For Harvard's Nieman Storyboard, I wrote a piece on why Tom Junod's famous Esquire profile of Mister Rogers is so good.
Occasionally, a fragment of the story will resurface in my mind. Mister Rogers, nude in a locker room, "slightly aswing at the fine bobbing nest of himself." Mister Rogers, visiting his family tomb, "'And now if you don’t mind,' he said without a hint of shame or embarrassment, 'I have to find a place to relieve myself,' and then off he went, this ecstatic ascetic, to take a proud piss in his corner of heaven." Mister Rogers, meeting a boy with cerebral palsy, "'I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?' On his computer, the boy answered yes, of course, he would do anything for Mister Rogers, so then Mister Rogers said, 'I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?'"
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