Franklin the Turtle Deserves Better — Not to Be Turned Into a Weapon

🐢 Franklin the Turtle Deserves Better — Not to Be Turned Into a Weapon

I’m 62, so Franklin wasn’t part of my childhood. I grew up on CBC classics — The Friendly Giant, Mr. Dressup, Sesame Street, The Electric Company — gentle shows that taught kindness, creativity, and imagination. Those were the programs that shaped my early world.

But when I had my child at 40, they grew up with Franklin the Turtle. And Franklin quickly became one of the loveliest shows in our home. The animation was warm and beautiful, the stories simple but meaningful, and Franklin himself was everything we want children’s characters to be: kind, thoughtful, gentle, honest.

So when the U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth posted a meme of Franklin dressed in military gear, firing a weapon at a boat — without permission from the publisher — I felt disgusted. And yes, furious.

Franklin is not a weapon.
Franklin is not a mascot for violence.
Franklin is a symbol of childhood safety.

To twist him into a tool of political messaging during a moment when real people have died in U.S. military strikes is shocking, disrespectful, and deeply out of line. The publisher condemned it because it goes against everything Franklin stands for — and as a parent who watched those gentle lessons with my child, I agree completely.

Children’s characters are sacred spaces.
They teach empathy, not aggression.
They soothe, they comfort, they help little minds grow.

Taking a character built on kindness and turning him into propaganda is not clever — it’s disturbing. It shows how numb society is becoming to violence, how quickly innocence gets co-opted for shock value or political stuntwork.

Franklin — like Friendly Giant, like Mr. Dressup, like all the characters who shaped generations — deserves better. And so do the kids who grew up loving him.

🐢💛 Keep children’s characters out of warfare.
Let Franklin stay who he was: a gentle friend, not a fighter.