Letters to the Editor
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The littler man.
I start with a disclaimer (yes, how cliche). I start with saying that I express no views in this article that are in accordance with or in opposition to Mr. Keillor. This letter has nothing to do with Bush politics, Republicans, Democrats, Conservatives or Liberals. This letter has everything to do with emotion-stirring complainers who offer only whines and gripes and no intelligent solution or conversation.
Mr. Keillor has left his article open to two replies: I agree/disagree. There is no hope for intelligent conversation to be spawned from this article. Obviously, Mr. Keillor has done his homework, but this sort of one-sidedness only poses itself as mental masturbation to those of us who seek solution in our country, as opposed dissolution into conflict. Mr. Keillor has shown us what he knows, but hasn't given us any opportunity to do anything with his information.
Yes, we're frustrated in this country. Yes, we're in a recession. It seems the rich get richer and poor get poorer, but at the same time, the complaints get louder and those with solutions are being drowned in the crowds.
Let's put an end to this. This is me trying to do my part. I say this not to you Mr. Keillor as an attack or as any means of offense, just constructive criticism, which I think all people in our nation can respond well to... even the President.
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Irrestistable Force vs. Immovable Object
Mr. Keillor, on a day when we've watched many testaments of appreciation for Coretta Scott King, I can't help but compare the ease with which her eulogizers expressed pride and empathy for their subject with your attempt to apply your seemingly endless reservoir of empathy to Mr. Bush. How telling that pity is the best you can muster.
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Little Big Man
Sure he's incompetent. But at his core, George W. Bush is a crook.
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Weak and Evil
As usual, excellently well crafted piece.
I minorly differ that in directing attention at their incompetence and blindness we overlook their active evil. They consciously set out to manipulate events to serve grandiose personal delusions. Hypocriticly (sp?) using their religion, they had no sense of humility.
I do agree with an earlier poster: we need to think creatively about what to do about this bane, but naming it so aptly as Garrison has is, I think, a positive step.
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say something funny. or researched.
Garrison, we get how you feel. A lot of us feel the same way. But this is kind of useless, no? I mean, cheer us up or teach us, things are bad enough as is.
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Conscience? I don't have to show you no stinkin' conscience.
"To see a beautiful young woman who must now live without an arm as a direct result of decisions you made -- who could see this and not scour the depths of your conscience?"
To answer your rhetorical/ironic question: George W. Bush, that's who.
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thank you for this sentence:
Your mistakes are responsible for terrible suffering, but you stand among your victims and urge public support for your policies as a sign of support for the people those policies have injured. This is a plot worthy of Shakespeare.
It just sums it all up.
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Just knock him out, Garrison - please!
Still waiting for the knockout piece like the one in 95 in Time magazine where he disemboweled the Gingrich Congress. You can do it, Garrison - and maybe you alone.
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SNAFU
More and more, it seems that observing the political leadership of this nation requires a flourishing and elaborate sense of irony. Bush's incompetence is matched only by the obsequiousness of his opposition.
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The little man
Thank you, Garrison. Our hearts beat as one. I cannot help but imagine what our history might have been if the presidency had not been stolen from Al Gore in 2000. He was well aware of al Qaida and its threats. I can't imagine that after being informed of the attacks of 9/11 he would've sat there listening to children read "My Pet Goat."
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An Evil Little Man
You're just so darn polite, Garrison. Bush is much more than merely an incompetent and incurious little man. He's an evil little man.
Today we see that the Bushistas propose taking away the tiny $255 Social Security death benefit and other meager survivor benefits so that Bush's wealthy political benefactors might keep their obscene tax cuts which have inflicted crippling deficits upon the national budget.
How do you characterize a plan to prop up the aristocracy on the backs of poor widows and orphans? Sounds pretty evil to me. Yet Bush has no shame in proposing it. That's because he's an evil little man.
How do you characterize the notion that we should support the killing and maiming of endlessly more young men and women in order to "honor" the sacrifices of those young men and women who have already been killed or maimed? Sounds pretty evil to me. Yet Bush has no shame in proposing it. That's because he's an evil little man.
I truly love reading your articles, Garrison; you write so beautifully. But you're just too darn polite sometimes.
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Great piece with a few minor quibbles
As usual, I loved Mr. Keillor's piece on Bush. However, I must correct a couple of items. We feds enjoy only 10 paid holidays, not 13. He states we get 21 vacation days. Actually, a fed gets 20 days after three years of service and 26 after 15 years of service. Finally, he states we get up to 80% of our salary when we retire. Technically, that's true; however, you have to work 42 years to earn that much and only geezers under the old CSRS system, not the new FERS system can get that much. Feds under FERS (anyone hired after 12/31/83) earn only 1% for each year of employment. Since very few work more than 35 years, most under FERS would earn only 35% or less, nowhere near 80%. Most under CSRS earn about 65%.
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Karma
GWB is a man not given to reflection upon the past. I derive a certain amount of pleasure from the thought that once out of office Citizen Bush will spend the rest of his life trying to shape the sand pile of his legacy into a golden city on a hill.
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Thank you, Garrison.
Readers who have posted letters in response to this and other Keillor columns as if they were critiquing a political commentator don't get it. Garrison doesn't need to be a pundit in the Beltway (or Sansabelt) mould; there are plenty of those. What he seems to attempt each week is to reclaim a little bit of the English language from the pundits and flacks. This allows the rest of us to imagine a town square of ideas free from the perpetual shouting matches and sloganeering that have displaced actual discourse in our fine nation. If American during the Philippine Insurrection needed a vitriolic Mark Twain to wake it up and reclaim the English language from the peddlers of Manifest Destiny and Christian Uplift of the Little Brown Brother, America today needs a Garrison Keillor to reclaim its language from spin, finely calibrated wedge issues, and Pilate-like sophistry. His gentle shakes of the head are worth a hundred fortissimo verbal salvos. Please keep it up, Mr. Keillor.