Mister Rogers knew how to address the visually impaired. Conservatives just sneer
Fred Rogers of “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood” fame was praised decades ago for doing something Vice President Kamala Harris was mocked for doing recently: accommodating the visually-impaired.
During his beloved public television show, which ran for more than three decades, Rogers fed fish. As he shook food into the tank, he told the audience he was shaking food into the tank. He began doing so after receiving a letter from the family of a 5-year-old blind girl. While everyone else could see him feed the fish, she needed to hear him say he was feeding to know the fish weren’t going hungry. And so he did.
It’s one of numerous stories about small acts of kindness Rogers performed. It’s why he’s so beloved, because he paid attention to the little things, went out of his way to invite in as many people as possible, particularly the forgotten and overlooked.
Apparently, such small acts of kindness are passe. Being inclusive not because you have to but because you want to is political correctness run amuck. Or at least that’s the message being sent by the reaction to Harris’s decision to do something similar. While introducing herself during a meeting with the visually-impaired, she spoke her pronouns and said what she was wearing, a blue suit. That ignited a firestorm, mostly from conservatives but also others who saw it as “wokeness” and “bizarre.”
Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who has received bipartisan praised because he put country ahead of party by becoming a stalwart member of the Jan. 6 hearings, took to Twitter to mock Harris.
“If you ever wonder why the left still can’t win elections despite the insanity of Trumpism, save stuff like this for later reference,” he tweeted.
Think about that. Kinzinger knows better than anyone how close we came to losing our democracy because of what Trump and other Republicans did before, during and after the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection equated a full-frontal assault on democracy to Harris’s decision to accommodate those with visual impairments.
I’m not among the visually-impaired. But I am among a group of Americans who sometimes need accommodations others don’t need or wouldn’t even think necessary. I have spoken with a severe stutter for most of my life. A simple accommodation changed my life.
Ms. Shiver, my English teacher in the 1980s at St. Stephen Middle School in St. Stephen, SC, required every student to complete verbal assignments. She knew I could barely get out two words back-to-back in some circumstances. She neither required me to just suck it up and receive poor grades on such assignments, as some other teachers did, or exempt me from them while declaring I was incapable of completing them, the way another teacher did. Instead, she came up with a unique accommodation just for me.
The day before verbal assignments, she’d quietly pull me aside and tell me she would be calling on my classmates in a particular. But she’d let me decide when I wanted to speak. I’d give her a quick head nod when I was ready, she’d call on me and I’d recite that poem or 2-minute speech. She wasn’t “woke.” She wasn’t lowering standards. She understood that in order for me to be fully part of the class she’d have to accommodate my difference instead of pretending I was less than or didn’t face challenges my classmates didn’t.
It’s what Rogers did for that 5-year-old blind girl. It’s what Harris did for the visually-impaired who needed it. It’s a shame little acts of kindness have become the latest victim of our culture wars.