[Right Wing Professor]

I have a feeling Norm Coleman is more in touch with the real spirit of Minnesota than someone who spends all their days with the NPR Crowd.

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.

[gl_mark]

I am particularily enjoying the liberal callers to Jason Lewis and other conservative hosts on local talk radio that start out by saying they don't find MPR/NPR liberal. Certainly a look into the kind of people Keillor speaks to.

Time to defund MPR.

[MadIvan]

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.

I have a bone to pick with NPR on their classical music programming (I listen over the web occasionally) - they tend to be more than a bit snide about my favourite soprano Renée Fleming (I made and run a fan site about her), merely because she's popular and successful.

It's like you're not valid as an artist unless you're sleeping in a puddle. No.

Regards, Ivan

[CatoRenasci]

I sent MPR an email pretty much to that effect the other day after reading Keillor's second Jeremiad on Coleman.

My wife's a Norwegian Lutheran and I always enjoyed listening to the tales from Lake Wobegon, but in quiet moments of reflective listening, I have always thought that there was more than a little bit of condescension and smugness in Keillor's schtick: that his mocking was not that of a knowing insider joking with others sharing the same background and values, but of an outsider making fun of rural people and values for an audience of urban professionals who would no more identify with the values of Lake Wobegon than they would with the Ku Klux Klan.

[Savage Beast]

"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."

This is a good point, RW, of course, but I wouldn't feel a whole lot better about them if they were taxpayer funded shills for the Republican or Libertarian Party. They shouldn't be getting any funds from taxes at all, and I'm sure you agree.

[CatoRenasci]

Another thought: do you think Keillor's emphasizing that Coleman was from Brooklyn was meant (for Minnesota consumption) as a veild anti-Semitic comment? Was he trying to appeal to the latent anti-Semitism that is so rampant among Scandinavians? Curious.