I swear, if Jonathon Swift had published "A Modest Proposal" on Salon seventy five per cent of you would be ranting your brains out about this monster that wants the British to eat Irish children.

Also every Garrison article brings out the same nutjob that calls him a slimeball because he was not a good hubby.

Us Lefties used to have a sense of humor. No more.

And Swift put 3300 words into A Modest Proposal. GK tried to slide through a column with 750, when another 50 or so could have pulled it out. Giving GK the benefit of the doubt for satiric intent, he didn't achieve satiric EFFECT. Don't blame the readers for the writer's (and editors') screwup.

Online journalism has the advantage that mistakes can be easily fixed. If Salon and GK can't be bothered to add or subtract a few words in this sloppy piece, I've got to wonder whether our subscription dollars are well-spent.

Even in Lake Woebegone, there are so many lives of so many wives, who are married to husbands, that are nothing to write home about (although they do sound sadly dismal on the air). Mr. Keillor might want to re-examine how much more his early religious upbringing damaged him and the many places -- geographical, emotional, and psychological -- where he can't find himself comfortable. While his comfort zone is in a mythical town in the '50s, where a mixed marriage was someone of Swedish origin married someone of Norwegian background, President Eisenhower has been out of office for a long, long time, blacks and whites (and gays and straights) can sit in any seat on the bus, and the world that never really was isn't any more, either.

Sorry, Garrison; it's time to jump to the 1980s, if not later.

Salon gives us a thrice divorced adulterer to leture on monogamy.

Next week: tune in to read a cannibal praise PETA!

Well, I've always been a great admirer of Keillor, but his halo dimmed a bit for me the first time I read his cracks about Unitarians. You see, I used to be a Lutheran, then...

Oh, never mind. All the criticism is valid about the stodgy voice, that he's crossed over into this never-land where you hope your literary and cultural heroes never go. You're only as old as you feel, blah blah... I'm sure if Keith Olbermann passes this way we'll mourn too... even Edward R. Murrow found himself doing gooey "Person to Person"s. The National Alliance Against Christian Discrimination has it in for Keillor too, so maybe he hasn't lost his touch. How can you expect to be a good writer if you don't manage to needle folks, accidentally on purpose?

But can someone tell me the last time an aging female writer wrote a piece like this, kvetching about her salad days, in the one true act that would really condemn her as a relic? It seems that women of Keillor's vintage have a more companionable relation to the clock.

But you know, Keillor's certainties and moralizing have always been there, burrowed in the the shuffling stories of Minnesota life, and that's part of his charm. You could even argue the style is native Midwestern. Didn't anyone see "Fargo"?

BeachBum - that IS the article he wrote. I just filled in the (rather obvious) gaps that some here and around the 'net seem determined to ignore very, very loudly.

Other points:

Salon doesn't "own" the article, Keillor didn't write it FOR Salon... they get pieces that Keillor syndicates. (That's my understanding, at any rate.) So complaints directed AT Salon's editors (apart from the decision to run the piece at all) are misguided, to my knowledge. Since I assume that Salon's editors are capable of understanding the written word at least as good as I am (and better than many around these parts, evidently), their decision to publish yet another pleasant article from Mr. Keillor likely seemed like the least controversial decision they made that day.

Harangues directed at Keillor's personal marital walkabout miss the *blindingly* obvious reference to it he has in the piece... what else do you think "serial monogamy' might be other than at least a passing, self-deprecating reference to his own marriages?

Again, the reference to his experience with his parents is described as "good ... for children". How dare he say that? Well... perhaps it really WAS good. NOT "the best way". NOT "the only good way". NOT "better than any f*gg*ts could possibly do, they're so evil and wrong, wrong, wrong!" (apologies)

Just "good... for children". Well golly... there are virtually an INFINITE number of things that are good for children.

His phrase, his text, his essay - NONE of it is dismissive towards, none of it denies that a significant number of those infinite possibilities will be good experiences that are given to children by their gay parents.

I'd be quite disappointed should the editors choose to stop carrying GK's work based on this tempest in a ... tea house. :-)

Did you lose some editors somewhere along the way? How did this ever get in? I assume it was intended solely for the fictional residents of Lake Wobegone (white, frozen forever, the butt of endless radio shows)to chortle at the faggots and Croatians.

GK is known for the simple verities of life, but I had no idea he was such a jerk. Or that he doesn't have people to protect him from publishing such swill. He's not aging gracefully.

Philip Ferrato

San Francisco

wow...so gifted, talented, intelligent. I've read his books. I liked him. but this article 'states the obvious' he's a fool. too bad, another disappointment.

jim buckley

How sad.

Like fundamentalists unable to read Genesis as poetry and myth (in the classic sense), it seems many of Salon's current crop of readers are absolutely deaf to Keillor's gentle blend of irony and -- with quotes that Keillor would himself would agree on -- "nostalgia". As a life-long liberal, I'm embarrassed by such literalism. So to All Ye Outraged Readers Out There, I have three simple words:

Clueless. Fucking. Wonders.