By Dave Lieber

www.YankeeCowboy.com

Photo courtesy of South Dakota magazine

The best public speaker I’ve seen is Garrison Keillor. He has a great voice, a great mind, a great memory and, of course, those eyebrows!

He appeared at the University of Texas at Arlington in late November. The host of the legendary public radio show Prairie Home Companion, author and newspaper columnist had canceled a previous appearance after a mild stroke. He said doctors told him to slow down and retire. The heck with that. He travels the country telling stories and selling books.

Here are 10 things Keillor did that night in Arlington that help make him one of the finest speakers in the world today:

1. His clothes sparkled. Even though I was in the upper tier and he looked like a Ken doll on stage, he stood out because he wore a bright red tie and red sneakers, along with his dark suit and white shirt.

2. He sang his own introduction.

3. He quickly flattered his audience: “I never felt more welcome than when I get to meet Texans in Texas.”

4. Throw in a reference to a local luminary to let the audience know you share reverence for one of their local heroes. He cited the late Molly Ivins.

5. Speak in sparse yet sharp language: “It was the most wonderful wake I ever attended, and the deceased was sitting right there.”

6. Self-deprecation whenever possible: “It’s my role to play a taciturn Norwegian – although I’m not really one.”

7. Use visual images punctuated with quippy lines: “Snow was a lot deeper when I was a kid.”

8. Introduce characters with strong imagery: “My father  was a low-thermostat man.”

9. Follow up introductory descriptions with more visual imagery to enhance your portrait: “If you couldn’t see steam coming out of your mouth, he thought you were wasting fuel.”

10. Use life experiences, especially recent ones, to show your hero’s journey: “In my case, I got lucky. This blood clot hit the part of the brain where not much is going on…. It was the North Dakota of the brain.”

Final notes: His closing was superb. During the question and answer period, someone asked, “Do you rehearse your material?”

He answered, “I don’t have to rehearse. I lived it. Life is the rehearsal. All you have to do is remember as much as you can.”

Then he said, “I will now sign autographs. I have a nice signature, very legible. I’m happy to have pictures taken, if that’s what you want, although I can see why you wouldn’t.”

The American literary superstar concluded by promising that he would “hang out and talk” until no one from the audience remained.

I imagined him helping to turn off the lights and lock the door.  It was a powerful commitment to his audience that I’ve never heard a star of his magnitude make before.

Dave Lieber is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and a member of NSA/North Texas.

I have two desks in my room.  The room is no bigger than I would imagine your bedroom to be, and if you have a steady job and a substantial paycheck, you should probably think of my bedroom as a form of a closet for you.  Perhaps the bathroom, if you like large bathrooms.

One of my desks is an antique – from my mother’s parents.  It matches the bed which matches the lounge chair, all of which are just about too big for the room and yet will never vacate until I do so.  I like them right where they are.  This desk has drawers upon drawers, three on each side and one in the middle.  They are in varying depths and the handles are delicate and suggest hidden secrets, but in reality all that is in them since I cleaned out the desk a year ago is a collection of my grandmother’s travel journals and an unfortunate catalog of junk.  I would use this desk, which seems like a writer’s desk, if it weren’t for the unfortunate problem that the desk can’t fit a chair inside the minuscule cubbyhole reserved for that purpose.  The only chair that fits inside the desk is one of the chairs from the dining room – something uncomfortable that guests sit in on the rare occasion that we have more than 4 people eating with us and cannot fit at the kitchen table.

The other desk is from Ikea.  Those of you familiar with Ikea know that this desk had to be put together – something I attempted and failed and my father finished.  It matches the shelf, which also had to be assembled at home, something I realized I could not lift once I’d put it together.  This also, my dad finished.

The Ikea desk has less on it.  A print of a painting (Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day [1887]) , a golden elephant, a “Get Fuzzy” calendar, a journal, a few pens, and a couple books.

I don’t just toss any book on this desk – this desk is the writing desk, and only books that provide inspiration and jolts to my consciousness sit on this desk.  One of the books is The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.  That book and its summary deserve a posting all to themselves, so I won’t go much farther into that except to say that it’s wonderful, I love it, and I’ll reread it as soon as I finish One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and On the Road.

The other book on the desk is one that’s infinitely important: Good Poems for Hard Times, selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor.  One of my best friends in the universe gave me this book, and the note written inside the front cover is great enough on it’s own and reason enough for it to sit on the desk.  However, the forward written by Garrison Keillor is what jolted the little writer inside of me to life, and what will probably serve as a continual jolt for months, if not years to come.

That’s what I want to share with you.

