‘Schoolhouse Rock!’: When American Children’s Television Was Still Sane

Back in October, failed candidate for the U.S. vice presidency, Tim Walz, made a post to X invoking a blast from America’s beloved cartoon past—the 1970s favorite Schoolhouse Rock! Walz intended it to show his support for the inane “No Kings” protests happening at the time, by sharing an old episode titled “No More Kings.”

I responded to Walz’s post on another social media app that had reposted him:

“Hey Tim Walz, thanks for invoking Schoolhouse Rock! as a source of authority on American history and culture. I like this one too. How about you?”

That text was followed by a link to the “this one,” another Schoolhouse Rock! short, “Elbow Room.”

That cartoon describes the American movement across the continent of North America with the following lines, among others:

It’s the West or bust, in God we trust…There were plenty of fights, to win land rights, but The West was meant to be, it was Manifest Destiny.