Blinded by hatred of Bush, The Humorist from Lake Wobegon lashes out at the Commander-in-Chief and takes cheap shots at our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, on a day we Americans honor our fallen heroes.
Abusing a national holiday simply to vilify a president and put down our armed forces on a day designed to honor them, is the cheapest of shots, befitting only the lunatic fringe.
But not beneath humorist-turned-pundit Garrison Keillor. His conspicuous wrath surfaces in his syndicated Memorial Day 2007 column rather sardonically titled, “A day that still means something.”
For him it means to politicize. Gary Keillor, his name before the literary affectation, views die Welt through the ooze of partisan politics, thus to engage in his favorite sport — Bush-bashing and berating all breathing Republicans, plus a few dead ones.
Putting down Memorial Day and all it honors is simply a vehicle.
The Time-cover humorist is a shill for the far left-wing of his beloved party. He exudes a seething animus for “Rs,” same as the DNC’s Howard Dean, only in snippy juvenile prose.
Politicizing even a revered holiday, giving it an intensely partisan edge, strikes me as a new postmodernist low. Memorial Day is marred by “wooden rituals and leaden speeches,” a smug Keillor writes disapprovingly. One speech by “an admiral with a chest full of ribbons.” Ribbons! (Keillor has not even the ubiquitous Good Conduct Medal. He did not serve in the military.)
Noble sacrifices of “our young [sic] men and women,” he writes, are not rooted — as one might think — in Love of Country, Honor, or Duty, but in “the ignobility of their leadership.” Got Keillor’s dark message here?
His target is not only his stated “. . . politicians and generals” but also his hate object, his voodoo doll, the Commander-in-Chief. Unwilling to name him, Keillor refers to President George W. Bush only as the Current Occupant.
The Humorist’s hatred is aimed also at Republicans, all of them. They are “freelance racists” and “Christians of convenience” in his book, Homegrown Democrat (2004), which I reviewed here. GOPers are “evil, very evil.” The devil, you say? Close. Try heathens and swine. In a 1999 interview Keillor said:
Republicans might be heathens out to destroy all we [sic] hold dear, but that doesn’t mean we take them seriously. Or be bitter because they are swine.
— The Guardian
Infusing Memorial Day with partisan politics is emblematic of the tactics of the blame-Amerika-first mob of heavy-breathing leftists: Vilify and above all, demonize those who disagree with you. Brand them devils, and war-mongers. Demagoguery sinks to new lows.
Presidential wannabe John Edwards touts Memorial Day as one fine day to be set aside for war protests. Liberal MSM did not much report on that creepy notion, but it’s all true, I swear.
Senator Edwards soon withdrew his wacky idea, caving to common sense and American sensibilities. The Humorist in Minnesota didn’t get the memo.
No slacker, Senator Edwards also suggested the on-going “war on terror” — his quotation marks, often duplicated by liberal MSM and academia — is not a war at all, rather a fool’s errand, a political wedge deal. War? What war?
Ask the forensics experts still scraping minuscule human body parts from New York City’s pavement for DNA analysis. Ask the survivors of 9/11, the USS Cole. Go tell it to the U.S. Marines in Iraq.
Liberal leftists in Congress are deeply invested in the failure of the surge, and of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Perhaps to hell with Afghanistan, too, if it suits their political purposes to win in ‘08. Anything now goes on the toothless Left: Rooting for one’s blood-sworn enemies to win, in effect, is from the Theater of the Absurd.
The last “Good War” was World War II, Keillor writes, expressing an article of faith on the far left. Calling it the last just war might just assuage their consciences, and expiate long-repressed guilt. Cheap-shot anti-war sloganeering and striking poses for peace take one only so far. Then, it's look-in-the-mirror time.
“This beautiful holiday,” writes Keillor, is “gutted” by “poor rhetoric” and “dishonesty.” There you have it, folks. "Leaden speeches" of mere “ribbon-bedecked admirals” and proud local VFW and American Legion post orators. Not Lincolnesque enough, or Shakespearian. How do you spell humorist jerk?
“Dishonesty“ is a bum rap, but the mantra now of the unhinged mob, howling in unison, “Bush lied!” Media joins in the fun. Facts don’t matter to the mob, their torches held high, chasing their self-created faux monster up a darkened mountain, yelling “liar, liar.”
“Simply NOT true,” The Humorist goes on, that men and women in uniform “did their duty and died in defense of their country.” Got that? They died for Nothing at All, or took horrible wounds. In another day, Axis Sally or Tokyo Rose couldn’t have phrased it better to smashmouth FDR and demoralize our military. The shame of The Humorist's statement is bottomless.
Is there any hope for ivory tower leftists not yet mugged by reality?
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I watched a TV interview of Keillor a while back. I was struck by his conviction.
Not the brand one admires, but the kind possessed by of a lot of intellectual hermits.
I learned he shuts himself off from the news and didn't do research to back up his positions and claims as presented in his recent book.
He remined me as one of his characters - a crotchety "I know what I know, what am I gonna do with a bunch of facts?" type. He probably considers himself more earthy than intellectual, though either way, he appears to be incapable or unwilling of examining himself and his beliefs.
Comment by nick adams | June 12, 2007
It takes intellectual honesty and a fair amount of moral and physical courage to be a conservative in the American sense. Garrison Keilor possess neither of those traits. He may be an artist of some sort and that is all he will probably be known as.
Comment by Dean | June 12, 2007