End of an era on radio

Elliott became a regular on the show when Keillor moved it to New York for a few years.

Prairie Home Companion’s Garrison Keillor destroys Donald Trump in hilarious open letter

In a scathing open letter to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, author, humorist and Prairie Home Companion ex-host Garrison Keillor said that Trump 2016 is a pathetic last-gasp attempt by the candidate to show up the snooty Manhattan elites who scorned him in the 1980s.

In the essay, published Wednesday afternoon, Keillor took Trump to task for everything from his “Make America great again” hat to his inability to read a teleprompter and scolded the childish businessman for making the U.S. political system into an arena for his petty vendettas and longstanding resentments.

“The cap does not look good on you,” Keillor wrote, “it’s a duffer’s cap, and when you come to the microphone, you look like the warm-up guy, the guy who announces the license number of the car left in the parking lot, doors locked, lights on, motor running. The brim shadows your face, which gives a sinister look, as if you’d come to town to announce the closing of the pulp factory. Your eyes look dead and your scowl does not suggest American greatness so much as American indigestion. Your hair is the wrong color: People don’t want a president to be that shade of blond. You know that now.”

Trump, Keillor said, came from Queens to conquer Manhattan 40 years ago and “you discovered that in entertainment, the press, politics, finance, everywhere you went, you ran into Jews, and they are not like you: Jews didn’t go in for big yachts and a fleet of aircraft — they showed off by way of philanthropy or by raising brilliant offspring. They sympathized with the civil rights movement.”

To Trump, he wrote, people of color weren’t so much people as a threat to property values, a menace to be litigated around, not an equal part of humanity worthy of celebrating.

Even so, the magnate hungered for approval from Manhattan’s elite, said Keillor, yearned for “Mike Bloomberg to invite you to dinner at his townhouse” and for the New York Times to run “a three-part story about you, that you meditate and are a passionate kayaker and collect 14th-century Islamic mosaics.”

“Running for president is your last bid for the respect of Manhattan,” Keillor said. “If you were to win election, they couldn’t ridicule you anymore. They could be horrified, but there is nothing ridiculous about being Leader of the Free World.”

All of this is going wrong, now, for Trump. Keillor said that the former reality TV star is finding the discipline needed to run for office to be beyond his grasp.

“The teleprompter is not your friend,” he said to Trump. “You are in the old tradition of locker room ranting and big honkers in the steam room, sitting naked, talking man talk, griping about the goons and ginks and lousy workmanship and the uppity broads and the great lays and how you vanquished your enemies at the bank.”

That may have flown in the Republican primary, but this kind of retrograde thinking is anathema to today’s voting public. Trump’s fans, however, are embracing the nominee’s inflexibility, even as it drags him lower and lower in the polls.

“You are losing,” Keillor said, “and so are they but they love you for it.”

“Meanwhile, you keep plugging away,” he concluded. “It’s the hardest work you’ve ever done. You walk out in the white cap and you rant for an hour about stuff that means nothing and the fans scream and wave their signs and you wish you could level with them for once and say one true thing: I love you to death and when this is over I will have nothing that I want.”



https://www.rawstory.com/2016/09/prairie-home-companions-garrison-keillor-destroys-donald-trump-in-hilarious-open-letter/

Wow.   I'm pretty much speechless at that one.  Have been reading Keillor's opinion pieces about Trump all along, and of course one realizes right off that he hates the guy, but this one's positively....can't even think of the accurate descriptor.   I can practically see the spittle flying.  

All I can add is another wow. But I certainly wouldn't consider it hilarious.

Bob wrote:This one especially goes out to RealLindaL.   It was the highlight of last night's show for me.   I fell in love with this song when I first heard the Everlys do it 1960.

Priceless!!!

Garrison has an appearance scheduled at the Saenger Theater this month.

