Wobegone Is Me

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63. Keillor's no bigot

..so, your latest attempt to paint anyone with any discouraging word about LGBT individuals as bigoted and anti-gay is a big fail here, as well.

First of all, the 'wardrobe' line is a joke; not meant, perhaps, for the humor-deficient. Secondly, his remark about the opposition to marry wasn't his best attempt at humor, but it's a harmless way of saying that adversity can actually strengthen relationships, in the end.

And your shallow interpretation of his remarks about Christmas suggest you haven't the depth of reasoning to understand viewpoints other than your own - yet you so regularly castigate others for disparaging yours.

By the way. Keillor is as sardonic about himself, perhaps more, than he jokes about the lives of others. This isn't hatred or bigotry, it's gentle humor aimed at folks who take their lives way too seriously. It's satire of the viewpoint of an old stick-in-the-mud like himself, for gawd's sake. You're supposed to groan, holler, and throw things at him, like you would a sardonic parent bemoaning kids today. It's a perfect opportunity he provides to take your own stand and hold your own views as superior. It's self-effacing - second-rate comedy at worst - because he fully realizes his liberal audience is actively judging his outdated perspective by their own enlightenment.

He's a supporter of gay marriage and an opponent of measures to ban the right of gays and lesbians to marry in his state.

...the well-known liberal talks about why he decided to wade into the marriage amendment debate, as a high-profile opponent of the ballot measure that would in effect ban gay marriage in Minnesota. “Love trumps government, and government should not stand in the way of people who love each other,” he tells KSTP.

http://bringmethenews.com/2012/09/19/interview-keillor-on-the-future-of-his-show-gay-marriage-debate/

Garrison Keillor issued an apology for the “misunderstanding” he created in a column, an apparently “tongue in cheek” look at parenting and the good old days.

Keillor:

March 17, 2007 |

Ordinarily I don't like to use this space to talk about my newspaper column but the most recent column aroused such angry reactions that I thought I should reply. The column was done tongue-in-cheek, always a risky thing, and was meant to be funny, another risky thing these days, and two sentences about gay people lit a fire in some readers and sent them racing to their computers to fire off some jagged e-mails. That's okay. But the underlying cause of the trouble is rather simple.

I live in a small world — the world of entertainment, musicians, writers — in which gayness is as common as having brown eyes. Ever since I was in college, gay men and women have been friends, associates, heroes, adversaries, and in that small world, we talk openly and we kid each other and think nothing of it. But in the larger world, gayness is controversial. In almost every state, gay marriage would be voted down if put on a ballot. Gay men and women have been targeted by the right wing as a hot-button issue. And so gay people out in the larger world feel besieged to some degree. In the small world I live in, they feel accepted and cherished as individuals, but in the larger world they may feel like Types. My column spoke as we would speak in my small world and it was read by people in the larger world and thus the misunderstanding. And for that, I am sorry. Gay people who set out to be parents can be just as good parents as anybody else, and they know that, and so do I.