Garrison Keillor--get off the goddamn radio!

The BBQ Pit
1

Although I was never interested myself, in the interst of fairness I’ll blindly concede that Garrison Keillor was, way back then, not a complete waste of airwaves, wood pulp, and bytes.

“Hey, there’s this guy–he’s homespun, funny, intelligent, and entertaining.”

OK, whatever, I thought. But now I can’t be neutral, because this guy is everywhere when he ought to be nowhere:

Why is NPR so Keillor-dependent? His “Writer’s Alamanac,” where he blandly pluh-pluhs over the greats of Western lit, is absolutely fucking intolerable! Just when I’m getting a dose of real info from the BBC and the local Indy affiliate, this pompous old fool comes on and tells me the year that Samual Clemens, aka Mark Twain, got potty-trained.

Who made Keillor the grand old man of literature, anyway? He has never written anything of substance himself, has he? Yet he’s treated like he carries the torch of civilization. It’s total bullshit. I could stand it if he brought an original perspective or even personal opinion to the enterprise, but no–it’s all, “Here’s your canon, children; be respectful.”

The radio goes OFF when “Writer’s Almanac” comes on.

Of course, that “show” is just a tiny fraction of Keillor’s NPR damage. Fortunately, I don’t usually listen on the weekend, but that’s when Keillor trots out his tired old Lake Woebegone bullshit. And he does ads for this crap in which he’s so obviously convinced that his creation is a cultural touchstone: “And we’ll also be talking about a little town called Lake Somethingorother.”

There are also promos on NPR for Keillor’s appearances in Indy. Look, give me Odyssey, All Things Considered, News and Notes, Marketplace, Fresh Aire, and the News–what the heck, even the Classical Connection–that’s your product, NPR. Keillor is just a dollop of shit in the wine cask.

Keillor also does regular damage to Salon through assorted columns and features of no substance whatsoever. Worse, he had his “Mr. Blue” advice column there for years, which I found totally inscrutable. Was this an attempt at humor? The “advice” usually seemed tongue-in-cheek and condescending, and always self-aggrandizing. Carey Tennis, for all his faults, including occasional attempts to turn his column into “literature,” genuinely seems interested in helping people.

In sum, Keillor is a has-been that never really was. He has leveraged some minor pop culture successes into a Lefty Media sinecure. I guess it comes down to having the correct image and politics.

I’m a lefty myself, but I prefer my lefty media free of pompous-ass bullshit. Garrison Keillor, fuck off!

2

I find him pretty annoying too. But I suspect you have it backward on the “writer’s almanac” thing. I don’t think NPR sat around (there’s an image) going, Who can we anoint as the Grand Old Man of Literature? It must be teh Keillor!" Rather, he probly floated the idea, they shrugged, and people liked it. Or at least haven’t expressed enough not-liking to get it yanked. If NPR had developed the idea and then made a search for the perfect “host,” I doubt they would have picked him. So I just kind of take it for what it is–for whatever it is–and not as some kind of dictation from on high on who I’m supposed to worship, literarywise. Sometimes it’s interesting, sometimes it’s not. But though Keillor does annoy me, the writer’s almanac doesn’t piss me off or anything. And PHC is a kind of pleasant, blathery, white-noise background for weekend puttering. Now you wanna talk about WAY past it’s prime, radio-out-the-window infuriatingly annoying? Did somebody mention “Whaddya Know?”

3

Hey, lissener, my buddy, I haven’t had a chance to tell you this, but I’m WAY glad you’re back on the boards. You’re my favorite poster. Seriously. Anyhow:

Self-annointed, yeah, I can totally buy that. You see my point about the Lefty Media sinecure, though? Any society or subsegment thereof will always have its Undeservings, and Keillor is a prime example. There are many out there who could add more to NPR than he. Of course, overall NPR is a object lesson in rent-taking and missed opportunities, but…

It would fit in better on Weekend NPR, which, as you put it, is pretty much “white noise.” But why is it sandwiched in among the serious programming meats? If it were just a minute or so (quite long enough for a bit of fluff), that were one thing. But that fucker is long!

Nope, can’t do it. I not only reject his hostmanship, or leadership, or whatever, but also the whole concept behind the program. My studies of poetry have led me to believe that we are missing and underappreciating vast swathes of good literature of the past, while “brands” like Twain, Dickens, Shakespeare (good as they are) get highly disproportionate attention. This is an undesirable part of human nature (attend to one thing 100% and forget the rest) that we need to fight. Meanwhile, Keillor aggrandizes himself via the brand names
just as chick mags aggrandize themselves by harping on the same clothing brands and Jen, Jen, Jen. Fuck that. (The opposite phenomenon at work on Writer’s Almanac and similar things is the larding of the material with enough obscurities to prove the creator’s erudition, but the brand-harping is the main thrust.

