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.
Regards, Ivan
-Eric
The amusing thing is that Keillor really thinks he's talking about Coleman here, and not himself.
Wow!! Aren't Moms great that way? When Clinton was campaigning for his first run at the presidency, my mom stated flatly (and I might add, uncharacteristically, for her): "He's a pathological liar."
"fellas": "We don't 'preciate commies 'round here. Why don't you just step back out through that there door."
Pass that one by again? I would suggest that Scandinavians are among the LEAST anti-Semitic of all Europeans, and I believe the historical record will bear that out.
Is this a typo, or a deliberate misspelling of "expatriate"? If the former, ouch. If the latter, OUCH!!
Dan
Also the President of that state's Trial Lawyer Lobby.
Who knows? Clearly he's couched it in such terms as to make the accusation of antisemitism deniable, and I'd hate to go on the sort of witchhunt for 'code words' the left is so fond of. One of our African-American football players said the other day that the word 'thug' is racist when applied to the quite frequent antisocial behavior of him and his friends - amusing to anyone with even the slightest exposure to Indian history (or the Indiana Jones movies).
Antisemitism is alive and well out here on the prairie. One of our former Democratic governors' wives writes monthly letters to the newspapers attacking Israel, often in terms in which the antisemitism is scarcely veiled.
Damn. Gotta work at being more unpredictable :-)
So much for Keillor.....next..
From the first moment I heard Keillor, I knew that there was something that bothered me about his “humor.” It took me only a little time to realize that he was having inviting his audience to have fun by laughing at this characters, not with fondness, but with malice. If you listen carefully, it will be immediately obvious that Keillor is not laughing WITH the people of Lake Wobegon, but AT them. His monologues are an unending, ironic put-down of fly-over country people and values. Why, the inhabitants of Lake Wobegon even think that all the children are “above average,” obviously something only a poor, uneducated, rural hick could believe. Even the name: Wobegon, is an indictment. Only life’s losers would stay in a place of woe.
What fools people about his monologues is the tone of voice in which they are delivered: a slow, measured Midwestern drawl that lulls. It is the same technique that Dashle uses in his attacks against Republicans. The tone is low, measured and muted. But the words are designed to draw blood.
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