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Jewish songwriters have created some of the most enduringly popular songs of the season — Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," of course, but also "The Christmas Song," "Silver Bells," and "I'll Be Home For Christmas," among others. Some people might view that as a heartening, only-in-America expression of interfaith goodwill and warmth. But not Garrison Keillor: "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," he fumed in a recent column for the Baltimore Sun. "Christmas is a Christian holiday — if you're not in...

Garrison Keillor has always struck me as mean-spirited, wrapping a fundamentally smug and condescending world view in a fondant of cutesy-poo irony. Now, thanks to Glenn Reynolds‘ posting of Marissa Brostoff’s TABLET MAGAZINE column, “Garrison Keillor Doesn’t Like Jews Writing Christmas Songs,” others may also reassess their opinion of NPR’s favorite son. Brostoff describes Keillor’s recent Baltimore Sun column, in which he complains about “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, coma along...

Jews have been accused of many Ills by the bigots of the world, supposedly we control the banks, the media, foreign policy, and the American Government (Thankfully Obama disproves that one). Lately Jews have been accused of creating swine flu and the housing bubble that created the economic crisis (well Barney Frank IS Jewish). During the Christmas season, many bigots revive the old anti-Semitic slander of diacide, that the Jews killed Christ. Garrison Keillor, of Prairie Home Companion fame has come up with a brand new slur for Christmas, the Jews ruined the holiday by writing lousy Christmas songs.

Garrison Keillor, self-appointed cultural representative of regular old Americans, ruffled some feathers yesterday with a mildly xenophobic rant about Christmas. After lambasting a Unitarian church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for “spiritual piracy and cultural elitism”—tweaking the lyrics of “Silent Night” for a singalong, in layman’s terms—he turned his ire in a different direction: 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’?...

Garrison Keillor, self-appointed cultural representative of regular old Americans, ruffled some feathers yesterday with a mildly xenophobic rant about Christmas: "...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."

I spotted this unfortunate headline on Salon.com and thought it was funny so I grabbed a screenshot.

Garrison Keillor, the "Lake Wobegon" author and National Public Radio icon, is offering a solution to a couple of the nation's problems with one swoop: Give members of the GOP "aspirin and hand sanitizer" but if they have more complicated health issues, let them die. The comments come virtually at the same time voices are being raised in Washington over an assertion by U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., that Republicans' health care plan for the sick is to "die quickly." "The Republican plan," the Democrat said on the House floor, "Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die...

... one starts to wonder if the country wouldn't be better off without them and if Republicans should be cut out of the health-care system entirely and simply provided with aspirin and hand sanitizer. Thirty-two percent of the population identifies with the GOP, and if we cut off health care to them, we could probably pay off the deficit in short order.

Garrison Keillor, author and host of the folksy radio show "A Prairie Home Companion," was being treated Wednesday for a minor stroke he suffered over the weekend, a hospital spokesman said. Keillor, who turned 67 last month, was admitted to St. Mary's Hospital at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, on Sunday night, spokesman Karl Oestreich said in a news release. "He is up and moving around, speaking sensibly, working at a laptop, and it's expected he'll be released on Friday," Oestreich said. "He plans to resume a normal schedule next week." The live variety show "A Prairie Home Companion"...

Pastor Inqvist of the Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church would be shocked: Thieves have struck author Garrison Keillor's St. Paul, Minn., bookstore, officials say. Video surveillance tapes showed a man and woman entering Keillor's store about 1:20 a.m. Thursday, making off with $3,000 from the safe of Common Good Books, store manager Martin Schmutterer told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. "They were very calm about it," he said after posting still photos of the burglars online on the bookstore's blog page. Schmutterer said the pair smashed a window in a coffee shop above the store, then made their way downstairs to...

From NPR Welfare Radio: Garrison Keillor (A Prairie Home Companion) recites a sonnet followed by a song for Barack Obama. January 24, 2009 "This week on A Prairie Home Companion, we're embracing the winter cold and heading up to the DECC auditorium in Duluth, Minnesota. We'll fight the frigid temperatures with some smoldering honky-tonk from Joe Ely and Joel Guzmán, and singer-songwriter Heather Masse will melt our hearts with a song or two. As always, we'll have the Royal Academy of Radio Actors with us: Sue Scott, Tim Russell, and Tom Keith; and of course, Rich Dworsky and The Guy's...