1″The meaning of poetry is to give courage.  A poem is not a puzzle that you the dutiful reader are obliged to solve.  It is meant to poke you, to get you to buck up, pay attention, rise and shine, look alive, get a grip, get the picture, pull up your socks, wake up and die right.  Poets  {and writers, which is my own addition} have many motives for writing (to be published on expensive paper, to show up the others in your M.F.A. program, to flaunt your sensitive nature and thereby impress someone who might then go to bed with you, to win valuable prizes and fellowships and maybe a year in Rome or Provence, to have a plausible excuse for making a mess of your life), but what really matters about poetry and what distinguishes poets from, say, fashion models or ad salesmen is the miracle of incantation in rendering the gravity and grace and beauty of the ordinary world and thereby lending courage to strangers.  This is a necessary thing.

“At times life becomes almost impossible, and you curl up under a blanket in a dim room behind drawn shades and you despise your life, which seems mean and purposeless, a hoax and a cheat, your shining chances all wasted, pissed away, nobody can change this or make this better, love is lost, hope gone, nothing left but to pour a glass of gin and listen to weepy music.  But it can help to say words.  Moaning helps.  So does prayer.  God hears prayer and restores the souls of the faithful.  Walking helps.  Many people have pulled themselves up out of the pit by the simple expedient of rising to their feet, leaning slightly forward, and putting one foot ahead of the other.  Poems help.  [Poems] don’t come to me in moments of hilarity, but often when feeling bereft or drowning in work or even just being late to an appointment, stuck in traffic, ranting at myself, Wright’s two Indian ponies have come to me, their eyes full of kindness, Oliver’s geese have honked, Shakespeare’s lark at break of day from sullen earth arises, the heart is calmed, the gnashing stops, and one goes on.”

Many of you have, very kindly, inquired about the state of the book that I’ve taken a year off to write.  The truth is that it’s difficult going, especially when you’ve so dumbly put expectations in the minds of so many people and you’re not certain you can live up to any of them.  But when I sit here and think of all the things that writing can do for people ( not just poetry, I mean the written word), I remember that the whole point of writing is to tell a story.  That incidental symbolisim will be created by the teachers who use my book in their literature class centuries later (one can dream), and that it’s actually stories that help save people, that knowing that someone else can feel the same way and it can be published en masse so friends can be found and hearts can be helped, that’s why we write.

So, this was my extrication, pulling myself up by the socks and getting up and realizing that I can do it.  I can write this thing, and I can do it well.

Thank you to all my friends and family who support me continually and often in blind faith.  Consider this my having pushed the “restart” button.

More to come.

1. Garrison Keillor, Good Poems for Hard Times, Introduction, (xvii -xviii). Viking Penguin. New York, New York. 2005.

Since Garrison Keillor’s essay on Salon.com (“Don’t Mess With Christmas”) many UU bloggers have been responding to his remarks about the carols he heard in one UU church.  Emphasis on the word one – because every UU church and fellowship celebrates this time of year in different ways.  Some celebrate Christmas with Jesus and God played down; others go all out with nativity scenes and carols with “Christ is born” in the lyrics; others prefer Solstice or Yule celebrations.  Apparently Mr Keillor doesn’t get that, and some UUs got upset with him over it.

Needless to say, it was another opportunity for Robin Edgar to lash out at UUs for being “wrong” – and it only makes us wonder, just what does he do on Christmas?  Does he go to a Christian church and celebrate the birth of Jesus?  Does he join the pagans in their Solistice revels? Does he just sit in a dark room like Scrooge, with nobody around him?

Apparently, the only “spiritual practices” he wants to engage in are celebrating total eclipses as the “eye of God”, flaming away on the Web, and picketing the church who felt compelled to throw him out for harassing its members.

Tell us, Robin, do you have any imagination left?  Or have you been reduced to finding excuses to scapegoat and belittle the only religious community who came even close enough to putting up with you?  Hardly sounds spiritual to us.  Certainly not in the spirit of the season.

If you want Christmas for Christians and nothing else, then go to a Christian church.  If all you have to say to us is more bellyaching and name-calling, and you have to resort to quoting celebrity curmudgeons to do it, that says much more about you than it does about us.

I must have been doing a spectacularly poor job wasting time over the last week, because only today did I see Garrison Keillor’s Christmas rant:

Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that’s their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite “Silent Night.” If you don’t believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn “Silent Night” and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism and we Christians have stood for it long enough. 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”? No, we didn’t.

Golly. For the record, he also says bad things about Lawrence Summers and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and unaccountably refers to the good people of Cambridge, MA, as “Cambridgeans.”

One has to wonder exactly how serious this is intended to be. On the one hand, Keillor is a professional humorist and satirist. He’s also an inveterate rewriter of lyrics, Christmas lyrics not excepted. On the other, well… it isn’t very funny, now is it?

I’m leaning towards thinking it’s satire, or at least thinking that he thinks it’s satire. I am hardly Garrison Keillor’s biggest fan¹—I find A Prairie Home Companion both precious and grating, not to mention endlessly, mindlessly, numbingly repetitive—but I don’t think he’s stupid. I can easily imagine him being sufficiently egotistical to blast the UU’s for rewriting lyrics even as he does it himself (possibly by distinguishing “serious” and “humorous” rewrites). I can’t imagine him being so ignorant of musical tradition as to think that lyrics haven’t been rewritten continually since there were lyrics to rewrite. Or that Christmas music was universally wonderful and timeless until those Unitarians and Jews had to go and spoil it all.

