Oh, I love Garrison Keillor. He embodies so much of what the liberal elitist species is today. Here he is, waxing poetic about how liberals who listen to the radio are enlightened higher beings - and conservatives who listen to the radio are, well.... Garrison says it so well. I'll let him speak for himself.
I enjoy, in small doses, the over-the-top right-wingers who have leaked into AM radio on all sides in the past twenty years. They are evil, lying, cynical bastards who are out to destroy the country I love and turn it into a banana republic, but hey, nobody's perfect.
And
The reason you find an army of right-wingers ratcheting on the radio and so few liberals is simple: Republicans are in need of affirmation, they don't feel comfortable in America and they crave listening to people who think like them. Liberals actually enjoy living in a free society; tuning in to hear an echo is not our idea of a good time.
Also
I don't worry about the right-wingers on AM radio. They are talking to an audience that is stuck in rush-hour traffic, in whom road rage is mounting, and the talk shows divert their rage from the road to the liberal conspiracy against America. Instead of ramming your rear bumper, they get mad at Harry Reid. Yes, the wingers do harm, but the worst damage is done to their own followers, who are cheated of the sort of genuine experience that enables people to grow up. The best of what you find on public radio is authentic experience. It has little to do with politics.
That's why public radio is growing by leaps and bounds. It is hospitable to scholars of all stripes and to travelers who have returned from the vast, unimaginable world with stories to tell. Out here in the heartland, we live for visitors like those. We will make the demented uncle shut up so we can listen to somebody who actually knows something.
Should you think that the above quotes are merely the aberration of Garrison on a bad hair day, then this is for you.
The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we’re deaf, dumb and dangerous.
Gee, I love those liberals, so "hospitable and open" to "scholars and travelers" of all types!
Just as long as they agree with their own viewpoints!!
Gee -- As I look out the window at my Chevy Cavalier and 10-year-old Jeep parked in the driveway, I wonder if I might be the Lamborghini libertarian of Keillor’s fantasy.
I very clearly remember my experience reading Lake Woebegone Days, before I knew much about Keillor other than he was from Minnesota. I started out in awe -- “This guy,” I thought, “is a damn good writer. And funny.” But the more I read of the book, the more uncomfortable I got. What started out as pimping the pompous, a proper satire, was degenerating into making fun of ordinary people for their sincerely held beliefs.
I never finished the book. I stopped when I was ashamed of myself for finding it funny -- the feeling one gets when the last off-color joke goes just a tad bit over the line.
At the end of the day, Keillor is little more than Nick Coleman with talent. And the sad part is, he won’t recognize that as an insult.
Posted by: Craig Westover | Saturday, May 14, 2005 at 11:30 AM