Posted on 11/20/2002 7:23:37 AM PST by Valin
Poor Garrison Keillor. Having worked himself into such a snit over Norm Coleman's victory, will he ever again be taken seriously as a man of calming good humor? For that matter, will he ever be able to go home to Lake Wobegon again? And if he does, what can he and fellas at the Side Track Tap possibly have to say to one another? After all these years of genial folksiness, it's finally come to this: stunned silence.
"How could they?" he must be fuming to himself. "How could he?" they must be muttering to themselves. Lakes generally lack bridges, but it must be bridge-burning time around Lake Wobegon in the aftermath of Keillor's not-so-gentle diatribe against the "evil" campaign of the "empty suit" whom Minnesotans just decided to send to Washington.
Of course, Minnesotans were far from unanimous in making this "low rent mistake." There were plenty of allegedly wise dissenters, Keillor having now supplanted Rick Kahn as the most conspicuous among them. But if such things as voting patterns and the law of averages mean anything, Sen.-elect Coleman probably did very well among the Lake Wobegonites of Greater Minnesota.
While Minnesotans have long wondered where Lake Wobegon might be, no one has ever suggested that this little town that time forgot might be somewhere near Kenwood and Lake of the Isles (and the sea of green lawn signs that fairly engulfed this enclave of limousine liberaldom). But who knows? Maybe that's just where it's always been. At least Garrison Keillor must be hoping as much. Otherwise he's going to have to deal with the unpleasant reality that there were a lot of Coleman voters among the good people of Lake Wobegon. Imagine that.
For the time being, imagining this possibility seems beyond the imaginative powers of Keillor, who has at least been temporarily blinded by a lethal combination of raw hatred and left-wing paranoia. But who knows? Maybe this affliction has always been a part of his makeup. Maybe a once well-concealed smugness, not to mention an old-fashioned mean streak, has always lurked behind his well-packaged kind-heartedness. Maybe, just maybe, this child of Lake Wobegon has always thought of himself as being somewhere above the average of the rest of the above average products of his home town.
One way or the other, it's going to be difficult for this prodigy to go home again. Then again, maybe he just won't want to bother. Or maybe, just maybe, the folks of Lake Wobegon would simply prefer that he stay away.
The very thought that any self-respecting Krebsbach or Tollerud could have voted for an evil-minded empty suit must just gall the man from St. Paul. How could such common sense folks have let themselves be snookered, and by a fast-talker from Brooklyn, New York, of all places??
And what about those Norwegian bachelor farmers? Odds are that more than a few of them long ago abandoned the modern-day DFL. What must they now think of this ex-patriot who obviously thinks so little of them? Since they're decent folks, they probably won't say much, but they've got to be mightily disappointed, whether by the DFL's new priorities or by Keillor's apparent failure to understand what's happened to what was once, no doubt, their party.
And we can't forget about the parishioners of Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility, even if the DFL has neglected them or at the very least taken them for granted. That many of them might not have been able to pull the lever for Walter Mondale shouldn't be beyond the most feeble of imaginations.
Of course, not everyone in Lake Wobegon was swept along by the GOP tide. If Garrison Keillor ever does go home, if he ever swallows enough Powdermilk Biscuits to summon the strength to get up and do what needs to be done by way of bridge-repairing, he surely will find a compatriot here and there.
Trouble is, he just won't know who they are. Hence the need for a little advance work, a little sleuthing perhaps, to prepare the way for this no longer universally favored son.
Sounds like just the job for Guy Noir, private eye.
Chalberg (e-mail: j.chalberg@nr.cc.mn.us) teaches American history at Normandale Community College in Bloomington.
On Norm: Norm Coleman won Minnesota because he was well financed and well packaged. Norm is a slick retail campaigner, the grabbiest and touchingest and feelingest politician in Minnesota history, a hugger and baby-kisser, and he's a genuine boomer candidate who reinvents himself at will.
