Keillor winds himself into a tizzy

My friend asked me to blog ths one, which was e-mailed to her by someone she knows and I don't. I read the piece and understand her anguish over it. Garrison Keillor makes Father Garvey seem a voice of sweet reason by comparison.

The problem is that Keillor doesn't say anything. I mocked Father Garvey's straying from his original point; Keillor doesn't have an original point to stray from. To take his words at face value, the height of the recent Republican party was Richard Nixon, which tells you either what he thinks of the Republican Pary or what he thinks of Nixon. (I've been wondering when the Democrats would resurrect and adopt Nixon; he's really one of them: he imposed wage and price controls; he opened relations with China; he negotiated with the Soviet Union; he cut and run from Vietnam What's to dislike? Unless it's the Watergate break-in, and a lot of today's Leftists don't think the law should interfere with their accomplishing their objectives.)

Anyway, Keillor's piece is too much of a soft pitch to bother with: a string of unstrung metaphors, cliches and stereotypes that serve more to show the writer's state of mind than any reality outside himself. The crowning irony, though, is this:

The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we’re deaf, dumb and dangerous.

preceding this:

This is a great country, and it wasn’t made so by angry people. (emphasis in original)

Take a few deep breaths, Mr. Keillor, or maybe a long walk. You used to be funny; now you're so angry you're sad.