Posted on 02/01/2023 10:20:36 AM PST by SeekAndFind
As a teenager and young man, it was always fashionable to ridicule Mr. Rogers, which is why he was the butt of various comedy routines over the years.
To a young guy’s eyes, those eyes that were looking to men like ADM Stockdale, CDR Denton, and my own father) as role models, Mr. Rogers was soft and effeminate. I even viewed him, through my adolescent eyes as a prospective creepy child molester, something that brings me no pride as a man.
It wasn’t until the third or fourth decade of life that I realized not all real, honest, caring, and dedicated men were cut from the same cloth.
And Fred Rogers was one of those men for me. When he passed, I viewed him in a far more benevolent and appreciative light.
I viewed him as a good man.
It seems that he might have been prescient in looking forward toward where society was headed.
I recall my dad saying in the ‘60s that homosexuality and cross-dressing (he didn’t use the word “transgender” then) would be the demise of America.
And your healing dream reminds me of one of mine, although not as profound. Mine is a little silly
It was the early ‘90s and I was in dire straights financially. (Think Lifetime movies when a bad dude scams everything from a woman.) I absolutely could not sleep at night I was so worried. Then a dream.
I had just read “The Art Of The
Deal”.
In my dream I was married to ... Donald Trump! No worries. Beautiful surroundings. Perfect life. It was wonderful. When I woke up I couldn’t stop laughing. It didn’t fix my problem; I had to do that myself. But it seemed like a sign that everything would be OK.
But also on around that time too was the old Romper Room show, hosted by Miss Ann, if I remember correctly. As a male in his mid-teen years, I found her to be quite attractive so I would watch her for a little longer period of time. She would look into her special magnifying glass and say the special words, romper, stomper, bomber, boo (or some such rhyming incantation), that would allow her to see her audience in TV land and proclaim I see Judy, and Johnny, and, well you get the idea. That show was originally out of Baltimore, and then it went to Chicago, and then returned to Baltimore.
But your recounting of the dream, after many years of not watching his show, you had of Mr. Rogers actually sent chills up my spine and touched me, for I have always thought dreams were special. Especially the dreams one awakens from and wonders if there wasn't some form of reality to them, like you had of him at the time he was passing from this earth. I wonder if others shared a similar dream. Wouldn't that be interesting if it were learned that others shared a similar dream that night.
Thanks for sharing those moments of yours with me.
I remember you from way back in the day, when I showed you how to format some kind of HTML command to either make a clickable link, or post a picture back in the days when I lived in Virginia. I had always assumed you were a man, from your Freeper name, only to find out now that you are a woman. 🙂
Also interesting to learn that you share an interest in music. So to end this I will share the only two songs I ever really cared for by Green Day, whom I do not care much for due to their anti-American leftist political views:
Even Snopes could find no fleas on Fred Rogers, in terms of scandals or confirmations of wild internet rumors. Like Billy Graham, every once in awhile a good Christian man can be found who lives a disciplined life, only to be misjudged or resented.
I understand the perceived dissonance when the male role model in America was very tough, rooted in the pioneers, farmers and cowboys who populated the early days of our country, in contrast to, say, India or even Italy or France, where hetero men could manifest a softer image than those who grew up here in the first two post-WWII decades.
I have pondered this view of "real" manhood or womanhood for a lifetime, since, as a woman with a pioneer spirit, I was shoehorned more or less against my will into the arts by my mother, and was exposed to gay men from early childhood as my dance instructors and art teachers—my parents were that naïve!—and my dad, a manly man but humble, only started to "get" what the arts community contained when he saw my department's faculty pix in my first college yearbook! What had my stage mother wrought?
My pioneering spirit found expression in renovating city properties in urban neighborhoods, which involved not fending off Indian raids, but guarding oneself from the "natives" who were being driven out by the artsy gentrifiers who were raising their real estate taxes.
In these days after Stonewall but before gay marriage and in-your-face "outness," I stumbled on a group of gay men who worked hourly on renovations. I did the design, general contracting and fine handwork myself and hired various gay men for specific or heavy jobs. My husband's demanding career left him little time; hiring gay men kept me safe from the obnoxious passes that heteros would make when a woman is, say, up on a ladder; and helped me avoid the type of contractors who would refuse to cooperate with my design plan because they were the man—and I was not. Gay guys had the strength of men and the sensibility of women, and we did some innovative designs together—sliding walls, floating staircases, lucite doors, and scouring the junkyards for antique hardware.
Along the way, I learned the life stories of several of these gay blades. One common theme was severe trauma in childhood like being orphaned or raped; another was the bullying many received as little kids because of their artistic natures, for being short, for having musical talent, a "cute" face, being on the autism spectrum, or a number of other sensitivities. They were shamed, taunted or labeled "gay" from a young age, whether they wanted that identity or not.
By the same token, I met a few men during my own publishing business travel to highly conservative parts of the country such as Utah whom I might have sworn were gay, but who had not only a wife, but many children.
So it did make me wonder if a cultural expectation like their teetotaling Mormon life could have insulated such guys, since being on the downlow is harder to do outside an urban center like the dense east coast where I lived. Surely some of these married fellows were not acting out as gay, even though they may have looked it, when their culture supported them in avoiding it.
And now our entire culture is forcing children into perversion as the only way to go. It's heartbreaking.
When the AIDS crisis hit my city in the early 80s, easily half of the gay men I knew of got it and died; but a surprising number got married to women, fathered kids, and asked their straight friends from the old days not to reveal their past at the school where both the ex-gays and their straight friends had enrolled their children. Of the men I knew who perished from HIV, several expressed regret for their lifestyle and had fears of dying, especially those raised Christian or Catholic. I sensed that choices not only had been made and rationalized, but that they believed no help would have been available to have changed course, due to the shame and taboo still in force.
