Mister Rogers' Hood

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My five-year-old has a cute new favorite show. At first I thought it might be a little too old for him, but he’s staring down the barrel at six now, and try as I might, I can’t keep him a baby forever. As a schoolteacher, you might think I’d be a bit uptight about how much TV I let my child watch. But as it turns out, quite the opposite is true. For one thing, I grew up watching 10 or 12 hours a day and, as you can plainly see, I is perfectly smart. Besides, in the Sliver Household, we understand that television is a More Is More proposition. AS LONG AS IT’S EDUCATIONAL TV. And I can’t stress that point enough. I mean, you wouldn’t put a limit on how much school your child could attend, or how many books he could read. So why limit educational TV?


The key is diligence to content, which is why we gave such thoughtful deliberation to this new show. We consider it our top priority to fill his head with valuable information, while at the same time protecting him from harmful messages. This, and making sure the Pop-Tarts and Yoo-hoos are on a low shelf so he doesn’t hurt himself getting dinner, keeps us quite busy.


And that’s why this new show is so exciting to us! It’s a perfect blend of the meaningful life lessons kids need and the playful exuberance they love. Every episode has a great moral for kids, but never in a preachy way, like those pain-in-the-ass proselytizing VeggieTales sons-a-bitches. Just go ahead and sample this scene.


You see what I mean?! Awesome, right? This scene alone touches on economics, teamwork, inertia, cause and effect, decision making, conflict resolution, and manners. And what an adorable way to drive home that crucial lesson on the importance of clean underwear! If your little ones aren’t turned on to The Wire yet, well, I don’t know what you’re waiting for.


Hopefully, you’re not wasting time making that classic rookie parenting mistake of mindlessly flipping the dial to PBS and expecting THEM to make intelligent choices for your child! My God, people. Have you not seen what they’re feeding our children these days? They’ve got this one show about an evil sociopath monkey who is hell-bent on breaking every blasted rule his kindly human gives him. He’s disobedient, reckless, and dangerous, and yet, in every episode, he comes out the hero. So what’s the message? Come on, kids! Fuck those lame rules! Why don’t we just steal this here car and see if we don’t end up with a medal from the Mayor!


Not on my watch.


Word.

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