Garrison Keillor and "A Prairie Home Companion"

[DonaldsRump]

Gosh, how do I miss both!

I am still trying to figure out is Garrison Keillor all that bad? I know there were sexual harassment claims against him in 2017, but what came of that?

I was listening to some old PHC shows online just now, and it reminded me that Garrison was one of the people who had kept me sane over the years. I was lucky enough to see him live around 20 years ago.

Garrison Keillor seems like one of the very good people. I'm I mistaken? If not, I wish he would come back right now.

[Loki Liesmith]

1. Nothing came of the claims.

[sandensea]

2. Hear, hear!

I remember the small - but memorable - contribution he made to Old Man Bush's defeat in 1992, when he told an "anecdote" from Bush's childhood with his famously stingy mother.

His mother, the tale went, looked out of the kitchen window to see young George stealthily sneaking out of a taxi - which he had apparently taken from school.

When he snuck in though the back door, his mother was (of course) waiting for him - and none too pleased at that.

"Read my lips, George," Dorothy scolded him. "No new taxis!"

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. The claims didn't really go anywhere, and I always thought MPR had screwed him.

I've met him, and he seemed so shy and introverted (he has said he is on the autism spectrum) that I can't imagine him being a sex pest, though I know you can't always tell about people. Still, there didn't seem to be a very good reason for what MPR did. I think he kind of got Frankened. The show was never the same without him.

[DonaldsRump]

5. Franken'ed is exactly what I was thinking about

PHC was taken over by Chris Thiele in 2016, changed its name, and is now totally gone.

My late Saturday afternoons growing up were not the same unless I heard "Tishomingo Blues":

[2naSalit]

4. Certainly was a good story teller.

I listened to that show for decades. He was getting a little old for the whole business of hosting a show like that. And musicians I know who have been on the show said that he was difficult to work with because he always wanted to sing and he was not good at it. Mostly musicians who would let him sing with them got booked and after a while, it was the same few over and over again. The guy is in his 80s after all.

I do miss the stories and some of the skits.

[cilla4progress]

6. our family enjoyed him on MPR and

listened to him religiously - along with Car Talk! Tom and Ray. Weren't they the best?

Saw Keillor live in Pullman, WA years ago.

[mitch96]

8. Been there, done that got the Lake Woebegon coffee mug!! Tom and Ray were the best

I would love the part where they diagnosed car problems. I would try to get the DX before they would. Very informative.... and funny.. A person was complaining about the odor of rotten eggs coming from the exhaust. Tom asked if he was using Shell gas. The person said yes.. Well that was the answer!! Shell gas thru a catalytic converter creates..... a "schmell"...... oy.
m

[DonaldsRump]

10. My Saturdays were made

When I listened to Car Talk in the morning and Prairie Home Companion late afternoon/early evening. If I did nothing else, it was still a wonderful day.

Tom and Ray, along with Garrison, were some of the finest radio stars ever. I miss them terribly!

[Midnight Writer]

7. I got a bunch of Lake Woebegone on CDs. Great for road trips. I love those stories.

They are so human.

[no_hypocrisy]

9. I attended an event with GK in Wilkes-Barre, PA in 2002.

We were still reeling from 9/11 and the country was returning to strong political partisanship.

In his soft, sonorous voice, he asked the audience if we could unite together for three minutes, being neither Democrats or Republics, but rather, just Americans and join him in singing (a cappella) America The Beautiful. It was quiet, just our voices singing. And for those three minutes, it worked. We were together. I think we all wanted it badly.

[cilla4progress]

11. Beautiful

story. Thanks.

[betsuni]

12. I've listened to PHC since the '70s when my midwestern mother recorded it every Saturday.

It's funny, I don't like gospel, country or folk music but I enjoy it on his show.

"Leaving Home" is one of my favorite books. Wouldn't change a sentence.

"Sweet corn was our family's weakness. We were prepared to resist atheistic Communism, immoral Hollywood, hard liquor, gambling and dancing, smoking, fornication, but if Satan had come around with sweet corn, we at least would have listened to what he had to sell. ... Sunday after church, when the pot roast was done and the potatoes were boiled and mashed and a pot of water was boiling --only then would Dad run out with a bushel basket and pick thirty ears of corn. We shucked it clean in five seconds per ear and popped it in the pot for a few minutes. A quick prayer, a little butter and salt, and that is as good as it gets.

"When I was little I didn't think of grownups as having bare skin; grownups were made of wool clothing, only kids were bare-naked; now I'm older than they were when I was little and I lie naked under a quilt made of their clothes when they were children. I don't know what makes me think I'm smarter than them. ... Everything they went through, the loneliness, the sadness, the grief, and the tears -- it will all come to us, just as it came to them when we were little and had to reach up to get hold of their hand, when we knew them by the shape of their legs. Aunt Marie had fat little legs, I held her hand one cold day after a blizzard, we climbed snowdrifts to get to the store and buy licorice whips. ... Every tear she wept, that foolish woman, I will weep every one before I'm done and so will you. We're not so smart we can figure out how to avoid pain, and we cannot walk away from the death that we owe."

I don't know the details of what happened with Garrison, but I know he's a romantic, not a perv. He may have fallen in love with someone, or had a crush, but it wasn't pervy.

[Ron Obvious]

13. What happened to him was one of the reasons I fell out of love with Public Radio

He was so quickly deemed to be an "unperson" -- no defence allowed, no other side of the story, his show cancelled never to be mentioned again and the entire archive wiped. And this for a show that had been on the air since 1979.

I always suspected Keillor was never guilty of anything other than possibly bad judgement.

We haven't donated to NPR since (there were many other reasons, such as the enormous dumbing down of the content and stopping the call-in shows). We donated to our local KNKX but stopped that a few weeks ago when meteorologist Cliff Mass was similarly "cancelled" never to be mentioned again after a relatively innocent remark on his personal blog.