Joanne Rogers Quotes

I don't mean to sound boastful, but he was my icon before he was anyone else's. Being Mrs. Fred Rogers has been the most remarkable life I could ever have imagined.

Fred was deeply wounded when one of those friends decided that it offended his sense of ethics to socialize with people who came from a background of privilege and wealth. He dropped Fred, which, to Joanne’s annoyance, further worried Fred about his family’s money.

JOANNE!” he cried. Somehow, he had figured out my name, or an approximation of it. I wondered, for a moment, if Roger had corrected him. Or Pam. “How’s the poetry?” I flushed. “Good,” I said. “Good.” “You’re writing every day?” he asked, lowering his voice. I flushed again. Suddenly I understood Roger’s nervousness. It was strange to feel the force of a famous person’s attention. “First thing in the morning.” “I am.” This was mostly true. “That’s what you do,” he said.

Still, both Rent and Spring Awakening ultimately use gay characters to bolster heteronormativity. Angel serves as the emotional touchstone of Rent, endlessly generous and hopeful, caring and sensitive. All mourn his death, which compels the other characters to look at their lives and choices. That Angel’s death enables the other characters to learn about themselves replicates a typical (tired) trope in which an Other (usually a person of color or a person with a disability) aids in the self-actualization of the principal character. Also, Collins and Angel have the most loving and healthy relationship, which the musical needs to eliminate so as not to valorize the gay male couple above all else. In addition, Joanne and Maureen sing a lively number, “Take Me or Leave Me,” but the musical doesn’t take their relationship seriously. Maureen is presented as a fickle, emotionally abusive, yet irresistible lover (Joanne and Mark’s duet, “The Tango Maureen”) and a less-than-accomplished artist (her “The Cow Jumped over the Moon” is a parody of performance art).15 In contrast, Mimi and Roger’s relationship lasts through the end of the musical, since Mimi comes back to life. This choice, one of the few that differs from Puccini’s La Bohème (which provides the primary situational basis for Rent), shows how beholden twentieth-century musicals—even tragedies—are to the convention of a heterosexually happy ending.

Fred Rogers didn’t ask “Was I a good person?” or “Will I go to heaven?” He asked something more theologically specific: Did I offer succor to the lowliest members of society? Even after a lifetime dedicated to caring for the powerless, he doubted that he had done enough. “If anyone is a sheep, you are,” Joanne assured him.

She didn’t read music,” recalls Joanne. “As I learned to read music, she learned a little bit about reading music.