Praire Home Hate

[pyat]

This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write "Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we'll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah"? No, we didn't.

Christmas is a Christian holiday - if you're not in the club, then buzz off.

Garrison Keillor, ladies and gentlmen. I dunno what to say beyond that. I sort of like Prarie Home Companion, but I've gotten weird impressions of Keillor before from it. I recall one episode wherein he watched a fictional acquaintance washing clothes in a laundromat the night before his wedding, and delivered a little monologue about the futility of the man's life. As though having to wash your clothes in a laundromat were some kind of mark of worthless life.

For people looking for a Keillor alternative, may I humbly suggest Stuart McLean as a far superior folksy raconteur? Keillor's sort of like Stuart McLean, minus charity and liberality.

Comments

[katepufftail.livejournal.com]

My Ladyfriend is quite taken with Mr. Keillor's radio show, and it was filtering in from the kitchen as I read the linked article. The interaction of the two put rather an twist on his Lake Woebegone monologue.

Ah, Mr. Keillor. I'd always expected that he was a bit of a crank, who knew that it lay so close to the surface! I know he'd suffered a stroke a couple months back, and it makes me wonder if it affected his reasonable wits?

It also brings to mind a piece that I recall him writing some four or five years ago for --- Slate? Salon? I think it was one of those. Anyway, he wrote about the way he despised the then current Washington regime for the way they bent Christian belief to fit their agenda.

It all makes me frown and shake my head. I subscribe to a beardy-guy in the sky sort of religion myself, probably not too far removed from Keillor's Anglicanism, but still, his comments get my hackles up. I'd always assumed that the whole thing was a private affair between yourself and Deity; something arrived at though thought and self-examination, and certainly nothing that's imposed on you. It can't be. Not by parents, not by society, and certainly not by a brain-damaged crank with a radio bully-pulpit.

Mr. Keillor should know the difference between religious observance, and cultural practice. He should also know that no-one convinces anyone of anything by whining and screaming. It's something that everyone over the age of five should know.

As for folksy type Keillor alternatives? I've always been partial to Jean Shepherd.