I think he’s adopted a sort of vaguely anti-Semitic (and anti-Unitarian (and heck, while we’re at it, homophobic)) curmudgeonly Andy Rooney persona, full of misty nostalgia for those good old days that never existed. Perhaps he’s also kidding on the square.

And this wouldn’t be the first time Keillor’s attempted satire was taken more seriously than he claims to have intended. Here’s his apology, in the context of Dan Savage’s response to same, for the above-linked column.

FWIW, I looked up the offending Godless Silent Night. I’m not sure which of the two versions in the UU hymnal so offended Garrison. The first is just like the one he’s used to, except that it replaces “son of God” with “child of God” and ends each stanza with “Sleep in heavenly peace”—no Sons or Lords here. The second is a much more literal translation of two of the original German verses, very mildly Unitarianized so as to avoid the word “savior.”

Lots of responses to this on the internets, of course. Here’s one from folk-singer-(pretty good folk singer, in fact)-turned-Unitarian-minister Fred Small, whose church it was that Keillor was talking about. This piece includes links to other Unitarian-Universalist responses (some of which seem angry and wounded—UUs, like “Cambridgeans,” are natural Keillor fans). Here’s something pretty icky from Powerline, the gist of which is that Keillor must be sublimating his anger at the Jews (isn’t it really the atheists, and those who like the First Amendment?) who have so rudely driven Christmas from the Public Square.

1. Garrison Keillor’s biggest fan is Garrison Keillor.

When tickets go on sale for Minnesota Public Radio’s A Prairie Home Companion the line stretches around the block. The Fitzgerald Theater where it is now held isn’t a very big venue and those who want to get tickets have to get in line well ahead of time, obscuring the doorway to the condo I used to live in and now rent out. I remember one year, coming back from the store with my arms full of groceries, trying to slip through a gap in that line to get into my building. One of the humorless dullards in line (they were waiting in line hours in advance of the box office opening for tickets to A Prairie Home Companion, if you’re curious as to know how I knew they were humorless dullards) took me for a line jumper.

“The line starts back there,” she said, pointing down the block.

“If you’ll pardon me, I’m only trying to get into my building. Also, do I look like I went to Macalester?” I asked as I fumbled with my keys.

Dick retort, I know, but any reminder of the continued existence of Keillor’s insincere populist snoozefest of an attempt at old time radio brings out the worst in me. Plus, I had on nice shoes and clothing that wasn’t one-to-three sizes too large for me, and when I get married my wife won’t have a dyke haircut (heck my mom doesn’t have one either), so it was apparent I was unlikely to be either a Macalester alumni or a Keillor fan.

When I used to live downtown, I went to the same barber as Keillor. They offer straight razor shaves and are within walking distance of my condo, so I was sold. A few unfortunate times I wound up in the chair across from Keillor (there are only three chairs in the place). The folks at the barbershop seemed to think he was a swell guy and to Keillor’s credit, he made me quite happy by keeping to himself while there, saying slow dull things to his barber as his whispy combover was worked on. Writers for two different local publications I know who have interviewed or fact checked articles on Keillor say he’s a dick.

His neighbors (his Anoka, Minnesota neighbors that is, not his Upper West Side, Manhattan neighbors) must surely share the latter opinion. In 2008 Keillor surprised his neighbors with a lawsuit against said neighbors who were building a 1,900 square foot addition  onto their 2,125 square foot home  on the grounds that said addition would block “light and air,” as well as “open space and beyond,” from where Keillor lived in his 5,168 square foot McMansion next door. Ah, the gentle neighborliness of Lake Woebegone…

I normally don’t bother with an entertainer’s personal life, but Keillor has made a career out of being a professional small town Midwesterner, much in the same vein that Steven Cohen, the host of the radio program World Football Daily, has as a professional Englishman, both hocking a persona to swipples via a minstrel show of sorts. And it is Keillor’s show that is the absolute pinnacle of swipple populism—the type of populism that keeps the populace at arm’s length.

I lifted the title of this entry, I believe, from something Dwight Macdonald wrote. He was ripping on Pete Seeger if memory serves. And Pete Seeger would actually be a move in the right direction for Keillor’s program as Seeger is a pretty mediocre banjo player, in sharp contrast to the slick, experienced studio musicians that fill out Keillor’s band. Normally those who make up Keillor’s audience wouldn’t be caught within a country city mile of a banjo. Banjo players, country musicians and the simple, small town folk that comprise Keillor’s old timey facade are the type of white people Keillor’s middle-to-upper class audience take great pains to avoid.