Garrison Keillor tries to enjoy Memorial Day at the National Gallery, honoring our fallen heroes by going to an art exhibit ... ...on we went to show our patriotism by looking at exhibits at the Smithsonian or, in my case, hiking around the National Gallery, which, after you've watched a few thousand Harleys pass, seems like an outpost of civilization. There stood Renoir's ballerina in pale blue chiffon and Monet's children in the garden of sunflowers. And Mary Cassatt's The Boating Party, which I stood and stared at for a long time. A lady in a white bonnet sits in...

Three hundred thousand bikers spent Memorial Day weekend roaring around Washington in tribute to our war dead, and I stood on Constitution Avenue Sunday afternoon watching a river of them go by, waiting for a gap in the procession so I could cross over to the Mall and look at pictures. The street had been closed off for them and they motored on by, some flying the Stars and Stripes and the black MIA-POW flag, honking, revving their engines, an endless celebration of internal combustion. A patriotic bike rally is sort of like a patriotic toilet-papering or patriotic graffiti—the patriotism...

ST. PAUL, MN -- Sure, Barack Obama got Maria Shriver's backing at Sunday's big rally with Oprah Winfrey and Stevie Wonder in Los Angeles, adding another Kennedy cousin to his list of endorsers -- and this one the wife of the Republican governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Perhaps Shriver's backing will help a bit in California, where he is locked in a tight Democratic primary contest With New York Sen. Hillary Clinton going into tomorrow's Super Tuesday voting. But the senator from Illinois, who is working hard to color in the map of the 20-plus states that will hold primaries...

ST. PAUL, Minn.: Garrison Keillor, host of public radio's "A Prairie Home Companion," has endorsed Democratic Sen. Barack Obama for president, Obama's campaign announced Sunday. Obama also won backing from a key backer of former candidate John Edwards. "I'm happy to support your candidacy, which is so full of promise for our country," Keillor, the best-selling author and humorist wrote in a letter declaring his support.

Here’s a Prairie Home Companion episode you’ll never hear: It’s been a quiet week here at Lake Wobegon. Aunt Tillie had to cut short her big vacation in Paris – she got caught in a riot at the train station and you’ll never believe it, she got tear-gassed. She’s all right, but you can imagine the mood she was in when she arrived at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Poor thing, she went straight to a duty-free shop and bought a big bottle of Merlot. After that, believe it or not, it got even worse. The airport cab driver told...

Serenaded by Joe Ely and Garrison Keillor and saluted by characters spanning the globe of liberal politics, Molly Ivins raised money Sunday night for her beloved Texas Observer. Over dinner with about 800 fans at the Capitol Marriott, the liberal columnist and former Observer co-editor sported a wispy mohawk of regrowing hair, reflecting her looking-good battle against recurrent breast cancer. She was hailed by 18 speakers. They were led off by Keillor, the Minnesota radio man, who, with Ely, sang "Today I Started Loving You Again" and "Waltz Across Texas." Keillor said, "It's good to be in a roomful of...

One of the paragraphs in Keillor's article: Having been called names, one looks back at one's own angry outbursts over the years, and I recall having once referred to Republicans as "hairy-backed swamp developers, fundamentalist bullies, freelance racists, hobby cops, sweatshop tycoons, line jumpers, marsupial moms and aluminum-siding salesmen, misanthropic frat boys, ninja dittoheads, shrieking midgets, tax cheats, cheese merchants, cat stranglers, pill pushers, nihilists in golf pants, backed-up Baptists, the grand pooh-bahs of Percodan, mouth breathers, testosterone junkies and brownshirts in pinstripes." I look at those words now, and "cat stranglers" seems excessive to me. The number of cat...

It's been a quiet week in St. Paul, Minnesota, our hometown. The mayor turned on his police lights to halt a fleeing citizen after a fender-bender. The Senate Tax Committee is turning everything to mush. Bodies so naked they don't even have skin are on display at the Science Museum of Minnesota. We welcome the world-class actors who will be cruising down Wabasha Street this evening for the opening of the movie version of "A Prairie Home Companion." This is a pretty big deal for St. Paul — not like the high school wrestling tournament, but pretty big all the...

The way to put military service back in the picture is to pass a constitutional amendment requiring that a candidate for president have at least two years of full-time military service. It would be a boon to the country, to the military and to the young. It would confirm the importance of service. The 42-year-old governor who discovers that he wants to be president would need to go down to the recruiting office and enlist. It'd be a big moment, like when Elvis went off to basic training. Think of Newt Gingrich climbing on a bus and going off to...