Actually, I don’t see the interest. A bunch of dates. “On this day Virginia Woolfe got married to her fourth husband…” It’s celeb worship for geeks.

Correct, my friend, but in the meanwhile someone with something really to say is not getting heard. That’s fucked.

Umm, garbage of the 1st order.

I appreciate your comments. We’ve got to talk about Showgirls sometime soon. I saw it for the first time but in a crappy, edited form. I need to get the widescreen special edition, or whatever. I lean toward your opinion that it’s overall a pretty cool flick. But more on that in the future.

4

I kinda like PHC, in the same way that I kinda like an old grandparent that I hardly know but who always has some crazy story to tell me.

I can think of a few others at NPR more deserving of the gulags. Like Carl "Loose Denturess"Casssle and that baseball-worshipping potato head Frank Deford. Every time he finishes his spiel they have to remind me that Frank Deford is a senior contributing Cheese Doodle at Sports Illustrated because most people are wondering “Who the fuck is this guy and who pays attention to baseball anymore?”

Or how about Tom and Ray Magliozzi, a.k.a. Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers? Thye do a good service by educating average NPR listeners about the workings under their hoods, but I wish they’d spend as much time talking about cars as they do laughing at their own tired jokes. And don’t drive like my brother! Maybe just have them spend a weekend or two in stocks.

5

His appeal is his radio persona and the quality of his voice as much as anything else. Kind of like Lawrence Welk for yuppies. :slight_smile: IIRC he left the show in the 80s partly because he was just tired of it. The ratings tanked. It was reincarnated with him in 1990. Blame the listeners and pledgers. He’s there because he brings them in. The money has to come from somewhere, plus Keillor won’t do it for free.

The truly great are the easiest to get people interested in, but even that’s very, very hard. What sort of success do you think you’ll have with lesser lights? You’re seeing it.

But because of the limits of people’s time and attention (including me and you), that will always be the case for everyone. What’s your point?

6

I think all t.v/radio hosts ought to take sabbaticals every year or two. Dave Berry used to be hilarious. I’m glad he retired when he did.

Keillor was interesting back when his material was new and fresh. Now it’s beyond stale and it’s just a matter of time before the mold sets in.

Oh, and I love Fresh Air, too, but Terry Gross is in desperate need of a break. She was so embittered over the last election that she lost her trademark sense of humor. I think a little time off would do wonders for her.

7

One of the reasons these shows are still on is because I am an Arbitron household, and I like all the shows you guys are dumping on. I put 'em all in my diary. Heh heh; it’s good to be old.

8

Agree 100 percent! Here we only have one classical music station, and the infernal Writer’s Alamanac comes on every morning just when I’m enjoying the music.

He used to be funny, but no more and on top of the inane list of birthdays or anniversaries, his choice of “poetry” is the last straw.
Well, actually the last straw is the damned background music that hasn’t changed in a century or so.

At the very first note, down goes the volume or on goes the mute button.

9

That is a very apt description.

I guess you could argue that all of NPR’s weekend garbage is there for a similar reason. It is all pretty unlistenable to me. In contrast, the weekday programming is pretty good. Something doesn’t make sense here. I think NPR does news and news-y stuff pretty well but is lazy and incompetent when it comes to fluff and entertainment. Perhaps the audience is to blame, too.

Allow me to explain. Shakespeare is an A+ writer, no doubt about it. But Pericles, Timon of Athens, Cymbeline, etc., are grade-C plays. Ben Jonson is a B+ writer, but Volpone is, in my estimation, the second-best play in English (after Hamlet. And critics do recognize Volpone as a great play; this isn’t just me being a contrarian). But the brand impulse in human nature says, “Hey, when it comes to English literature, let’s celebrate the best–Shakespeare–and forget the rest!” So Shakespeare’s grade-C plays get read and performed because they’re Shakespeare’s, while Jonson’s masterpieces are ignored.

We identify with people and make them our brands, and our overall appreciation of literature suffers. I say, don’t make people the axis, make the great works–one by one–the axis of analysis and appreciation. So it’s not about “lesser lights”; it’s about the best that mankind has produced.

10

Oh yeah.

You know, there are various types of egotist; it is wrong to hate them all. In fact, in our culture, we love the balls-out arrogant bastard who says, “I’m great, and here’s what I got,” while achieving just that. (For some reason McMahon of the '85 Bears comes to mind.) Why? Because there is no hidden agenda, and the egotism is limited to the explicit agenda.

