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

[iamradar.livejournal.com]

I wonder if that jerk realizes that most Christian Christmas traditions are actually Pagan.

[toad-hall.livejournal.com]

wow. that's some stunning ignorance.

[paka.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty confused about where his line is between being funny and being serious here. I think this means that whatever part is actually his joke, it's fizzled.

[commanderteddog.livejournal.com]

Same here. There's just too much anger for me to pick the two apart.

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

Wow. He also dissed nerds and Unitarians in the same rant.

Like you, I kinda liked some of the episodes of Prairie Home Companion I've heard before but this essay is something pretty pernicious. If he thought he was aiming for a 'curmudgeon' vibe, he instead comes across as narrow minded git .

::B::

Hrm.

[shavastak.livejournal.com]

When my radio stations stop being inundated with Christmas music for 1.5 months, then Christians can complain to me about people who aren't 'in the club'. Between Black Friday and January 1st you cannot turn on a radio station anywhere and escape Christmas music of some kind - at least, not where I live.

Re: Hrm.

[(Anonymous)]

Let's start a pagan station!

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

he can take my 4 foot secular christmas tree and shove it up his butt.

AND I found a nativity scene in my basement. I might actually put it up even though I'm not religious because baby Jesus is cool.

I saw tacky Jesus air fresheners and I want one. I am a tacky Jesus thing fan >:D

I haven't been a Christian since I was 15, but I still celebrate Christmas and sing the carols and tell the jesus story out of tradition. And it's fun.

it's funny, there was a huge article in macleans on how a lot of Athiests even get into the spirit, complete with going to church to sing carols, because it's fun.

[terminotaur.livejournal.com]

Them darn "elites" again, always thinking they know better than common folks huh? His view of it, well, it kind of sounds rather Puritan.

The one thing that always comes out of these rants though is some variation on the theme of hands off "our" holiday. Keilor's hands off (mostly about a single song?) seems to suggest that others can do whatever they want, but hands off OUR stuff, while at the same time castigating the way others do their stuff and how they do it in the public sphere. I mean I can understand the idea of everyone celebrating in their own ways (I like that idea) but if you sign on to that you can't turn around and complain about the various songs in the mall.

I'm not big on the folksy (I live on the prairies, LOOKING for folksy is like hunting for oxygen sometimes) but Stuart McLean doesn't seem to have a bug up his hind quarters like Keilor. Just thinking about the 22 Minutes bit he did with Gavin Crawford a few years ago where they kissed....

[relee.livejournal.com]

Do spiritual pirates kidnap angels and turn them into devas?

[ladyringo.livejournal.com]

SSSSHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Don't tell anybody!!!

[foomf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he lost my patience a couple years ago when he pulled a tantrum about noisy motorcycles which inconvenienced him.

Wah wah wah. Those noisy motorcycles were part of a legal, well organized, scheduled and permits-purchased protest, an annual veterans' ride-on-Washington which was especially necessary as that was the year Bush started hiding how many people were coming back dead from Iraq.

[ladyringo.livejournal.com]

Well, we all know that unless you can afford your own appliances, life isn't worth living!


I read the article. I read all of the responses. What continues to amaze me is that most Christians don't know the history of their own holiday. The early Christians took over the pagan winter holiday in order to help convert people. Christ was born during LAMBING SEASON! which would be spring/early summer. *rolls eyes*

I was raised Catholic, I went Christian for a while and then Pagan and now I am mostly athiest with trends towards a general pagan spirituality. I work for the government and I am not allowed to say "Merry Christmas" unless someone says it to me. I do not have a problem with Christmas. I like having wreaths and trees and presents and giving things to the people I care about. I donate extra to charity, participate in canned food drives and do what I can to help make people's lives better. I also give to charity every MONTH of the year, not just at Christmas. I know almost all of the Christmas carols and I have my favorites from the secular and the reliigous. Even though I don't believe in Christ and I don't believe in the Judeo/Christian God, I do not feel the need to tell others that they cannot believe.

It makes me angry that the Christian Majority feels so threatened by the minority of the minority who may speak against it- who seek to make most people comfortable. I am not offended by Merry Christmas, but some people might be. I prefer to say "Happy Holidays" because the month of December has a million holidays in it. I think it's a season about remembering the light we used to have, of cherishing our freinds and family, of good food and sharing and remembering our fellow man. I haven't had a Christmas with my family in going on ten years. Every year I miss them. The first few were miserable- because for me, Christmas is about family. About staying up late and waiting for presents in the morning, about dollar gag gifts and Gramma's home cooking, about fighting with my sister, watching TV and helping cook Christmas dinner. Foggy central california mornings and frost on the ground. This year Christmas will be spent with my fiance and my "family" of close friends. What is wrong with that? Just because we don't celebrate Christ, we cannot have a Christmas?

I do not threaten you. Stop threatening me. :)

Sorry about the huge rant!! I didn't realize how much that had upset me.... >_>

[catsarah.livejournal.com]

Keillor did an album of cat songs "Songs of the Cat" that I quite like, but beyond that my impression of him is that he's a grub and a knob.

He can buzz off :P

[paka.livejournal.com]

"Arrr, matey! Discard all yer attachments to the Floating World, and prepare to be boarded!"

"Oh no! Spiritual pirates! Quickly, take refuge in the dharma! Take refuge in the sangha!"

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Wow. I've have only encountered him incidentally, and did not have any idea that he was either quite so bad at satire or quite so bizarrely angry - it's difficult to tell which, but either way, the result is definitely filled with fail.

[kianir.livejournal.com]

Huh.

[renface.livejournal.com]

Garrison Keillor is an awful man. When I was at school in River Falls, WI, I often saw him at the local grocery store.

[redregon.livejournal.com]

well, that's a way to get into the spirit of the holidays (*removes tongue from cheek*)

[redregon.livejournal.com]

the light we used to have

but, have we really lost it? ;)

[ladyringo.livejournal.com]

No! Because at the Solstice, the days become longer! :)

[rowyn]

I have to admit, I have already heard "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "The Christmas Song" as many times as I need to in this life, though. >:)

[ladyringo.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq10bz3PxyY

[brand-of-amber.livejournal.com]

If you don't like mass produced pablum why are you hanging out in malls?

Not that it matters to me; I celebrate YAKMAS.

[xydexx.livejournal.com]

Perhaps what he really wants is a CHRIST-mas tree (http://www.avclub.com/articles/how-to-subtly-keep-the-christ-in-christmas,36328/?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=feeds&utm_source=avclub_rss_daily)...

...or perhaps a holiday display of Jesus shooting Santa (http://www.koco.com/mostpopular/22005291/detail.html).

[mbehemoth.livejournal.com]

I think most Christians realize that Christ wasn't born in December but its become the traditional time to celebrate it. That being said his little tirade, whether tongue in check or not is not all that Christ like which unless I'm out of sorts is what Christians strive for.

I'm not really familiar with his writing outside this article but I second what Pyat says about Stuart McLean. I love Vinyl Cafe and his books and how he can artfully craft stories that are entertaining while being incredibly wholesome. To me he is the ideal of an aspect of Canada I really like.

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

I adore what I've heard of Stuart McLean. :-)

[used_songs]

Ugh. I can't stand Keillor - all that faux folksiness and nostalgia for something that never existed. He's so smarmy.

[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.

[thebitterguy]

I still like him more than Stuart McLean.