When we had a Christian society, the closet was somewhat of a protective thing against a man's reckless impulses for those men who were able to function as the husband of a wife and father of children. Again, there had to be some kind of choice involved, just as there is for many single heteros who live the spinster, incel or widowed life in spite of temptations or suspicions.
Bottom line, I have come away believing that most gay men are NOT "born that way", but through a combination of factors were pushed, labeled or seduced into a lifestyle that appears to be a bottomless vortex very difficult to escape.
Drag queens, bitchiness and swishing disgust me; but so does bullying or targeting gays for a beatdown, especially children. So I've given Fred Rogers the benefit of the doubt for himself, and much praise for his work with kids. God bless him where he is.
That is awesome! Trump really does live rent-free in many people's heads, conservatives as well as lefties! Now, if you ever meet him, you can truly say, "You're a man of my dreams!" with a straight face! And Trump did bring the promise of a better life, for all Americans. Few could imagine the hell that our overlords would unleash against him—and us.
Re your father's prediction, for me the moment when I heard the first rumble of an approaching avalanche destruction was the Lee Marvin / Michelle Triola "palimony" case in —where else—California? Along with legalized birth control to the unmarried, cohabitation, and abortion, "palimony" decision was the nail in the coffin of legal support for traditional marriage.
From that point, we have had a jurisprudence not of marriage as society's building blocks, but of divorce and child custody, with fewer legal protections for the "life partners" promises of marriage than you would have running a shoe shine stand with a business partner.
What a novel thought! There's so much more to this life than meets the eye...
I remember you from way back in the day, when I showed you how to format some kind of HTML command to either make a clickable link, or post a picture.... I had always assumed you were a man, from your Freeper name....
Thank you again for that, Robert DeLong! Possibly that was when I was learning HTML so I could post after-action reports from the Walter Reed freeps. Did you ever come up and join one of those on Friday nights when you lived in VA? Seven years of wonderful fun and freeping. We met so many "screen names" in real life.
As for my name, I love to debate, and found out long ago that the opinions of presumed males are often taken more seriously; so I went with an ambiguous name for that reason.
Green Day? That was the choice of the kids mine ran around with. But I enjoyed the nostalgic link, thanks!
Didn't go to Walter Reed, but I did go to the VP's residence with a friend to tell Al Gore to leave Cheney's house. 🙂
By that time I was living in King George County Va. in a house that I had built for 160K on 12 acres:
When you follow the link, if you delete the pictures you will see a map. with Potomac Creek, and the Potomac River at the bend where the Potomac River continues out to the Chesapeake Bay. There was a hill between my home and the creek & river which prevented be from seeing the creek or river, but my deeded access was at the mouth of the creek which had to be at least 1/3 of a mile, perhaps even a 1.2 mile wide.
It was about 45 miles to D.C. so I didn't get up to D.C. often often. I did have friends in Md. but they were in Montgomery Country, in the Potomac area. 🙂
Hope all is well with you & yours. 🙂
Wow, that is amazing! It must be a lovely place to live, so close to the water. What foresight you had to build that.
One of my great uncles bought a lot on a point of land jutting into a tributary of the Chesapeake sometime between WWI and WWII for a few hundred, and built two cabins on it mostly with hand tools. The place is now worth $1.5M last time I looked, having been sold by his heirs 40 years ago for $350K.
The one exception period was shortly after 9/11/2001 as I was down rover from Quantico and considerable air traffic seemed to fly directly overhead. But that was kind of interesting to be honest. 🙂
That is interesting indeed. Although we're in a far suburb outside Baltimore, we are apparently in a flight path, because we hear passenger and cargo and military planes and copters going over frequently -- EXCEPT for the few days after 9/11. It was tomb-silent those few days, blissfully silent, unreal. it reminded me of our childhood in the 1950s, before the superhighways, the massive refrigerated trucking all over the place, before several cars per household. Population was less than half what it is now. Those really were the days. Never to return.
I noticed the rapid growth in population in the mid to late 70s as the Vietnam war was coming to an end. from the mid 60 & through those years we lived in No. Va. in the Annandale/Fairfax area.
The other factor responsible for that rapid growth was thanks to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. But while it opened the door, it wasn't really abused until the mid 70s.
As humans, we should judge people on a personal basis when we can, and when we have to group them as a preliminary judgement, we need to do that as well for a variety of reasons. And the personal judgement should always override the group judgement.
Group judgements should be reserved for cases in which a personal judgement is either unsafe, impractical, or even impossible. An example of a group judgement would be deciding to fire tear gas into a crowd of people pelting police with rocks. If someone is in that crowd that is throwing rocks, they have made a choice to be part of an undesirable group.
In a non-wartime situation, doing a "beat down" on anyone based solely on their group, with few exceptions is something any decent person would avoid if humanly possible. In a war situation, obviously things would be different.
This is how I try to conduct myself in these things. It isn't perfect, but it is the best I can do.
All that said, I try to hate the sin and not the sinner where I can, and I have a long way to go. I am trying to get closer to God, and of all the things in the Bible that I have difficulty with, up near the top has to be "Love your enemy".
I just cannot get past that. I am not cut out that way, and I don't know how to get past it.
The effort is what counts. It’s well to remember that the God of the Bible doesn’t define love the way American mass media does. Biblical love involves being willing to stand up for another person’s God-given human rights (not the man-made demands), or to tell them the unvarnished truth, without sentimentality about their obnoxious behavior. That’s the essense of “being straight” with someone!
I agree with that, AW.
👍
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