Fred Rogers - When Kindness Met Congress - The Testimony That Saved Public Television It was 1969, and the country was agitated. The Vietnam War was raging, student protests were rocking college campuses, and the moon landing was still a tantalizing dream. A young, ambitious senator in Washington, D.C. named John Pastore presided over a subcommittee hearing. He was known for his tough mind-set, a man who knew no fools. His task that day was to determine whether public broadcasting would get the $20 million in funding he so desperately needed. And then Fred Rogers walked in. He didn’t look like much. He didn’t have advisors beside him or wear political armor. No campaign slogans. No charisma in the traditional sense. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t come armed with statistics or pie charts. What he brought, instead, was something far more powerful: a quiet belief in the emotional life of children. This is not a story about television. It is a story about persuasion. About how a soft-spoken man in a cardigan managed to do what high-powered lobbyists and media moguls could not.