The guy is a Brooklyn boy who became a left-wing student radical at Hofstra University with hair down to his shoulders, organized antiwar marches, said vile things about Richard Nixon, etc. Then he came west, went to law school, changed his look, went to work in the attorney general's office in Minnesota. Was elected mayor of St. Paul as a moderate Democrat, then swung comfortably over to the Republican side. There was no dazzling light on the road to Damascus, no soul-searching: Norm switched parties as you'd change sport coats.
On the Colemans: All you had to do was look at Coleman's face, that weird smile, the pleading eyes, the anger in the forehead. Or see how poorly his L.A. wife played the part of Mrs. Coleman, posing for pictures with him, standing apart, stiff, angry. Or listen to his artful dodging on the stump, his mastery of that old Republican dance, of employing some Everyguy gestures in the drive to make the world safe for the privileged. What a contrivance this guy is.
Norm and the press: Norm got a free ride from the press. St. Paul is a small town and anybody who hangs around the St. Paul Grill knows about Norm's habits. Everyone knows that his family situation is, shall we say, very interesting, but nobody bothered to ask about it, least of all the religious people in the Republican Party. They made their peace with hypocrisy long ago. So this false knight made his way as an all-purpose feel-good candidate, standing for vaguely Republican values, supporting the president.
On GOP values: The old GOP of fiscal responsibility and principled conservatism and bedrock Main Street values is gone, my dear, and something cynical has taken its place. Thus the use of Iraq as an election ploy, openly, brazenly, from the president and Karl Rove all the way down to Norman Coleman, who came within an inch of accusing Wellstone of being an agent of al-Qaida.
On 9/11: The Republican exploitation of 9/11 for political gain is the sort of foulness that turns young people against the whole business, and for good reason. All sorts of people went down in the World Trade Center, execs and secretaries and bond traders and also the dishwashers in Windows on the World and secretaries and cleaning ladies... . For a cynic like Norman Coleman to hitch his trailer to that tragedy is evil — call it by the right name. To exploit 9/11 and the deaths of those innocent people on that beautiful day in Manhattan — to appropriate that day and infer so clearly that there is a Republican and a Democratic side to it, is offensive to our national memory and obscenely evil, and it was rewarded by the voters of Minnesota.
On Wellstone's plane crash: I personally don't believe he (Coleman) had anything to do with the crash of Paul's plane. Plenty of people suspect he did. I don't. But I do think he is a cynical politician who should make himself scarce for the next few years until people start to forget his campaign.
On Coleman supporters: I know those people. To my own shame, I know them. I'm ashamed of Minnesota for electing this cheap fraud, and I'm ashamed of myself for sitting on my hands, tending to my hoop-stitching, confident that Wellstone would win and that Coleman would wind up with an undersecretaryship in the Commerce Department.
To choose Coleman over Walter Mondale is one of those dumb low-rent mistakes, like going to a great steakhouse and ordering the tuna sandwich.
But I don't envy someone who's sold his soul. He's condemned to a life of small arrangements. There will be no passion, no joy, no heroism, for him. He is a hollow man. The next six years are not going to be kind to Norm.
Regards, Ivan
Your feeling is, as usual, reliable. Minnesota, like the rest of the Midwest, has been trending rightward for years. And this is not the first fit of Garrison Keillor pique. He was apoplectic about the 2000 election, working a multitude of shrill, snide comments into his Guy Noir schtick. And before that, during the HillaryCare attempt to nationalize the American health system, he went into a 'Danish' phase where he took every opportunity to unfavorably compare the US with Denmark, of all places.
Oh well, time to again remind NPR that although I listen to their classical music programs, I won't send them a red cent until they cease being a taxpayer funded shill for the left wing of the Democratic party.
So British, yet so wise.
He had the right, of course, but when an entertainer kills the magic, it's pretty hard to get it back.
The short answer to the question posed by the article is: Yes he has always had a mean streak.
Time to defund MPR.
If Norm had stayed a Democrat, would the Repukes have accused Norm of being a "little light in the loafers"?
Just asking.
And it was the RAT party that accused a GOP candidate of being gay for the sole purpose of defeating him at the polls. Remember their "hair dresser" ad?
He never ate a powder-milk biscuit in his life.
He's an old fem who won't come out of the closet. JMHO.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.