Among the less lovable types, there is the smug actor or musician who feigns humility but leaks self-love from every pore. Many of Hollywood’s finest are this way. But at least such people love themselves for what they themselves have accomplished.

The worst kind of egotist, however, is the Keillor type: One who builds his/her ego upon the accomplishments of others, in addition to any of his/her own. When Keillor is ready that shitty poetry, it is as if he is reading his own works! “Oh, I’m reading these classics, I’m wallowing in them, have great knowledge of them, and am a part of them.” It all comes across as being about his own douchebag self.

And that’s how his fucking Salon advice column always came across to me: Not about escaping one’s own self truly to see and feel the problems of others from their perspective (and later returning to oneself to access one’s store of wisdom, or the world’s), but using the foibles of others as a springboard for one’s own mental masturbation.

I guess I gotta say that he makes me thoroughly sick.

Yeah, wtf?!

If only we could program our radios. I get no “Ah hah!” joy when I turn it off; I’m genuinely annoyed and stressed to hear it come on.

11

I have agreed, in varying degrees, with pretty much everything that’s been said so far in this thread, so I have nothing further to add.

Except, I HATE Frank Deford to a really, really unhealthy degree. Nothing Garrison Keillor or any of the other weekend lame-o’s could EVER do me what Frank Deford does. I spend six days a week dreading Wednesday. Seven, actually; as soon as his bit is over, the dread starts building again for the next go around. He needs to have his “commentary” juried on a case by case basis, just like everybody else. This weekly commitment is doing NOBODY any good. He mostly just has nothing to say, but now that he’s got a slot to fill, we all get to hear him say it. I have destroyed whole villages after hearing one of his fictional “character” dialogues, done in funny voices. He’s got a lot to answer for.

12

Sounds like a putz, but when does this guy come on? I can’t ever recall hearing him on WFYI in Indy.

13

First, a moment of accuracy: neither Writer’s Almanac nor A Prairie Home Companion are produced by NPR. They’re produced by American Public Media, a division of Minnesota Public Radio. Lots of NPR member stations license and run WA and PHC, paying American Public Media to do so, because, well, lots of NPR listeners pledge money to keep those shows on their stations.

That said, I enjoyed Keillor back in the '80s, when his shtick hadn’t been worn down to sub-nubness. He doesn’t bug me, but I haven’t actually listened to an episode of APHC for years (although I can still sing the damn Powder Milk Biscuits song), and I don’t seem to catch Writer’s Almanac when it airs here.

14

[pounds radio] Stupid radio! Be more funny!

15

I’ve been working at an NPR affiliate station going on 5 years. PHC is one of its most popular programs; the people just eat it up. Me, I’ve never heard it. I make the promos for it and put them on the air, but nothing I’ve ever heard on a promo inspired me to want to listen to the show. Actually, it’s on right now. That kind of entertainment doesn’t appeal to me, so it’s almost as if Keillor doesn’t exist for me. I hadn’t heard of that other feature mentioned until I read this thread… it isn’t heard in these parts. Anyway, why work up a sweat hatin’ the guy? Just don’t listen to him.

16

Oh and–

–thanks. Quite a burden :wink: , but still nice to hear. I try, but I don’t always come off the way I think I do, so it’s encouraging to know that that’s not always the case.

17

So I’m guessing that nobody here is going to be camping out to get tickets for the first showing of Prairie Home Companion: the Movie then?

I can take or leave Keillor. Most of my negative reaction to him is that the brother of a good friend (I know- cousin’s nephew’s father-in-law’s barber’s brother, but I do know the person) was a writer on his show and says that he is an absolutely dreadful and abusive person to the people who work for him. He has mentioned his extremely high turnover of writers, but he blames it on the low wages he can pay compared to television or other venues.

18

He’s a regular weekly commentator, wednesdays, on Morning Edition. He’s a “senior editor”* as Sports Illustrated, so all of his commentary are sports-illustrated.

*Judging from Frank Deford, I assume “senior editor” means “crazy old coot we stuck in his own office in another wing so he’ll quit bothering the other people who are trying to work.” He’s probably an uncle or a grandfather of a real editor or something, and he probably got named “senior editor” and fobbed off on NPR (in exchange for huge endowment no doubt) after people got tired of him interrupting meetings with “Who wants to hear my limerick about the hockey strike?”

19

Fits the image I have of him: egotistical, self-centered asshole.

20

I could give two shits about pro sports, so maybe I just tune him out. Also, “Morning Edition” is one of the lamer shows on NPR overall, now that I think about it.

Re Terry Gross, I think she’s good at what she does and Deserving, but perhaps she does need a break. I know I need a break from the Bush Regime myself.