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.
Wellstone was Jewish too. I think the caricature of the smart-alecky Brooklynite ("youse talkin' to ME?") was meant to impugn Colman's bona fides as a Minnesooooootan.
Would love to see you post one, if possible.
I suspect that link is far less solid than you believe. Most midwesterners have not (knowingly) met enough Jews to dislike them. But they have met enough "New Yorkers" to dislike them. Doesn't everyone dislike New Yorkers???
This is her comparatively mild recent effort, from the Lincoln Journal Star of 11/17. Please note: this is posted under a category orange barf alert.
U.S. funds horror
A Baltimore Sun news story by Peter Hermann reported in the Journal Star said, "`The terrorists were shooting from heavy machine guns and they were throwing grenades,' an army spokeswoman ... said. `After a while, the soldiers got to be in serious jeopardy.'"
The story went on to explain: "Thursday's battle comes after a series of Israeli army raids in the Gaza Strip -- home to 1.2 million Palestinians and 7,000 Jewish settlers -- in which many civilians were killed. In July an F-16 warplane dropped a 1-ton bomb on an apartment in Gaza City to kill the head of the militant wing of the Hamas group, but also killed 15 bystanders, nine of them children."
The army spokeswoman explained: "Our forces try to avoid hurting the innocents, and of course we express regret if we have." Most of the injured were children near a United Nations school that was hit by gunfire. No Israeli soldiers nor civilians were injured during the fierce gunbattle.
How much more do we need to understand that the Israeli army and government, supported by $5billion a year in aid, both military and economic from the United States, is intent on euthanizing all Palestinians, who are called terrorists for fighting back to keep the tiny scraps of their own country not colonized by Israel's settlements, bypass roads and gigantic concrete fences to keep Palestinians out of Israel?
How much longer can we citizens of the United States play passive victims of our right-wing foreign policy which supports only Israel in the Mideast -- and Saudi Arabia with its huge oil reserves -- pretending we know nothing about the massive imbalance of power in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
The root cause of misery and war in the Middle East is the Israeli brutal domination and now ethnic cleansing of Palestine and Palestinians. The United States supports and funds this horror. For how long and at what cost?
Ruth Raymond Thone, Lincoln
I quite agree. New Yorkers have the reputation, afforded them by an obnoxious few, of being pushy, opinionated, patronizing, and parochial. I stood in line behind a woman in a bank in Portland, Oregon, not too long ago, who was hectoring a poor teller about identification required to cash a check "that's not how we do things in Nyoo Yawk!" The guy actually pretended to care.
Same deal with Californians on the West Coast - they're seen as interlopers who have thoroughly fouled their nest and are attempting to export the habits that were responsible to a new location right next door to you. Again, it's a noisy few making things uncomfortable for the ones who really do want to blend in - I'd guess under 95%...
Generic bubble-headed feminazi.
It's hard for me to imagine that this woman has met too many of my co-religionists.
That said, a few years ago, I passed a group of Nebraska fans in full regalia, in NYC for a game at the Meadowlands. When I shouted "GO HUSKERS!", they just glowed. It was very touching, and it's hard to imagine such decent folks allowing such hatred to fester in their community. Oh well.
I hear Portland has a surplus of Nyoo Yawkers, including their Mayor. Their soon to be ex-Governor is from Conn I believe.
The guy actually pretended to care.
Figures. Those NW Scandinavians are very liberal, but they are generally nice, and very polite. That teller will justifyably not have a nice impression of "Nyoo Yawkers", and may tell some stories. That will cause some of the Nyoo Yakwkers to scream "anti-Semitism", thus blowing their cover.
Ruth Thone is regarded as somewhat of a warped and broken record, but as ex-guv's wife, she gets her letters published. The left here is a very strange mix, stranger even than usual, possibly because they're so isolated.
Absolutely. I was gobsmacked when I met her this past July. Truly someone who looks as good in person as she does on her album covers.
Cor, blimey
Regards, Ivan
Keillor did a monologue once in which his supposed phone call was interrupted by the operator, his former Sunday School teacher, who said, "Your folks aren't at home, and I don't intend to connect you, you just are calling up so you and your swell friends can make fun of us...this town was a decent place until some people came along and left" And then she hung up on him.
Perhaps a bit more truth in art than he'd care to admit.
Regards, Ivan
I've never been able to accurately articulate just why I ceased enjoying his humor -- which, at first, had seemed so fresh and insightful.
Your #31, however, is right on the button. I come from a small town in Oklahoma and Keillor's storytelling revealed some humorous insights I could relate to. Eventually, I realized that he wasn't laughing with us, but at us, instead. He was mocking the very people whom he purported to admire -- biting the very hand that fed him.
Garrison Keillor is an ungrateful wretch, a very nasty man.
Vicious.
In the same way, it's de rigueur among opera fans to hate Andrea Bocelli purely because he caught on with the ugly, unwashed general public. Opera fans want their music to remain a sealed-of little world all its own.
That encapsulates some of the reaction I've received from the "establishment" about my little Renée website. (www.rusalkasvoice.com in case anyone is interested.)
Regards, Ivan
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