Fred Rogers – aka Mr Rogers – is revered as the nicest chap to have ever walked this green(ish) earth, so much so that the only person who is even remotely qualified to portray him in a biopic is the second nicest guy ever, Tom Hanks.
The thing with being a walking beacon of positivity is that your “niceness” may be taken advantage of by unscrupulous folks and that’s exactly what happened to Mr Rogers back in the early 1990s courtesy of the KKK (ugh).
Back in the late 80s and early 90s in the red-state of Missouri, the KKK were still a thing (sadly) and they thought the best way to spread their hateful rhetoric was to impersonate Mr Rogers over the phone and circulating the number among children. It must be incredibly jarring for unsuspecting kids to hear the reassuring voice of Mr Rogers sprouting hateful nonsense over the phone.
This impersonation schtick from the KKK ultimately caught wind among civil rights and religious groups and soon the real Mr Rogers found out about it and decided to take legal action against fraudsters.
It was always going to end badly for the KKK but since those idiots used actual recordings from Mr Rogers’ show, a copyright infringement claim was a guaranteed slam dunk against the Klan. According to The Los Angeles Times, a judge ruled against the KKK and the men responsible agreed to destroy all the recordings.
Now we don’t know what happened to the three men behind this scheme after the judge ruled against them, other than them claiming not to be Klansmen. Sure Jan.
It would be easy to wish ill upon these dudes, especially since they’re KKK, but Mr Rogers wouldn’t have liked that so we like to assume that he appealed to them to toss away the white robes and convinced them to be better.
If there was to be a second movie about Mr Rogers starring Tom Hanks, this little beef would be a good place to start in terms of material.