Chain Letter Broken, PBS had no Rambos

Usually when I get e-mail chain letters, I send them packing to the recycle bin quicker than a crushed pop can.

But one actually slowed me down enough to read it this week. It told the "true" story of how a couple of PBS kiddie show icons were actually macho military machines of Rambo proportions.

The chain letter, possibly written by Colonel Trautman, said Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Rogers weren't trained to entertain children with puppets. They were trained to kill. Period. They could live off the land, and were taught how to ignore pain. They'd eat things that would make a billygoat puke. And if you plan on sending 200 men up against them, you better remember a good supply of body bags.

Part one focused on Captain Kangaroo, who earned his rank in the military leading the famous attack on Iwo Jima. I'll save you the agony of reprinting the entire tale and just give you my Cliff's Notes version: Captain Kangaroo charged up the beach, possibly even while wearing his red blazer, to keep the bullets and mortar fire away from his troops. Unfortunately, actor Lee Marvin was shot in the ass during the melee, but he was ultimately saved by Captain Kangaroo in a hail of gunfire. According to the chain letter, that's what Marvin told Johnny Carson during a Tonight Show taping.

I was suspicious of this story from the start. If Captain Kangaroo was involved in the taking of Iwo Jima, surely the real hero would have been Mr. Moose, who would have orchestrated a ping pong ball carpet bombing of the Japanese Imperial Army once the U.S. forces had reached the beach.

Marvin seemed like an odd fit in a unit commanded by Captain Kangaroo, who instead would have brought his supporting cast into battle. Mr. Green Jeans would have been perfectly camoflauged in the jungle landscape. Grandfather Clock could have kept the times of coordinating attacks synchronized while Dancing Bear and Bunny Rabbit would have been difficult moving targets for enemy snipers to shoot.

Part two of the chain letter "outed" Mr. Rogers as an elite Navy Seal. He had 25 confirmed kills in Vietnam and only wore his famous sweater in the kiddie TV show to cover up his numerous tattoos on his forearms and biceps. He was also a master in hand-to-hand combat.

What was his secret weapon? While invading an enemy base, would he just waltz in and slip out of his combat flippers into some comfortable sneakers while singing a song about how wonderful the neighborhood was, even though it was being pounded by Navy battleship guns and cruise missiles?

The only military duty that seemed fit for Mr. Rogers would be taking care of the mail call after Mr. McFeeley's delivery. He couldn't have even been a military strategist because he would have used too many trollies and cute puppets in the war room battlefield dioramas.

I just couldn't picture Mr. Rogers crawling three miles through rice patties to help re-wrap fellow SEAL Jesse Ventura's feather boa, which had come loose during battle. Also, if there was an admission that a PBS telethon's purpose wasn't to raise money to keep their programming on the air, but was to fund its secret WMD program, or its even more deadly MMD (Muppets of Mass Destruction), the chain letter might have had me believing.

I finally showed the chain letter to my wife, who considers herself a Murder She Wrote-esque internet sleuth, to confirm my suspicions. She officially blew this story out of the water after about 10 seconds of research. She said it was an Urban Legend, probably to make the "Captain" title actually mean something and put a tough edge on a goody-two-shoes guy.

I could see her point, but immediately wondered why I had never heard through a chain letter that Tennille "shopped around" through the elite Navy ranks for a captain willing to give it all up to play piano for her pop 70s tunes.

I was relieved the PBS war stories were false. Just think: If Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Rogers were our Rambos in their days, who has been filling their combat boots for the past 50-60 years? Who would PBS be ponying up now for someone like Trautman to tutor?

The only PBSer I could think of to fill this role was Barney. He might seem like a purple pansy ass, but he's STILL a T-Rex, the most dangerous dinosaur to ever roam the planet.

If you think about PBS programming, he's the only natural killing machine the network has left.

Consider this: He has more potential than Rambo. Even if Barney doesn't attack anyone physically, he would dominate the blaring audio psychological warfare front, driving enemy forces insane with his "I Love You, You Love Me" song played over and over. Those unlucky ones who couldn't commit suicide would be begging to surrender.