Garrison Keillor the next victim of Dixie Chicking?

[jdsmith]

This is a followup to an earlier thread on his latest book. Take a look at the chat at the _Prairie Home Companion_ site: some people are signing up to chat just so they can slam him for daring to be liberal.

http://prairiehome.forum.publicradio.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/15/1510213

[mac56]

1. I'm not worried at all about Garrison Keillor.

He can give back as good as he gets, and then some.

[Taylor Mason Powell]

2. I'd love to see them try!!

Garrison Keillor is an incredibly beloved and popular entertainer all across middle America. Sure, so are the Dixie Chicks, but he's a lot smarter and funnier than the Dixie Chicks (although to their credit, I think they handled the flap pretty well).

The Dixie Chicks thing didn't end up hurting their careers all that much either - as I recall, their album still went to number one even after the controversy.

Let's put it this way - I bet Mr. Keillor isn't losing any sleep. "Bring it on!"

[TrogL]

4. I bought a Dixie Chicks album

and I hate country.

[Taylor Mason Powell]

9. I'm not a huge country fan...

but I've always found the Chicks more tolerable than most. I think they're pretty talented!

[chiburb]

3. From an earlier thread:

At one time, the Republicans were the party of idealists and independent thinkers, the party of Lincoln and Mark Twain, but that party has been bought out by a gang of radio preachers and aluminum-siding salesmen who have demagogued us to death on taxes and school prayer and flag burning and homosexuality, and they have beaten us and given us Reaganomics and run the country into hock up to the hubcaps and thereby succeeded in practically immobilizing government.... We Democrats believe in government as a necessary force for good. Republicans did too, at one time, but now they have become nihilists in plaid pants, the party of the embittered rich who believe that they can trash this country for the rest of us and build themselves a comfortable walled compound somewhere upwind of the paper mill and send their kids to ivy-covered schools and buy the best medical care and dump their sewage in the river and to hell with everybody downstream.
Garrison Keillor, Washington Post, June 1996,

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. I love the Prairie Home Companion :^)

[KittyWampus]

6. Garrison Keillor Is The Embodiment Of American Values

neighborly, good sense of humor. Aprreciative of the little guy.

His Lake Wobegon is every little town across America... with families we all know and recognize.

Whatever partisanship that appears in his humor is strictly poplist and people friendly.

Harassing Garrison Keillor is kind of like harassing Mr. Rogers.

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

7. I didn't know he had a book out.

I don't get Praire Home Companion, but I do get his brief radio spots on poetry , and he also writes a column for The Lutheran magazine (I guess he's a Lutheran..ELCA variety).

I can see him being sort of indirectly political from what I recal of the PHC that I did hear, as he's sort of lightly parodying rural midwestern life. But nothing too heavy, really.

So, he's become more overt in his politics, huh?

Actually I'm suprised that he would have any fans amoung the rigth wing.

[CBHagman]

14. Oh, honey, he's been in the political fray for years.

Several years ago on "A Prairie Home Companion," Keillor observed that if you were a wealthy person in America, people simply couldn't do enough for you. In other words, privilege begets more privilege. And he's right, judging by the perks received by the wealthiest at a time when average workers are having theirs cut.

Keillor's show also features impressions of famous people, and any reference to/imitation of GWB is inevitably quite wicked.

Then there's the song "We're All Republicans Now" (meant ironically), which has been featured several times. And who else would feature Tom Paxton singing "Shut Up and Drink Your Arsenic"?

If I'm not mistaken, Keillor was one of the famous people who made a donation to the Clinton Legal Defense Fund. I don't think there's been much doubt as to Keillor's political stance.

[osaMABUSh]

8. You know what? The repukes time has run out they ain't

Dixie Chicking anybody else.

Even if they tried I don't think they could keep up with the volume.

[brook]

10. Agreed.

The Repubs have reached the point where all they do is take away from the table. Sadly, they contribute nothing, save bile.Perhaps when the hunger really sets in, they'll be ready for a sweeter, truthful side of life.

[qb]

11. If they start giving him grief, he'll just work it into a PHC program...

make them look like fools, and have the audience rolling in the aisles. They'll wish they'd never opened their mouth.

[StClone]

12. I just bought his new book "Home Grown"

He puts his life in words while mounting a scathing attack on the Right.

A warning to Ditto-wankers: Garrison puts the current Republican thought where it belongs in the two holer with plenty of Sears-Roebuck pages.

[dsewell]

13. GK is the Mark Twain of our age

Like Mark Twain, he's a humorist and a storyteller with his roots deep in the popular culture of his society. Like Mark Twain, he is capable of speaking truth to power with keenly sharp satire. Our ultra-Republican friends who are shocked, shocked to hear Keillor attacking the right wing should perhaps be reminded that American-as-apple-pie Mark Twain was an unabashed freethinker who took on various forms of religious fundamentalism and theocracy over the course of his career, and whose indictment of colonialism remains one of the most powerful ever written.