Garrison Keillor's Blog, page 80

Trumpology is your old uncle with better lighting

“Maniacal” is not a word you care to hear about the president of the United States, especially not from his close adviser. Previously, “maniacal” was reserved for the Joker, Doctor Doom, Dr. No, Lex Luthor, and the boy fuehrer of North Korea, but there it was, uttered by Stephen Bannon to the conservatives congregated in Washington — “maniacally focused” — which tells you why Mr. Bannon is not allowed out very often: he would scare the bejabbers out of the good Republican voters in the Midwest. He is a Crusader and out here in flat country, where we don’t have huge boulders to hide behind, we try to get along with the neighbors.

Read the full column at the Denver Post’s site →

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Donald Trump’s tremendous Sermon on the Mount

The Lord is my shepherd. OK? Totally. Big league. He is a tremendous shepherd. The best. No comparison. I know more than most people about herding sheep. And that’s why I won the election in a landslide and it’s why my company is doing very very well. Because He said, “I’m with you, Donald. You will never want.”

Read the full column at the Denver Post’s site →

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Strangers meeting in a snowstorm in Vermont

I flew into Boston in a snowstorm Sunday, coming in low over little white houses in the gray murk, and my connecting flight to Vermont was canceled, so I rented a car and set out into the storm. I had told Vermont I’d be there and once you start canceling things, where do you stop?

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What Mark Twain killed, Donald Trump has revived

The Constitution does not allow 13-year-olds to become president and after last week we can see why. The Boy President proudly holding his latest executive order up for the cameras, to show that he knows right-side-up from upside-down. Bringing his Supreme Court nominee onstage (“So was that a surprise? Was it?”) Hanging up on the prime minister of Australia. His homage to Frederick Douglass (“someone who’s done an amazing job”) for Black History Month. Twittering about the “so-called judge” who stopped the Muslim travel ban. Pictured in full smirk at the National Prayer Breakfast, preening, bloviating (“In towns all across our land, it’s plain to see what we easily forget — so easily we forget this, that the quality of our lives is not defined by our material success, but by our spiritual success”) on a scale of bloviation equal to Warren G. Harding and the great gasbags of the 19th century. You think, let the man be president but please don’t put him in charge of the Weather Service or Amtrak or the TSA.

Read the full column at the Denver Post’s site →

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Republicans, the nation looks to you

What we know so far is that the man is who he is. There is no larger, finer man inside him trying to get out. Everyone who is paying attention knows this. Flags flying at the Capitol, the U.S. Marine Band, gray eminences in black coats, and He Who Is Smarter than Those With Intelligence delivers 16 minutes of hooey and horse hockey about corrupt politicians betraying the people, and American carnage, and patriotism healing our divisions, though the division is mainly about Himself and love of country does not necessarily make people stupid.

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Trump has me searching for a new religion

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.

Read the full column at the Washington Post’s site →

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Hanging out down South

I’ve been down in South Carolina and Georgia, an old Northern liberal in red states, enjoying a climate like April in January and the hospitality of gracious, soft-spoken people, many of whom voted for He Who Does Not Need Intelligence, but they didn’t bring it up, so neither did I.

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Idealists can’t win

Back when I was 16 and an idealist, I decided that our church youth group — I was president — should sit and listen to Handel’s oratorio “Messiah” and have a spiritual experience, so I brought my LP and sat everyone down in a circle and talked about how wonderful it was and set the needle down on the vinyl.

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The decline of small talk and common experiences

A man says to me, “How do you like that car?”

I’m standing by a little green Kia.

“It’s not mine, it’s a rental,” I say.

I’m in the town of Okeechobee, Fla., parked on the main drag in front of Nutmeg’s Cafe.

“Where you from?” he says.

“Minnesota.”

“I hear they just got more snow up there.”

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Christmas lives on

It is hard to believe that the Creator of our universe with its billions of galaxies could have sent Himself to this little blue blip not so long ago in the form of an infant born to a virgin, to be first worshiped by illiterate shepherds where He lay in a feed trough, livestock peering down at Him, Eastern potentates following a star to the site. But here we are again, singing those songs, so we shall see.

Read the full column at the Washington Post’s site →

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