanted to watch. One more reason to hate the Folks at Faux News.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Also, Mr. Rogers had a sandbox INSIDE A TABLE!!! It was a sandbox, but it wasn't on the ground! I'm 26 and I STILL havn't gotten one of those.

[Qwerty 42]

I guess we should lock up your mom for every Dr. Seuss book she read you.

Damn straight.

[The Yosemite Bear]

hell they atttack people for telling what was the truth at the time the book was published not meeting current statistics? Hell they attack a woman that said that Bill O shouldn't be invited to be a keynote speaker at a women's convention on Rape and Domestic abuse becuase of his history of sexual harrassment and insensitivity.

what they couldn't book John Norman?

[Gil Hamilton]

ZOMG! I love the crayon factory episode

I know, that's the episode of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood that sticks out in my mind when I think of the show. Also, to this day, I tend to say "Speedy delivery!" when I hand someone a parcel of some kind.

[Duckie]

I'm glad they waited until Mr. Rogers was safely dead before slandering his memory and accusing him of betraying the very thing he worked his entire life for.

Oh wait. I'm not.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I swear some of us PBS kids should just show up and spam the shit out of them, or better yet, all of those really sucessfull ones like Damien, and others should send the Lousiiana Economics prof Emails from their work accounts. (Gee we loved Mr. Rodgers, and we're employed HERE!)

[Samuel]

Wow, talking smack on Mr. Rogers would be fighting words in Pittsburgh. I mean, the streets would come alive and eat them. Mr. Rogers was a great man and his show was all about teaching children to be good people... and videos of crayon factories and stuff. Everyone I know grew up with Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, and it wasn't about giving kids a sense of entitlement.

NPR did one of their quizes on Mr. Rogers. Apparently someone once stole his car... but when it was announced to the public it was his car that was stolen, it was returned with an apology.

Attacking Mr. Rogers is... sort of like beating up puppies or abusing children. Even most crazy people are against it. But Fox...

[CaptainChewbacca]

Wow, talking smack on Mr. Rogers would be fighting words in Pittsburgh. I mean, the streets would come alive and eat them. Mr. Rogers was a great man and his show was all about teaching children to be good people... and videos of crayon factories and stuff. Everyone I know grew up with Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, and it wasn't about giving kids a sense of entitlement.

NPR did one of their quizes on Mr. Rogers. Apparently someone once stole his car... but when it was announced to the public it was his car that was stolen, it was returned with an apology.

Attacking Mr. Rogers is... sort of like beating up puppies or abusing children. Even most crazy people are against it. But Fox...

It's true that the car was stolen and returned, but nobody ever apologized. They figured out it was his car because there were scripts and props in it. They did, however, keep a director's chair with his name on it.

[Darth Wong]

Does the irony of this accusation occur to FOXNews at all? FOXNews is the most narcissistic organization in history. They constantly tout their superiority to every other network on television, and they constantly declare that their nation is the greatest nation ever to be created. And not just created by man, but BY GOD HIMSELF.

If Mr. Rogers is to blame for a sharp rise in narcissism, then FOXNews should be THANKING him, not blaming him. Their entire demographic is based on narcissism and entitlement. They rant about coloured immigrants who work harder than they do, for less money. They rant about the eeeevil of taxing the rich, even though it is undeniable that the rich have greatly increased their share of the nation's wealth in the last 10 years and there's no reason to believe they're working any harder or doing anything more constructive (quite the opposite, actually). They supported an end to the so-called "death tax" for rich people, when trust funds for rich boys are the ultimate form of entitlement and the opposite of meritocracy. They believe the rules which apply to other nations should not apply to America. They are even convinced that the creator of the entire universe is in their corner, cheering them on. How much more narcissistic can you get?

And I think we have to ask: precisely which generation is fucked up here? Which generation was in charge during the incredible orgy of greed that characterized the last decade's enormous buildup of fake wealth? Was it the kids? The teens? The twenty somethings? Nope, it was the old people: the same fuckers who watch FOXNews and rant about narcissistic entitlement-minded young people. Don't get me wrong: I do think that young people are way too coddled (just look at the fact that universities have drastically reduced their failure rates, and teachers aren't allowed to criticize kids any more). But if there's a moral failure evident in American society today, it ain't the young people: it's the old people. Specifically, the goddamned baby boomers, who made narcissism into a generational pastime. Hell, even if they're right about their own offspring, who the fuck do they think raised them? Oh yeah, the most absentee parenting generation in history: the boomers.

Which generation was it which decided that mind-altering drug use was cool? The boomers. Which generation was it which decided to vacillate wildly between eastern spiritualism, Christian fundamentalism, far-left socialism, and far-right laissez-faire capitalism depending on its own needs at any given time? The boomers. Which generation was it that decided greed was actually a profoundly positive force in society, coincidentally when they happened to be in their own peak earner years? The boomers. Which generation was it that fucked over its own progeny by spending all of their fucking money? The boomers. Which generation did George W. Bush belong to? The boomers.

Stop whining about what's wrong with the current generation, you fucking Baby Boomer assholes. Look in the goddamned mirror.