Keillor has found his niche in life by giving his audience a sterilized serving of his bullshit folkery-fakery, drawing on the fairly unique white populist liberalism that stoic Scandinavian descendents in the upper Midwest brought to North America (of course, Keillor, raised Lutheran, no longer is one). If you’re a smug swipple it’s nice to have Keillor remind you of the tiny swath of working class white Americans that share your political sensibilities, seeing as you’ve got all these great ideas about how best to help them not be so small town and working class.

A coworker and I were talking about A Prairie Home Companion and we were both delighted to discover we each disliked it considerably. We both agreed T.D. Mischke is the one man with an understanding and reverence for old time radio who could pull off a variety show like the one Keillor wishes he could (well, probably not, he wouldn’t get to poke fun of his origins for the bemusement of his Manhattan neighbors when he and his third wife are attending their dinner parties). Mischke used to talk to all sorts of working class folks when he hosted his graveyard shift radio show in the Twin Cities. He’s demonstrated an actual appreciation and understanding for American roots music, grit and all. He’s a hell of a lot funnier than Keillor (admittedly a very low bar). And he knows how to put forth original content on the radio, specifically how to create content, instead of offering forth only reactionary material like the vast majority of talk radio in our nation.

But you don’t get a pad on the Upper West Side interviewing grave diggers every Wednesday night at 11:00 PM, or playing country music performed by country people. Garrison Keillor is well aware that folk music is high class music, just with a lot of low class people sangin’. Amputate the problem half of the genuine article and you’re all set for national syndication on public radio.

-RF

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.

Garrison Keillor

On this day of giving, please accept a wonderful Garrison Keillor piece that I read in today’s Houston Chronicle.

Christmas angel found in unexpected place

You can almost see the Hudson…

The weather they forecast hit, but not where they said it would. Chicago got the ice. Not too bad here in the Cities. Maybe five inches on the ground but traffic seems to be moving OK. What little traffic there is.

The problem, for me, is south of the Cities. Eight inches so far and mounting by Faribault, which is about half way to Iowa for me. The airports are open, but 150 flights have been canceled. (If you’re stuck at the airport, call — I’m in the book.)

Cool. My lifelong idea of the ideal Christmas was always to spend one in a motel room in rural Washington state with a steady downpour outside. Assuming I get to the liquor store to restock, I think this will be close enough to my fantasy to make for a memorable holiday.

-

The Senate’s version of healthcare insurance reform passed this morning. No Republican votes and in fact Olympia Snowe took it upon herself to lie her ass off about how the poor GOoPers had been shut out of the process (after only six months of footdragging and obstructionism by the unprincipled minority party).

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, said the business model of the health insurance industry deserved to die.

“It deserves a stake through its cold and greedy heart,” Mr. Whitehouse said.

Except this bill doesn’t do that.

Oh well, on to the reconciliation process. All I know is that no public option? No support from me.

If you can’t give us a public option this year, we’ll take single payer in 2011, and then we’ll primary the bastards who sold us out, Obama included.

-

It’s Christmas Eve so what better time for the NYTimes to run an op-ed from some guy with a Jewish name saying there’s only one way to stop Iran, and no, he doesn’t mean we should be nice to them.

Am I wrong to think we should be humiliating the warmongers who’ve gotten us so deep into debt and disrepute? Am I selfish to think that because Iran doesn’t have a missile that can deliver a payload into the Mediterranean, let alone our East Coast, Americans shouldn’t care?

Nah, I don’t think so. Look at a map of the Middle East. Look at the countries next to Iran. Any of them you’d ever miss? Me neither.

-

Thailand is trying to repatriate 4,000 Hmong to Laos. Laos doesn’t want them. Laos doesn’t want anyone. Laos is a fucked up country and no one should have to go there.

Nine U.S. senators sent a letter to Abhisit to express concern about the possible repatriation and criticize the government’s screening process to determine refugee status, saying it was led by the military and lacked a civilian presence.

”We believe that the lack of transparency in the screening and repatriation process only exacerbates these difficulties and heightens international concern regarding these populations,” said the letter obtained Thursday and dated Dec. 17. ”We strongly urge your government … to conduct a transparent screening process consistent with international standards.”

The letter was signed by six Democratic senators — Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, Barbara Boxer of California, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Minnesota senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken — and three Republicans, Richard Lugar of Indiana and Alaska senators Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich.

Bring ‘em here. It’s not the last installment on the debt we rang up in Vietnam, but taking care of these people is something we owe them. They fought for us, and now they’re not welcome in their own country.

The tribe and the State Department have had a long, roller-coaster relationship. During the Vietnam war era, the U.S. ambassador to Laos actually ran the covert military effort. The C.I.A. and the U.S. Air Force reported to the ambassador and, because there were no U.S. ground troops, Vang Pao and the Hmong were the favorite proxy soldiers. After the communists took over Laos in 1975 and began their revenge, slaughtering more than 10,000 Hmong, the State Department withdrew most of its embassy staff and turned its attention elsewhere. It has done no serious post-conflict resolution work in Laos up to today.

