A Series of Tubes

Garrison Keillor is a radio personality on NPR that writes and stars in A Prairie Home Companion, who recently wrote something controversial.  For background purposes: He is an episcopalian, and former Lutheran.  His show is “family friendly” in that it does not discuss weighty or controversial topics with any seriousness, and the music featured on his show is usually bluegrass, folk, country, or hymnal.  The image below probably best describes why Keillor is a radio and not a Television personality:

Garrison Keillor recently wrote an opinion article in which he wished everyone a Merry Christmas and got into a bit of trouble for it.  Now why would he be in trouble for wishing people a Merry Christmas you might ask?  Well it was probably because he said Merry Christmas after penning a big F U to Unitarians, Jews, and anyone else that even thinks about participating in the Holidays from a non conservative Christian perspective:

“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.

Christmas is a Christian holiday — if you’re not in the club, then buzz off.”

The full article can be read here.

Garrison Keillor’s show on NPR is quite popular, and having a popular personality ranting about Jews and Unitarians can have a corrosive effect –specifically it make listeners feel free to express and act upon their own bigotries.  I firmly believe in freedom of speech, so I think everyone should be allowed to spew whatever venomous and irrational fears they have, I just don’t think Garrison Keillor is telling the truth when he ends his article with “Merry Christmas, my dears”.

So should Garrison Keillor’s tirade against all those who believe in Jesus less than him bother people?  I’ll go with no.  His show is wildly popular with a specific crowd, seen in the background when he speaks in the video below, which include older generations and their grandparents:

His influence on younger generations is inconsequential meaning that his audience is literally dying off.  His ability to influence a demographic that will have little influence in the future gives me hope.  I really want NPR to release an official response so that I could tell if they distance themselves from his writing, or if they defend it (and thus which demographic they are targeting the most.

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Of all the responses I’ve read so far I think Debbie Schlussel’s is the funniest.  It’s funny not because she was trying to be funny however.  She mostly has a point that Garrison Keillor was being an insensitive  ass, but at the end she says “this isn’t a Christan-on-Jew attack, but rather a Marxist-posing-as-a-Christian-on-Jew attack.”  How she got from what Garrison Keillor said to Marxism can only be uncoded after one learns the following:

Debbie Schlussel is a conservative (her about page talks about her following being similar to Ann Coulter’s and how she has appeared on the O’Reilley actor).  Most conservatives will help hoist the defense of Christmas flag that Garrison Keillor is raising, but Debbie is a Conservative Jew.  Conservatives are known for lumping all their fears into one basket, hence peace protesters often get labeled as hippie, communist, anti-American, Atheist, Muslim, jobless, gun hating, Gay, Demon worshipers.  This tactic of demonizing ones enemy is how Garrison Keillor gets called a Marxist.

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Garrison Keillor apparently doesn’t like Gay people too: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/03/14/keillor/