Mr. Rogers Sued The KKK

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A Federal district judge had ordered the Missouri Knights of the Ku Klux Klan to stop playing racist telephone recordings of "Mister Rogers's Neighborhood." The judge, Howard F. Sachs, also ordered the Klan and three of its members on to turn over tape recordings and other materials.

Lawyers for Mister Rogers say the materials infringe on the program's trademarks and copyrights. Fred M. Rogers and his company, Family Communications Inc., sued to stop the Klan's use of the recording. The message imitates the sound effects and song of the program and Mr. Rogers's voice and speech patterns. On the first tape, the Mr. Rogers impersonator points out a black kid on a playground and calls him a "n***** drug pusher." At the end of the tape, the Klan lynches the youth.

In a second tape, the Mr. Rogers impersonator ridicules gays and says, "AIDS was divine retribution." The messages, said Cynthia E. Kernick, a lawyer for Mr. Rogers, "are of racism, white supremacy and bigotry - the antithesis of everything Rogers and Family Communications Inc. stand for." A group of civil rights, community and religious leaders complained that the number for a telephone in Independence that played the racist message had been circulated among elementary and middle school students in the metropolitan area.

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