I’ve never found Keillor funny, or amusing, or even particularly interesting.
He has made a career out of sounding like what a not particularly sharp pseudo-intellectual thinks that they should laugh at.
Over the years, he has gotten even more eccentrically uninteresting, and it has culminated in an OP/ED in (where else) The Washington Post, where among other things, he lambastes the Democratic Party for even considering making a Muslim black man DNC chair: (No direct link, as a statement of my disapproval)
In a recent editorial for the Washington Post, Keillor expounds on his general loss of faith in the American electorate, from the Republicans who protest-voted for a heart attack-inducing whoopee cushion of a president, to the Democrats wandering lost in the woods.
It’s the written equivalent of a temper tantrum, and specifically saves a few clumsy jabs for Minnesota’s own Keith Ellison.
“A lackluster black Muslim congressman from Minneapolis is a leading candidate for chair of the Democratic National Committee, the person who will need to connect with disaffected workers in Youngstown and Pittsburgh,” Keillor writes. “Why not a ballet dancer or a Buddhist monk?”
Why not indeed? As long as that hypothetical ballet-dancing monk isn’t a Wall Street puppet, a job-outsourcing trust fund-made billionaire, or anything else that old-school Rust Belt Democrats should actually be concerned about?
Ellison has been racking up powerful endorsements since announcing his bid for DNC chair last month, and notably owns the support of the AFL-CIO, which represents some 12 million union workers across the country.
Ellison’s record of working for working people is solid: He’s tried to make union organizing a civil right, introduced legislation to tax Wall Street financial transactions, and has steadily opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
What Keillor really seems to be saying, with fly-by innuendo, is that the hardscrabble, socially conservative blue-collar Democrats so plentiful beyond the liberal oasis of Minneapolis won’t get behind Ellison for the simple reason that he’s black, and a Muslim.
No, Keillor is saying that HE. “Won’t get behind Ellison for the simple reason that HE’s black, and a Muslim.”
He’s also saying that he people who work with their hands, and on their feet, are stupid, and cannot see past the color of his skin and how he prays, despite the fact that they voted for a black guy with a Muslim first and middle name in 2012 and 2106.
Please Garrison, just shut the f%$# up.