Letters to the Editor
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Don't jump on the bandwagon, GK!
The wagon is very full, the one carrying the writers who lip-fart their justified raspberries at GWB and his crooked, incompetent administration. They blog, they editorialize, they run late-night talk shows, they do everything but walk around the streets in beards and long robes carrying signs. And the thing is, they're all right. Every one of them. George Bush is a disaster and 2009 seems agonizingly far away.
I guess what I'm saying, Mr. Keillor, is there are already enough good writers out there foaming at the mouth about Bush. You don't need to join the club. What you do best, only you can do, there's no one else who quite does it like you do...that sly humor, that wry elbow-in-the-ribs, those insightfully-drawn characters...I could go on. But we all know what you do so well. And no one, least of all me, wants you in a rut. But if you're going to push the envelope, if you're determined to try something new, please don't make it Bush-bashing. It's too easy and we need that sly humor of yours...that sense that Americans are really, fundamentally, pretty good people...to get us through the next couple of years.
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Save me a seat on that bandwagon, Mr. Keillor
Please don't listen to anyone who would tell you that Dumbya is off-limits to you because you're... what? Too smart? Too funny? Too talented?
If more smart, funny, talented people had spoken up a lot sooner and a lot louder, maybe we'd still be living in a country which any of us could recognize as the United States of America.
There's no slyer way to get across the sense that Americans are fundamentally good people than to intelligently and humorously point out those who are not.
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Bushwa!
Go right ahead Mr. Keilor! Sure you have a way with a sly turn of phrase. But when you want to just cut through the BS and point out how ridiculous something is - well, it seems like you are pretty good at that as well. Keep up the good work!
BTW, were you ever able to re-write that story you lost in the train station?
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The Post Turtle
Bravo, Garrison. Bravo! This is so not my father’s Republican party. As I came out of my political stupor in 1999, I voted for Gore because I wanted a president who could speak in complete sentences. Little did I know how prescient I was. This man in the Oval Office is like a turtle stuck on a post. You know he didn’t get there by himself. He certainly doesn’t belong there. He doesn’t know what to do up there except beat the air with his arms and legs and, by Golly, all you want to do is help the poor little guy get down.
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sentiment ok, logic bad
I agree with the sentiment overall, but GK is illogical when he says:
"The iPod was not developed by Baptists in Waco, Texas. There may be a reason for this. Creative people thrive in a climate of openness and tolerance, since some great ideas start out sounding ridiculous. Creativity is a key to economic progress. Authoritarianism is stifling."
That's really quaint, but patently untrue. Creative people thrive in a climate of authoritarianism. (Germany still is a fairly regimented place, from the family to the schooling to the community, and its people are incredibly creative as a whole). Or else it doesn't matter the climate and there's some other reason Germans and persons in much more regimented places are often so creative. But the statement as stated is at any rate demonstrably false.
Closer to the truth, to be sure, would be to say that some climates of openness and tolerance seem to produce some mighty flaky pseudo-artists.
I'm as anti-Bush and anti-Rethug as the next person (or really: probably more), but there's no need to use fake logic and false non-facts. Unless the writer is being quaint. If so, a short quip about Bush (one of those earlier paragraphs was really quite amusing) will do the trick. A long op-ed piece requires logic.
The article would be better if he'd pick one and go with it.
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I live in SF, and I aint gay.
And I like Mr. Keillor's political articles. I think this is a time for everyone to come out and talk very plainly about their politics. I remember when I was a teen in the 80's thinking that the folks in the 60's had been too obvious about everything. But now it's time for obviousness again.
We get tourists in my neighborhood all the time from states where everybody is raised to be fat and pink and wear shorts. We're always polite to them, but I think I'm gonna start asking them more probing questions about where they're from and if they think I'm gay.
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San Francisco as Metaphor
Gay life in San Francisco isn't special enough to warrant code word status anymore: don't flatter yourselves. Perhaps for some it's now code for 'illegal gay marriage,' or 'grandstanding mayor.' Even Democrats I know think use it as code for 'smug, lefty monoculture:' your piece and ensuing comments don't disappoint. But if a picture is worth a thousand words, how much will you give me for a one of Nancy Pelosi hugging Cindy Sheehan next to another of Cindy Sheehan hugging Hugo Chavez? Two heartbeats from the Presidency and two degrees of hugging from Fidel? You cannot be serious! Maybe San Franciso is just code for Nancy Pelosi, and you're overthinking things.
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Say what?
"Quaint'? And, "Creative people thrive in a climate of authoritarianism."?
Creative people might get their hackles up in such an environment, and they might be more activist than others, but thrive? What utter nonsense!
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Don't get smug
'We're stuck with a terrible war and a worse president, and all the GOP can do is scream, "Pelosi and her Nancy boys are coming"? This is pathetic.'
Yeahbut, um, Garrison? It's gonna work again. Karl Rove got The Great Idiot re-elected. He's on top of this election and devising schemes decent people couldn't even dream of. The Democrats are disorganized, ineffective and distrusted. Don't count on them controlling anything for the next four years at least.
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Mr Keillor
I think you can see by merely looking at some of these letters that the damage is further than anyone even realizes.
Did I see one subscriber suggest that GWB is so pathetically pathetic that it would be beneath you to suggest it? That's a new and creatively ignorant way of protecting him. Talk about foaming at the mouth...
I love your work. Thanks for the entertainment.