Eventually, one third of all Laotian Hmong came to the U.S. as refugees – an act of great American generosity. But the State Department seldom bothered to track the Hmong factions that continued to fight the Laotian regime, or chart the relationships between the jungle Hmong and their cousins in America. This bureaucratic underperformance – together with the misrule in Laos, one of the last five communist regimes in the world – allowed a curious kind of anarchy to take root in the Hmong populations of both countries. The symptoms included widespread illegal fundraising in America to support the resistance, young Hmong-Americans traveling to Laos to fight, and a persistent myth of Vang Pao’s inevitable return at the head of great invading army. “A lot of this could have been prevented,” says Bill Lair, Vang Pao’s former CIA advisor, “If there had been a liaison” between the State and Justice Departments, on the one hand, and the Hmong-American community on the other. But there wasn’t. Nor did the State and Justice Departments appear to be sharing solid intelligence information with each other – if they had any.

In 2007, the Justice Department indicted Vang Pao and ten others on charges of conspiring to overthrow the Laotian regime with a massive, spectacular armed coup. It soon became clear that the old general learned about the coup idea from his fellow defendants, but hadn’t endorsed it, because he knew it wouldn’t work. The plan was a kind of exaggerated military fantasy, heavily promoted by a U.S. undercover agent, as part of a widespread pattern of federal sting operations in the post-9/11 era.

The reality was that the tiny, vestigial, Hmong resistance was little threat to the Laotian regime and no threat to the U.S. government. The resistance at that time – maybe one or two thousand people in an Asian country the size of California – consisted of small bands of hungry men, women, and children who stayed on the run and ate roots and bugs to stave off starvation. Via satellite phones, resistance leaders in the mountains of Laos spoke regularly with Hmong in the U.S. Their underlying message: They wanted to come out of the mountains and lead normal lives, if only there was a way for them to surrender in safety.

I can’t vouch for the complete accuracy of this op-ed. Roger Warner is doing a documentary on Vang Pao, and has a very rosy view of the CIA’s former general. But St. Paul wouldn’t even notice an extra 4,000 Hmong, although it would stretch our social services folks a mite.

Bring them here and let Laos rebuild itself in peace without guerrillas from a war that should have ended decades ago. Being Hmong in Laos sucks even worse than being black in Wisconsin.

-

It’s hard not to despise headline writers who proclaim “personal income rises again” knowing full well this just means income inequity is back on the rise.

Part of the latest increase in personal income stemmed from growth in hours worked, rather than higher rates of pay. Although most workers might prefer the latter, increased hours are usually a leading indicator of a strengthening job market and overall economy. That’s because employers tend to increase the hours — and thus the paychecks — of existing workers before adding new names to their payrolls.

And employers also increase hours when they don’t trust the economy and don’t want to do any additional hiring, a scenario that sounds much more like what we’re experiencing than the L.A. Times cares to admit.

The article also whines about people saving money instead of spending it.

The inmates are running the asylum.

-

Garrison Keillor’s been catching his share of shit over his Christmas column, but he does have a point: is it ethical to tamper with or profit from other people’s religious music?

I dunno, but until the Osmonds do an album of Flying Spaghetti Monster music, I don’t feel like I’ve got a dog in this fight.

-

Wanna become a Jew? In New York all you have to do is sleep with Rabbi Leib Tropper. Ugly shiksas need not apply.

-

There’s $2-10 million sitting on the table earmarked for charity, just waiting for Sean Hannity to make good on his promise to raise money for the troops.

But lying liars never make good.

Or do good.

-

PolitiFact said it was the lie of the year, but Sarah Palin’s still bearing false twitness going into the Christmas holiday.

S’OK. In a country where no one ever goes to prison for fraud on an international scale, what’s a few more lies from Alaska’s biggest liar?

-

Matt Taibbi goes, um, Taibbi on David Brooks.

Brooks is a perfect example of the kind of spineless Beltway geek we always see beating the war drum at times like these. It’s because nebbishly little dorks like Brooks and Paul Wolfowitz and David Frum got their books dumped in high school that we end up dropping daisy cutters on Afghan sheep herds and shipping working class American kids halfway around the world to get their nuts blown off.

That’s the kind of Christmas spirit we need more of!

-

So it looks like I’ll be posting live on Christmas day for a change. I promise not to do so without being fully into the spirits of Christmas.

Skøl!

(Nonbelievers, please leave Christmas alone)

In the wake of my little rant about Christmas season irritations yesterday, I was browsing some news blogs and discovered that America’s favorite lovable curmudgeon, Garrison Keillor, had gotten there before me.

