Bob is embarrassed by the prize. He’s from Minnesota, he has a conscience. He has written a few good love songs and some memorable phrases and the Swedes have embraced him as if he were Homer, which he is not. WaPo linkKeillor doesn't really write much about Trump and Minnesota -- instead he focusses on Iowa:
Mr. Trump is well-liked in Iowa. Des Moines would be a good place for him to show off his governing skills. He could deport the migrant workers who are employed in the slaughterhouses and he could get Iowa teenagers to take their place, bonking* hogs in the forehead and cutting their throats and gutting and skinning them.Well, Mr. Woebegotten -- are you saying that the children are all above average, or just that the women are Hillary-strong?
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*To bonk, verb, tr.; not to be confused with to boink, verb, transitive.
16 comments:
How many pigs has Garrision Keillor slaughtered? Has he even once spoken ill of Rosie O'Donnell?
Have you noticed how some people mellow as they age? While others began as mellow (sounding) and harshened over time. What we have here is a serious case of displaced anger.
You see, *strikes a professorial pose* we're supposed to have for ourselves a representative government. That is our birthright. A government that reflects our image with fidelity. Not the other way around. As you know our country is based on rejection of overlordship. Over time what we've allowed so that we can carry out our business trusting our representatives are doing just that, is the reverse, our representatives have carved out for themselves a separate class floating above their constituency and demanding their subjects reflect their image. This is the reverse of the truth of our nation. We have the reverse of the design of our system. Now people have awakened to this situation and have made it very clear through election cycles that situation will be reversed and corrected. Now, change is hard and people are upset. Their apple cart is upset. Their projections are dimmed. Their realities have become uncertain. Things are ruined for them. As they slowly realize their new reality and resist its implementation. We see quite clearly the force bringing about this needed change is not going away. It will not be suppressed. Cannot be suppressed. Change is nigh. That tectonic change is already well primed and activated. Behold, the great awakening and the seizing back of power.
Should Hillary be elected her government will be met with nothing but resistance. It will be pure refined misery for her.
Network media has spent their credibility. They are splayed in open vivisection. Known for what they are. Nobody listens to them anymore.
If nothing less then this election, the Trump phenomena, is one gigantic "FUCK YOU" to both of our main political parties. And that's shocking. Because that soured attitude is permanent.
Lake Woeful guy begone! Your sentiment is returned to you tenfold.
Keillor sounds embarrassed and frustrated that Dylan's not going along with this. They could be having a big presentation party now and Bob could have his picture taken with Obama and Gore, and since Keillor has endorsed Hillary she would have been invited too. It would have been great for the loony Lutheran but not for Dylan. I don't blame him for ignoring them.
I never saw what was supposed to be so clever about him.
Keillor.
PS Shouldn't it be De Minnemis?
Chip, Great, insightful, comment.
Does Iowa even need migrant workers? To do what? Pick corn? Soybeans? I'm sure there are orchards in Iowa but it's not orchard farm country. That's even if you accept Keillor's conflation of illegals with migrants.
As usual, there is some truth in what Keillor said, while he makes erroneous statements and avoids the larger point:
Trump is well liked in Iowa.
Migrants are employed to work in the slaughterhouses of Des Moines as they are in the turkey processing facilities in our area. Many of the church sponsored Karen people who've come here legally from refugee camps in Thailand found their first jobs in meat processing plants, where they were shown what to do with little English required. None of them were here illegally and none would be deported by Trump.
When it comes to finding responsible people willing to work in the meat processing plants, teenagers are not the group employ for that joy no matter how above average they appear.
This Keillor is like a slightly older and less adipose Michael Moore. But publicly funded rather than using slave-wage earners. A long time ago he had a good idea and he's been flogging it into the ground ever since on the taxpayer's dime. He doesn't even like the people he's been pretending to represent all these years. Feels he's above them now, all those cow-bonking hicks, but he's called upon by the media to speak on their behalf, explain them. So he does so, bringing his new "worldly" bias to the explanation and perpetuating all the fictions that the media holds so dear about rural small-town America. Nasty old fart.
This sad hack talking down Bob Dylan. Ugh. I'm not even a big Dylan fan but I get that his music reverberates with a lot of people.
Amartel, "adipose." Love it!
...teenagers are not the group employ for that joy no matter how above average they appear.
As boink and bonk are different, joy should not be confused with job. That was a typo.
My brother worked his way through college in the 70's carrying sides of beef from the processing facility to the trucks, where they were heaved onto hooks in the trailers. He worked the night shift and the pay was $17 an hour at that time, which was considered exorbitant, though he said every cent was earned the hard way. Pay, and they will come.
I KNEW someone would key off the cow-bonking.
I grew up rural and did field work all summer until I was about 15 and old enough to get a town job. We kids all worked illegally at first because children were not supposed to work so about once or twice a summer we'd get the sign to casually head for the woods because an inspector had shown up. Pretty sure the inspectors back then just looked the other way. I never slaughtered any farm animals but there were hog farms and cattle ranches in the area along with the milk cow herds. We used to get half a cow once a year, chopped up into steaks, and freeze it. I go back there now and the smaller time animal husbandry operations have all died out though there are still lots of orchards and grain and other crops in the fields.
Give Keillor a break. He just had to fill copy.
His show might be repetitive. But to listen to that low, calm voice and all those colorful anecdotes on a dark, cold Sunday night - he could tell the same story over and over and over again and it would never be any less reassuring.
He's just a story-teller. (Much like Dylan). You take him way too seriously.
I think 60% of Keillor's appeal is all in the prosody. Pitch, pacing and voice.
30% is the entertaining tidbits he throws into his stories, and the clever and unexpected way they're framed.
No one goes to him for politics. He's from Minnesota. He's liberal, and proud of it. That's how they are.
I don't understand how people get this way. Clint Eastwood is a halfway decent director. No one denigrates his work due to his strange politics. (Which include attempts to get his point across by cussing at a chair).
What you complain about is not even the worst thing wrong with the essay. He's bitching about the Mark Twain prize for humor. Twain was a satirist in the best of the American tradition. As Will Ferrel said when he won it, it's an art. Why not? Tragedy/"drama" is seen that way. Naming the prize for Twain is the best way to elevate comedy as an art form.
Keillor's just a grouchy guy. You can't hold it against him. He's always been. He leaves the warmth for his show.
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