We're discussing this Slate piece over at Pam's House Blend and this is how I feel on Mr. Keillor and the piece in question:

As a non-Lutheran, non-Scandinavian queer female Minnesotan I'm completely tired of Keillor's Lake Wobegon franchise as I feel he perpetuates stereotypes that are no longer true about my homestate. In this piece of writing, (bad) satire or not, it seems like he's going off on another of his rants about how things were done (right) in his day. He's living in another world.

Even if he is trying to write this to show how outdated prejudiced views of homosexuality/blended families are I think he fails as I have read this piece over and over and it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth and does not accomplish whatever goal he had in mind.

Most of us in the Twin Cities have noticed that his writing has become more and more the whining of a crotchedy old man pining for the good ol' days.

oh man. you know, it's almost worth it though just to read a hilarious dan savage post. ALMOST.

Someone (maybe me?) should send him a copy of "The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap" by Stephanie Coontz.

Someone (maybe me?) should send him a copy of "The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap" by Stephanie Coontz.

Nothing like those bigoted midwest values

I hope you don't assume all of us midwesterns have bigoted values....cause not all of us are that dense.

Garrison Keillor is a guilty pleasure of mine (though...over time, it's become more and more tedious.) But even as a fan, that article completely floored me. Ugh - and to think, folks that write into my hometown paper like to complain that he doesn't share my town's values!

Barf. He always got on my nerves, and now I know why.

He once did a column about Thanksgiving being the perfect holiday, because "you just sit down to it."

Spoken like someone who's never had to make the creamed onions.

After reading the entire piece, I suspect that it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, however badly it was presented. Keillor has stated in the past that he supports marriage equality, although he also said that he doesn't think it should trump other issues, such as economic justice.

Sarcasm, Janet. I'm from Iowa and went to school in Missouri, and believe me I'm well aware that not all midwesterners are bigots.

keshmeshi is right - Garrison Keillor does a lot of this kind of tongue-in-cheek stuff - which isn't to say that he does this well at all in this piece or created anything entertaining or interesting, but still, presenting this as an example of bigoted opinion is overly simplistic. Garrison tends to lean liberal.

i don't know - i used to really like garrison's work, and i don't think he ever presented the stereotyped midwestern good ol' days in a way you can take seriously - but he's definitely lost something in the last 4 years or so. more sad than a case for outrage.

Garrison Keillor was poking fun at those who yearn for the old days when everyone looked the same, worshipped the same, had sex the same,etc. He's also mocking the incredibly-behind-the-times pictures of homosexuality and step-families often held by these same people.

It's a joke. But perhaps not done very well as so many didn't seem to get it.

Garrison should read the book "The Evening Crowd at Kirmser's" about an underground queer bar in St. Paul in the 1940s...yep, the Minnesota of his memories

There is the theory that Garrison Keillor was completely ironic but suffered from the comedians dilemma: People think his criticisms of society are mere jokes too. There´s actually a whole book on the issue: The Comedian As Confidence Man: Studies in Irony Fatigue by Will Kaufman .

The danger here, to me, is that whether Mr. Keillor's representation of "the way it was" is intended as a joke or not, it might become "the way it was" as represented in our collective memory; in other words, even though it wasn't necessarily that way, and/or he may intend it to be some sort of (weak) satire or humor, people will come to believe that it was true. Robert Frost built an illustrious reputation writing poetry about a New England that never existed (the guy was born in California, moved to New England and failed at farming twice!). But most people believe that he is describing some actual long-ago place, and it's tough to overcome that misperception. I hope that doesn't happen with Mr. Keillor, but the situation doesn't look good.

"It's a joke. But perhaps not done very well as so many didn't seem to get it."

Well said. I'm not a huge fan of GK, but I do know he loves literature, and he's a writer and a storyteller who is interested in human beings' complexities, relationships, and ways of being in the world. He plays with stereotypes, but listen to him read one of his stories; he is very much interested in people as individuals and not people as stereotypes.

I hope that before you all condemn Garrison Keillor as an Ann Coulter-esque homophobe, you take the time to read my defense of his column that I wrote up at Bilerico. While you might not like his show, that doesn't make him a raging homophobe.

And we don't need the classist and classless Dan Savage speaking for the entire GLBT community. Good sex column on his part, but the whole "Fly-Over Country should just disappear" mentality that he pushes isn't helping anything. (Like remember how just after the 2004 election he said that we should treat America like an archipelago of cities and never venture out of them? Yeah, some of us live out there and and value the work of Dean's 50-State Plan that doesn't leave us behind.)

I have to take issue with Syllogizer's statement: Robert Frost built an illustrious reputation writing poetry about a New England that never existed (the guy was born in California, moved to New England and failed at farming twice!).

Robert Frost moved to New Englad when he was 11 years old. He lived there (save 3 years in england) until he died, at 88. That's 74 years in New England. It seems to me that if one could be qualified to write poetry about an area, a lifetime living there would count.

I haven't read every one of his poems, but I have read fair amount, and I always felt that they described the New England I grew up in, and I wasn't born until well after he died. Those feelings are not simply a nostalgic look at my childhood either; as a child his poetry spoke to me of the world around me.

I find it hard to believe how much emotional energy has been expended over this. *He's not attacking us!* He's poking gentle fun at those who do.

Must we enforce the use of sarcasm / irony / snark etc. tags in all posts to avoid these stupid flame-wars? Some of the comments I've seen (like over at Dan Savages) remind me of the "Ditto, Rush!" pilling-on we expect at winger blogs.

Not a GK fan? Fine. Roll your eyes and move along. If you're more than mildly irritated, you might want to check the calibration of your sensitivity levels and emotional firewalls.

Sheesh! Let's save our righteous ire for actual foes.

I pretty much agree with the last comment. Feministing seems to muster outrage after outrage at the most trivial things - a KFC sign that doesn't even exist, a Garrison Keillor column that's insufficiently self-flagellating to please gays (even as the man has been a vocal and prominent and effective advocate for liberal-left causes for years), and even a schoolyard snark by a 10-year-old girl, for Chrissakes!

Stop jousting at windmills, and get some perspective.

1. there was no "outrage" over the KFC sign-- a question as to whether or not it was real, and the discovery that it was not.
2. being an "effective advocate for liberal-left causes" does not get you a free pass to be homophobic and hateful of gay families. never did, never will. be as left-leaning as you like, the minute you let your prejudice show, you're going to catch shit for it.

PZ Meyers was pissed at Keillor too. But PZ, being who he is, was skewering Keillor's hints that that ol' time religion actually was a good an comforting thing that has been dilluted.