Fred Rogers' song "Thank You God" is at 1:10 of his video and at about 2:05 he says with a longing smile, "Back then everything was possible." Oh, the smile at once having had the upper hand. Then he tells how NBC politely told him it would be best to keep it secular and he threatened to leave the show in a snit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pHfZKUPHjA

Shoot, I thought he kept religion out on purpose. He didn't. PBS just wouldn't LET him, the poor fellow. They couldn't have that. It doesn't work.

PS the "Thank You God" song sounds like it was not written for a child, but BY a child and a really simple Simon child at that.

I'm sorry to say that that nauseating song really emphasizes the "tiresome, but reprehensible"view of a diety in Sam Harris's video which started the discussion.


MORE OF MY TROLLY DISCUSSION WITH A FRIEND:
I know I've written too much. Why? Well, I have gotten carried away posting here because the video led me to one by Mr. Rogers and IT led me to dislike Mr. Rogers, whom I liked so much before. I think I saw some more of this Harris video on YouTube. I happened to look at a Fred Rogers video just after I listened to Harris's speech here. It was on song writing.

To my dismay, I found I didn't like Fred much anymore. At all. I had always loved him. I was very disappointed to see his attitude about not being able to proselytize to other people's children.

I thought of the part of the Harris video that starts at about 3:28. Harris gives a good description of the immorality I see in one of Fred's songs that he sings in this video. It's "only tiresome, but reprehensible" exactly for the reasons that Harris outlines.

He was an ordained minister and there I was doing what all we tolerant people tend to do and not remembering what Christopher Hitchens once said about liking people and praising them precisely to the extent that they don't seem religious. An interviewer gave him an example of a religious man and woman who did charity work and didn't preach or proselytize.

"Can that be poisonous?" the interviewer asked, and Hitchens said:

"No, but in that case in what sense is it religious? Again, you're saying these people are so nice they're hardly religious at all!"

It appears that Fred may have only been fit to admire because the secular PBS compelled him to behave himself. Fred wasn’t even going to practice the golden rule unless his hand was forced. If someone had a singalong for his kid with lyrics thanking Allah, Fred would have thrown a fit I'm sure. But as long as he's getting it HIS way then who cares about doing unto others? Very disappointed but I should have listened to Hitch more. I had it coming. My wishy-washy liberal tolerance led me astray.

When my mom was dying, some damned minister came by and for some reason we were stupid enough to leave him alone with her for a minute. She told him that she wasn’t a Christian but she could hardly move and the minister held her hand and started praying to Jesus for salvation. She told me this afterwards, and I went looking for him, but couldn’t find him. Lucky man. Since then I have no trust in ministers. I don’t feel that they can be trusted, and Fred, unfortunately, has lived up to all my bad expectations

RANT ON THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Fred's comment is typical lame brain teary-eyed nostalgia about the past when the majority had the upper hand from preaching nonsense to children to putting blacks in the back of the bus. Remember the Judd's song "Grandpa tell me 'bout the Good Old Days?" Kind of an anthem to this kind of resistance to giving up the upper hand and a belief in a mythical Golden Age (for some). Each of the stanza states beliefs that are nonsense. Very unhealthy attitudes in my opinion.

Grandpa
Tell me 'bout the good old days.
Sometimes it feels like
This world's gone crazy.
Grandpa, take me back to yesterday,
Where the line between right and wrong
Didn't seem so hazy.

Did lovers really fall in love to stay
Stand beside each other come what may
was a promise really something people kept,
Not just something they would say
Did families really bow their heads to pray
Did daddies really never go away
Whoa oh Grandpa,
Tell me 'bout the good old days.

Grandpa
Everything is changing fast.
We call it progress,
But I just don't know.
And Grandpa, let's wonder back into the past,
And paint me a picture of long ago.

Did lovers really fall in love to stay
Stand beside each other come what may
Was a promise really something people kept,
Not just something they would say and then forget
Did families really bow their heads to pray
Did daddies really never go away
Whoa oh Grandpa,
Tell me 'bout the good old days.

Whoa oh Grandpa,
Tell me 'bout the good ole days.
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Fred Rogers on writing songs with Josie Carey - EMMYTVLEGENDS.ORG
See the full interview at http://www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/fred-ro... See More
July 7 at 2:05pm · Like · Remove Preview
Holly Lynn Schineller Darn Tommy, This bums me out.
9 hrs · Like
Tom Hascall Cole Well, I was bummed out too. Who didn't like Fred? But that smile when he says, "Back then, everything was possible." tells it all. He really means only that back then you could get AWAY with anything. And he's secretly resentful!