The Bard of Wobegon and I don’t see eye-to-eye on most issues, politics foremost among them, but in this column, he got a little exercised, like I did, about the proliferation of Christmas songs that obscure, confuse, or simply out-shout the message of Christ’s birth and its promise of redemption for mankind. The last straw seemed to be a Unitarian “rewriting” of Silent Night, absent any acknowledgment of Jesus. Keillor, displaying some Lutheran vinegar that I thought he’d long abandoned, basically told the pagans, secularists, and their fellow-travelers to shut up and quit meddling with a Christian holy day.

On the other hand, I had to agree with PowerLine’s Scott W. Johnson (who has some interest in Keillor, being from Minnesota) that Keillor stepped over the line in a puzzling preoccupation with Jewish songwriters that missed the point–there are plenty of lousy and/or empty Christmas songs out there from musicians of all ethnic/religious backgrounds, and targeting Jewish composers as somehow responsible for the co-opting of Christmas doesn’t help his plea for more respect of Christian traditions.

There’s nothing especially sinister about reindeer, chestnuts, elves, or mistletoe, and songs about the importance of family ties are certainly appropriate at Christmas, but I’d still like to see a little more balance toward the sacred and away from the commercial. We bend over backward to acknowledge and honor all the other religious traditions and observances–why is it okay to disrespect Christianity?

Well, maybe Garrison and I just need more ketchup in our diet.

Silence is the Enemy campaign image

1. South African lesbians being dragged off the street and  raped – The worst part of all is that in the video found in the link above, citizens are happily admitting their support of rape in order to “correct” these women and “teach them a lesson.” The police and government are not taking this seriously.

One man roared with laughter as he said lesbians should be “whipped”. “There is no mention of lesbians in the bible,” he said.

. . .

They said “women should behave like women” and this was a way of “teaching” them that.

Why is it that whenever there is repulsive female oppression, a reference to the bible isn’t far behind?

2. The Pope (TM) – The Vatican has literally copywritten the Pope. So apparently the likeness and image of Joey Ratz is no longer in the public domain:

The statement seeks to establish and safeguard the name, image and any symbols of the Pope as being expressly for official use of the Holy See unless otherwise authorized.

. . .

Due to this demand, the Vatican has felt it necessary to declare that “it alone has the right to ensure the respect due to the Successors of Peter, and therefore, to protect the figure and personal identity of the Pope from the unauthorized use of his name and/or the papal coat of arms for ends and activities which have little or nothing to do with the Catholic Church.”

So I guess mentioning the fact that it’s a matter of public record that the current Pope conspired to cover-up countless instances of child rape, allowing the rapists to continue to rape and escape prosecution to this very day is a big no-no.

3. Garrison Keillor’s anti-semitic rant – Ironically, he accuses those non-Christians who embrace Christmas of “spiritual piracy and cultural elitism,” apparently oblivious to the holiday’s pagan origins and, you know, the fact that this very rant promotes “cultural elitism.” This just further hits home the point that there’s no such thing as a “War on Christmas,” only a war by fanatical Christians against everyone else’s cultural or religious traditions in order to reinforce their own religious dominance. And the guy seems really, really worked up over this. Dude, there are REAL problems in the world. Non-Christians enjoying the season isn’t a problem; it can hardly even be described as a pet peeve. But I’m not a heartless guy, so I’ll just wish Mr. Keillor a Happy Atheistmas!

4. Mexico City legalizes same-sex marriage – And apparently Uruguay already has legalized civil unions throughout the country, along with several South America nations. Who knew?

5. Clive Thompson of the Washington Post calls anti-vaccination one of the “Worst Ideas of the Decade” – Thompson hits it out of the park, but of course he’s just become the newest target of vitriolic attacks by the anti-vaccine movement. In fact, it’s already started. And by tomorrow, I’m sure Age of Autism will have found some reason to insist he’s a Big Pharma Shill, such as him once living next door to someone who knows someone who works at Merck. And on a related note, the anti-vacine Australian Vaccination Network (or AVN – not to be confused with any other AVN that may hold annual conventions in Las Vegas) and its leader Meryl Dorey are under investigation for misleading the public.

You wouldn’t believe the nastygrams I’m getting from Keillor’s apologists, who think it’s perfectly fine to publish a column in the  Baltimore Sun excoriating “Jewish guys” for writing

“all those lousy holiday songs . . .  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 if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah’?”

Then, again, those who write nastygrams would tend to defend a fellow generator of nastiness, wouldn’t they?

Responses that politely disagree with my position will be posted.  Nasty responses — go post to Garrison Keillor’s blog, where nastiness is welcome.

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 if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah’?”

Anyone capable of writing a column like this doesn’t ‘get’ Christmas — unlike Irving Berlin, who very clearly did.

No ho ho! Down, Donder and Blitzen! Off to Norway
with you! Goddamn Unitarians.

So, Garrison Keillor finds himself at the centre of a controversy!

