For one reason or another, I usually wind up driving somewhere on Saturdays between 5 and 7 – if not for the entire two hours, at least in bits and pieces.
And one of my favorite rituals during that time is to flip over to MPR to listen to A Prairie Home Companion. Say what you will about Garrison Keillor’s politics (hard left) and personality (a**hole); I just plain like the show. The music’s usually great; the sketch comedy’s often good, sometimes great; “News from Lake Wobegon” may be a funny fictional ramble to most people, but if you grew up Scandinavian in the Midwest, it’s more like a documentary.
But listening to Keillor’s post-election show, I couldn’t help but think: for eight years in defeat, Keillor was graceless, venal and churlish; it stands to reason that in victory, he’s utterly insufferable.
I seriously cannot imagine.
We like Prairie Home Companion too. The music is great (I never tire of the Powder Milk Biscuits bit), but the minute we hear his droning voice we turn it off. Insufferable.
Prior to 2000, I hadn’t voted for a Republican for President since my first vote in 1976 for Gerald Ford (and Jimmy Carter makes me look smarter every time he opens his festering gob). I was also a member of MPR for 16 years, and listened to it for nearly 12 hours a day for 16 years, as I owned and operated my own business (truth be told, it actually owned me). Now the list of things I formerly enjoyed but cannot now stomach includes MPR, NPR, Garrison Keillor, This American Life, David Letterman, any major news outlet, PBS, etc, etc. Older and wiser, I guess. Reminds me of this quote from Mark Twain. “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
“For one reason or another, I usually wind up driving somewhere on Saturdays between 5 and 7….”
I thought you just got your car back?
Keillor was funny in the 80s, mildly entertaining in the 90s, and for naught in the naughts. Pass.
nerbert said:
“I thought you just got your car back?”
He didn’t say it was his car.
I imagine he has a habit of stealing cars on the way home from the station and dropping them off at a chop shop, on the count of his “latent racism” and “hate filling”.
But I do realize I am just imagining these things. 🙂