Trump Has Me Searching For A New Religion  by Garrison Keillor 


And so the Boy President heads for Washington to be sworn into office, pumping his fist, mooning the media, giving the stinky finger to whomever irks him, doing his end-zone dance, promising to build the wall, cut taxes, create jobs, provide great health insurance for EVERYONE and send his son-in-law to the Middle East to solve that little problem, and the rest of us will sit in a barn and keep ourselves warm and hide our heads under our wings, poor things. Discouraging.


So I’ve been shopping around for a new religion to see me through the next four years. Too many of my fellow Christians voted for selfishness and for degradation of the beautiful world God created. I guess they figured that by the time the planet was a smoky wasteland, they’d be nice and comfy in heaven, so wotthehell. Anyhow, I’m looking around for other options.


Buddhism involves way too much sitting still for my taste; the Dalai Lama basically says, “Be gentle. Listen to the universe. Live in the moment. Let happiness flow through you.” And I think to myself, “This man has never had children.” Hinduism includes sacred cows, and my experience with cattle makes it impossible for me to revere them; they are stubborn and stupid, and letting them wander loose in the streets — why? Prime rib is their proper destiny.


Islam is great and so is Judaism but they’re so complicated! You can’t just walk into a temple and listen to a holy person and burst into tears and throw yourself down on the floor, as you can with Christianity, and say, “I believe!” and get dunked in water and, shazam, you’re in.
And spirituality is no go for me, like what you read about in books with sentences like “Creativity is the journey of channeling connectedness and realizing the potentiality of being.” Don’t want that. I want a religion.


At the moment, Zoroastrianism is looking good to me. Compared with other religions, it feels comfortable, something a guy could get used to. (It has nothing to do with the masked adventure hero Zorro, by the way. Or his ass.) Zoroastrians believe in one Great Almighty Spirit of Good who is in combat against evil forces, and Goodness prevails in the end. There is no self-flagellation or staring at the sun or snake-handling. In the afterlife, you will basically reap what you sowed in life. If you were industrious, generous and kind, you’ll be okay, and if you lied and cheated and didn’t pay your bills and plastered your name on big buildings, beware.


If I embraced it, I’d be one of the few Zoroastrians in Minnesota and I could start my own First Reformed Zoroastrian temple and pretty much write my own ticket. This is a huge advantage over the old system of adopting the religion of your forefathers. My parents were Bible-believing Christians, but I don’t get the parable where the latecomers get the same pay as the early birds and also the part about lust in your heart being the same as committing adultery itself: Where did that come from? A Christian who believes in those things is not going to be a happy person.


My religion would be a gentle faith that believed in the sacredness of leisure. Napping as a form of prayer. You worship the Lord by sitting on the porch and sipping iced tea and dozing off over a good book. Baseball is part of Reformed 


Zoroastrianism, and the number three, and Ferris wheels and deep-fried cheese curds. A tolerant religion, but it would come down hard on tailgaters and the writers of technical manuals and people who butt in when you’re busy working. “I’m sorry to disturb you,” they say. Well, then don’t, okay?


But then I stop and think about all the work involved in starting up a religion and deciding on dogma and having mystical visions, and proclaiming the truth to people who don’t care, and dealing with the oddballs and misfits who’d be attracted to the thing, and I think, “No way.”


So I am left with Confucianism, accepting the sacredness of confusion. Life is messy and it always has been. We work hard to earn money, we neglect our health and then we pay the money to restore our health, meanwhile we forgot how to enjoy life, so what good is health anyway, and now 80,000 people in three states have elected a president who can’t focus on anything for more than a couple of sentences and who contradicts himself every other day. So it goes. Have mercy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-has-me-searching-for-a-new-religion/2017/01/17/361d575e-dcf0-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html

Clever and on point -- Keillor characteristics.  Thanks for posting.  Wonder if this one will show up in the PNJ or not.

Meanwhile really miss him on PHC and have all but stopped listening to it, as it's nowhere near the same with Chris Thile.   Bet the show's ratings are way down.