Some of you may be surprised that the cuddly broadcaster – as close to a UK-style ‘National Treasure’ as America can muster – is at the aye of a furore in an eggnog cup. But we poets, of course, know better. The American poetry world – though I have to say not so much the non-American one – is permanently riven by the controversial cuddliness of Keillor. Just try walking into a Lake Wobegon Days convention sometime and saying to someone: “Have you read August Kleinzahler’s new book?” They probably won’t say yes. (Here in the UK it is Kleinzahler who has the poetry fan-base, and they may well have read it; but they won’t be at a Lake Wobegon convention.)

But this time it isn’t a poetry fracas, and the general idea is that Mr K isn’t being quite so cuddly.

But what’s he done? you ask. What can he have done? Well – according to Galleycat – “In a curmudgeonly essay, author Garrison Keillor* unexpectedly bashed Unitarian and Jewish Christmas song writers.”

Yes, it’s true. He did. And nerds. Though we all know Unitarians and Jewish songwriters are NOT nerds. Though I’d hate to appear to be even a little nerdist.** I’ve checked out the primary source, and it seems that Keillor indeed wrote this in the Baltimore Sun:

Christmas is a Christian holiday – if you’re not in the club, then buzz off. Celebrate Yule instead or dance around in druid robes for the solstice. Go light a big log, go wassailing and falalaing until you fall down, eat figgy pudding until you puke, but don’t mess with the Messiah.

So far, so ecumenical. He’s practically listing all the alternatives, merely omitting to mention things like Hanukkah, Eid, Diwali, Burns Night or indeed any other Festival of Lightsomeness. He compounded it (it seems those nerdy Unitarians have had a bright idea too many) by writing this:

If you don’t believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn “Silent Night” and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough. 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”? No, we didn’t.

So basically, I’m sorry because it’s a bit late, I wish I’d started this earlier. But it is still, just about, Hanukkah. Please consider this – whether you be Jewish, Gentile, Muslim, Hindu or Jedi – your invitation to write the Ultimate Ecumenical Religious Seasonal Carol. Better yet, make that your challenge. Because I’m kind of wishing we did. Only I think we coulda done better.

Make sure you write it about a religion other than your own. And please – no reindeer or other fictional characters allowed. I want Pharisees & cheese, dreidls & fir trees, mangers & doughnuts; casual footwear, religious horned instruments, latkes, Judith & Holofernes; kaftans, angels, angels in kaftans, King Herod, menorahs, fireworks, minarets, and what the hell – some druid holly – the works! In rhyme.

Let’s say the deadline is Christmas Day. If I get any entries, there will be a prize. I have yet to think what it will be but it will be suitably seasonal, if not quite Santa-suit-ably so.

And that’s the news from Baroque Mansions.

* Mom – YOU must click that link! I swear to God.

** though I once summered in a nerdist colony…

PS – As I typed in the tags for this post, after I typed in the word “nerds,” the drop-down menu of suggestions popped up with “graphic designers.” Why, some of my best friends are graphic designers, and many of them are nerdist. There are only six degrees of separation between you and the most liberal-thinking Unitarian alive.

n.b. Hat tip to the Bookseller, whose indispensible daily newsletter was the source of this story.

Did Garrison Keillor, beloved host of NPR’s “A Prairie Home Companion” and author of innumerable faintly schmaltzy books about Norwegians in Minnesota, veer dangerously close to anti-Semitism in a recent essay about Christmas?

“Don’t Mess With Christmas,”  which appeared in the online magazine Slate this week, is a comic argument that “Christmas is a Christian holiday — if you’re not in the club, then buzz off.”

Keillor got worked up after taking part in a Unitarian service in Cambridge, Mass., where he was offended to discover that “Silent Night” had been rewritten “to make it more about silence and night and not so much about God.”

He writes: “If you don’t believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn ‘Silent Night’ and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism and we Christians have stood for it long enough.”

Keillor is explicitly hard on Unitarians, not to mention Ralph Waldo Emerson, former Harvard president Lawrence Summers, and New England elites in general, all in the context of keeping Christmas songs religiously pure. These are easy targets — Unitarians are one of the few groups you can still mock with impunity. And it’s always open season on “elites,” whatever that is.

To his credit — sort of — Keillor doesn’t stop there, but tackles head on the historical fact that many secularizing Christmas songs have been written by Jews (Irving Berlin, Mel Torme, Johnny Marks, etc.):

“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’? No, we didn’t.”

Keillor is a humorist, in some respects the riskiest of all writing disciplines. Humorists always run the danger of being misunderstood — the good ones, anyway. A classic example is Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay, “A Modest Proposal,” with its suggestion the Irish ease their poverty by selling babies for rich people to eat.

Maybe Keillor, like Swift, is overstating a point he does not actually believe — Jews should keep their unworthy hands off our Christmas songs! –to make a larger point: Keep the Christ in Christmas.

