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Children’s YouTube personality Ms. Rachel hit back at critics of her political activism during an interview Tuesday, pointing to Mister Rogers, who she said was very political.
Ms. Rachel, whose full name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, spoke to Kareem Rahma, host of “SubwayTakes,” and broke down her hottest takes.
“Mr. Rogers was political,” she said. Mister Rogers, whose full name was Fred Rogers, is known for “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” a children’s program that ran from 1968-2001.
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Ms. Rachel pointed to an example in the children’s show in which Rogers invited Officer Clemmons, a Black character, to cool off in a small wading pool during the civil rights movement. The episode aired in 1969, at a time when some public pools still prohibited Black swimmers.
Rahma called the episode “revolutionary.”
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“I’ve read that some people saw it and in their family it wasn’t okay to share a pool, and they were like, ‘Oh Mr. Rogers is doing it. It’s okay for our family now.’ And so it did make a difference and actually people sometimes say to me or you know, in the media, they’ll be like, ‘Ms. Rachel should be like Mister Rogers and not be political.’ And actually he was political so much on the show. I think maybe they didn’t watch it or maybe weren’t paying attention because he did so many things,” Ms. Rachel said.
Ms. Rachel also pointed to a series of episodes from 1983, telling Rahma that Rogers was against the nuclear arms race.
“He was against the nuclear arms race, and he had in his neighborhood make-believe he had King Friday building bombs because he thought the other neighborhood Southwood was building bombs, so he wanted to have 100 million and one bomb parts for his bombs and in the show. And then he was like, ‘Now we don’t have money for the music program because you spent it all on bombs. Queen Sarah, the wife, was like, ‘Why did you spend the tax money on bombs? We should have spent it on these other awesome things,’” Ms. Rachel said.
She noted that Mister Rogers also testified before the Senate in support of funding for public broadcasting.
“Nixon wanted to cut $10 million from the PBS budget and he testified in front of the Senate and he just shared from his heart how much care goes into his show and how he helps children manage, and feelings are manageable and mentionable, and it was huge and the very like-grrrrrr Senate guy was like, ‘You got your $20 million.’ And it was so touching. It’s like the coolest video,” Ms. Rachel said.
She added, “And so he went to Senate and was like, ‘No, government, don’t cut funding to PBS.’ Like, how political is that?”
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Author and psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert told Fox News Digital in a statement, “Fred Rogers addressed serious social issues. His 1969 pool scene with Officer Clemmons was a powerful statement about racial equality. But there’s a difference between quietly modeling human dignity and turning your enormous platform with children and parents into a vehicle for your positions on today’s political controversies.”
Alpert continued, “Rogers didn’t need to tell his audience, ‘Here is the correct political position.’ He showed a Black neighbor that he was welcome in his pool. The lesson was contained in the act itself. Ms. Rachel is far more explicit about telling the public what she believes about Gaza, immigration and other politically charged issues. I think invoking Mister Rogers gives her a convenient defense: If Mister Rogers was political, then criticism of her activism can be dismissed as hypocrisy. But that’s a false equivalence. You can admire what Rogers did in 1969 without concluding that every children’s entertainer therefore has a mandate to become a political activist.”
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Alpert said Rogers was “influential precisely because he didn’t beat people over the head with his politics.”
“He trusted the audience to understand the lesson. The pool scene didn’t come with a lecture or a list of political demands. He showed people how to behave,” Alpert said of Mister Rogers.
Fred Rogers Productions did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Ms. Rachel’s other takes included one about children in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.
“No child should be in immigration detention center ever,” she said. “I’ve talked with some children, and the harm is so obvious.”
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“And we don’t want to be people who abuse children. It’s the medical neglect is abuse. So, they’re actually abusing children. And some pediatricians I’ve talked to have even said torture. Some autistic children in there, like keeping the lights on 24 hours, just that they’ve been unable to go to the bathroom, to poop for nine days. And as parents, it’s like, that’s so wrong. Like you can’t, and there was a girl they neglected that she had this respiratory stuff, and when they took her to the ICU, she had COVID, RSV. Her oxygen was like 52. So the medical neglect is abuse in there,” Ms. Rachel said.
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ICE did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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