“Cultural Heroes (5):
Captain Kangaroo in Court”
In 1988, Captain Kangaroo, Bob Keeshan, was scheduled to be
the commencement speaker at Western Connecticut State University. The students
were not happy, as Leonard writes, “The little greedheads probably wanted a
boost of testosterone from Carl Icahn.” Remember, this was the era of Wallstreet, the movie.
Leonard writes about his kids experience with the Captain
who bucked the system and was cancelled as out of touch…“Bob Keeshan wouldn’t
play the kidvid game.” He also takes us back to his experience in the 1960s
when, for research, he embedded himself
in a harvest season at a New Hampshire Orchard that was manned by poor, black,
migrant workers who evidently watched Captain Kangaroo over breakfast before
their long, hard, underpaid days at the harvest, “His benign bafflement was a
kind of umbrella against brutishness.”
I wonder why Mr. Rogers survived the era and Captain
Kangaroo didn't?...probably the haircut.
New word: Mice (in ad agencies) = children
New
learning: In the eighties, New Hampshire apple orchards brought in migrant
workers for harvest, mostly black migrant workers. Not just from the deep
south, but also from the slums of New Haven…the North east version of
“indentured servitude” that we normally associated with Mexican migrants in
California.
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