Or maybe he’s dead serious. The essay, though written in a sprightly, readable style, has a sharp tang of bitterness. Even if Keillor means to overstate his case for satiric or rhetorical value, the plain thrust of his argument — Christmas is for believing, practicing Christians only –seems to run counter to much of the Christmas spirit.

You know, all that peace on earth, good will to men stuff. Reaction to Keillor’s essay, which you can find at Salon and also at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, GalleyCat and elsewhere, ranges from agreement to accusations of anti-Semitism.

Most, however, are reasoned and funny in themselves, like this one at Salon from pinkoursula: “Hey, if you’re going to nit pick (in the spirit of Christmas), don’t go translating a perfectly lovely German song into English. English speakers need to write their own damn carols. So please, keep your Englische hands off our Stille Nacht!”

This is not the first time Keillor, generally perceived as a doctrinaire liberal, has outraged a group you would think he’d be in sympathy with. A Salon column from 2007, “Stating the Obvious,” defended traditional male-female marriage, indulging in some offensive gay stereotyping in the process. For a scathing and pointed response, see The Stranger website.

Do I think Garrison Keillor is anti-Semitic or homophobic? No, his talent and record earn the benefit of the doubt. But that doesn’t mean he might not be slipping.

The quality of his signature “Lake Wobegon” monologues on “A Prairie Home Companion” has become spotty, at best. More jokey, more anecdotal, less shaped and poignant. Less funny, too. A few months ago I heard one that consisted of fart jokes that wouldn’t pass the taste meter in a Seth Rogen movie.

In some of his columns, and some of his monologues, I can’t help detecting a distinct tone of what might be called “age-related crotchetiness.” He’s been doing “A Prairie Home Companion” for 38 years. That’s a long time to plow one field. I’d get cranky, too.

By Jason Diamond

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’? No, we didn’t. Christmas is a Christian holiday—if you’re not in the club, then buzz off.

-Garrison Keillor quote via Tablet.

Until I read Sarah Vowell’s Radio On: A Listener’s Diary, I worried that I was the only one that harbored a deep dislike for A Prairie Home Companion creator and host, Garrison Keillor. Until I read his comments about Jewish songwriters and Christmas songs, I thought that Ms. Vowell and myself were simply irrational people, and that maybe Keillor isn’t such a bad guy.

Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic is on our team now also.

And I thought I had a bad attitude. In this Christmastide Garrison Keillor tries to pick a fight with the Unitarians.

You’re lucky we’re tolerant, Keillor. If you tried that with the Catholics they would forgive you in such a martyred way that you would know you had just given the Borg more energy with your photon torpedoes. They would be so ‘disappointed’ in you.

But we’re Unitarians. We can take it. We have a sense of humor, really, I can prove it. Here’s a tolerant chuckle for you, Garrison Keillor. Heh, heh.

I’m not bothered. I survived the Mall parking garage without running over one of those ticket robots. I can face anything.

Ferragamo's Cage heel shoe

 Salvador Ferragamo (1898-1960) the eleventh of 14 children, discovered at an early age his passion and talent for designing beautiful shoes.  Born in Italy, he emigrated to the United States and after a short time in Boston, Massachusetts he moved to Southern California, where he quickly became known as ‘Shoemaker to the Stars.’  Some of his clients were Carmen Miranda, Judy Garland, Duchess of Windsor and Eva Peron. His creations were beautiful, but he couldn’t understand why his shoes pleased the eye, but hurt the foot ~ he decided to study anatomy at the University of Southern California. To his credit some of his inventions and designs revolutionized the shoemaking industry.  

What happened to his research? I’ve had pairs and pairs of gorgeous shoes that absolutely hurt my feet.  Was it in the 1950s when Ferragamo invented the metal arch support so that shoes no longer needed ‘toe caps’ to serve as brakes for the feet? Ouch! The 1960s, the decade that I own my first pair of high-heels; before then I wore my mother’s shoes around the house playing dress-up. Clop, clop, the sound I made as I walked across the wood floors in the Victorian Flat we lived, as I struggled to keep my mother’s heels on, while trying to gracefully glide across the room without falling. I tripped a lot.   

Ferragamo shoes

Okay, back to Ferragamo’s research ~ gorgeous shoes that please the eye and don’t hurt the foot. Did he succeed? Perhaps ‘yes,’ perhaps ‘no.’ That dilemma is as strange as the mystery of “why coffee (espresso, pressed or dripped) isn’t as delicious as its aroma is tantalizing?”  Dare to imagine a world so perfect? Let’s try!  

Life is Good!

 Reclining on a red leather ‘corbusier-ish-styled’ sofa – oh so modern, drinking coffee – delicious as its aroma, nibbling on chocolates  – delighting the senses of taste and smell, with feet in the air – wrapped in very sexy, very comfortable, very high-heeled (in this dream) ankle-boots.  

Oh yeah, sexy shoe plus painless feet ~ Life is Good!