It's tough to put into words how good the Mister Rogers profile we read for class really was. It's difficult to imagine a better magazine article than this one. It takes Mister Rogers, a symbol of the simple and uncomplicated and beloved, and fleshes him out more fully while doing nothing to dispel the idea of his simplicity. He's as great a person as we all imagined he is, but not necessarily any more complicated. He does the same thing every day, he loves everyone, he prays for everyone, he asks for prayers, and he's generally just one of the best people ever, if this profile is to be believed.
Structurally, the article was definitely the most modernist, stylized piece we've read. It's almost stream-of-consciousness at times, and there's a handful of brief vignettes about people whose lives were touched by Mister Rogers in some way interspersed throughout the article at seemingly random times. They aren't random, though. They're crucial to the story, and they serve only to flesh it out and make it a better piece. All of them brilliantly show another side of Mister Rogers' seemingly endless kindness and generosity, and they make his story more complete.
I thought the lead was pretty interesting. The writer doesn't insert himself into the story as a character so much, but he decided to lead with a memory from his own childhood in an article figuring heavily on childhood and memory. We don't get introduced to Mister Rogers until after the first formal break in the story. The lead reads a bit like a vague, half-remembered fever dream, but to the writer, it's special, and that's what the entire article means to communicate: what's special to different people, and how Mister Rogers is tied so indelibly to so many of those people.
Still, it's not an overly effusive, panegyric article. It's real, it just happens that the real Mister Rogers is a great person.
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