Garrison Keillor...new soldier fighting the "War on Christmas"?

[S_E_Fudd]

Pretty uncharacteristic for Keillor...unecessarily harsh and intolerent...next thing you know he will be popping up on the Bill O'Lielly show!!!

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/garrison_keillor/2009/12/15/cambridge/


Rebuttal from Rev. Small here...


http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/154156.shtml

[LastNaturalist]

1. Well I always support the troops. I don't see why that should change in this war!

[Winterblues]

17. Did you support the troops that did the Mai Lei (sp) massacre or the one's that torture?

While I support our military I do not support War...EVER.. and I do not just blindly support the troops no matter what. If they commit atrocities then I want them prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law.

[LastNaturalist]

23. Do you understand "irony?"

[Brickbat]

2. Keillor is a crankypants who is trying to cash in on a shtick that was tired 10 years ago.

Why anyone treats him as a sage is beyond me.

[S_E_Fudd]

3. I've always been a fan of his...

And continued to be until I saw this...

[LastNaturalist]

4. I disagree. I find him far more preferable to Olbermann, Maddow, or Ed Schultz.

Talk about being cranky. These three never stop bitching. Nothing is ever good enough.

[Brickbat]

5. I liked his early stuff. But his Deep Thoughts are tiresome.

[TwilightGardener]

6. I always think of him as a Midwesterner first, liberal second.

There's a limit to his tolerance. Midwesterners don't like messing with tradition and religion, in my experience. We're not the cutting edge out here.

[gratuitous]

7. NYEEEEEOOOOOOWWWWW!!!!

{The sound of the point going completely over someone's head; there is no cure.}

[S_E_Fudd]

10. Care to elaborate?...nt

[gratuitous]

12. No, if you don't get it, you don't get it

Nothing to be ashamed of; for example, I keep seeing Dane Cook on Comedy Central for some reason.

[kestrel91316]

19. You have to actually listen to Keillor, frequently, and follow the riffs he goes off on

repeatedly, to get this. It's his own personal style of satire, or SOMETHING.

He's NOT actually attacking Unitarians, lol. He is sort of mocking the stodgy Lutheran types who think Unitarians are the devil's spawn.

He kas a keen wit that lesser minds might miss.

[krabigirl]

25. Meh, I disagree.

[murray hill farm]

8. Oh......

he's right! It is a Christian holiday! If the rest of us want to take part in it, we should respect it..even if we are not Christians.

[krabigirl]

24. Well, it's not really, but ok.

[supernova]

9. Garrison is Lutheran

so it stands to reason that he's crowing a little bit about tradition here. (Would be very surprised if Struggle4Progress doesn't comment here.) ;-)

Church People don't get any crankier over any church subject more than music. Preachers can come and go. Choir directors come and go. But don't you dare change the music. And carols are sacrosanct. :P

You can call Jesus a hippy, say that John the Baptist was a delusional homeless man in need of meds, but don't you DARE TOUCH THE MUSIC!!!!

I think Garrison needs to go to another service so that he can get his carol fill before he explodes. :P

[S_E_Fudd]

11. Ironically...Silent Night has gone through numerous revisions...

Through history...the version he wants to protect is a revision...celebrating a holiday whose date was decided on to keep the pagans in line...

[supernova]

16. If it's the version you grew up with

then that's the *permanent* version. ;-)

[FlaGatorJD]

13. My read is that his tongue was tucked firmly in cheek!

You folks need to lighten up a little, and by the way, Happy Holidays.

PS-His books on being a Democrat are fantastic.

[S_E_Fudd]

14. I don't think so...

I read Keillor's columsn regularly, listen to his show weekly. I grew up in Minnesota in the same tradition he did. This article had a harsher more intolerent feel than his others.

It is obvious from reactions that many did not take it as tongue in cheek...including many unitarians who it has been my experience have an excellent sense of humor, particularly about their faith...

[kestrel91316]

20. Exactly. His wit is rather sharp, but I think Christians with a bee up their butt

are on the receiving end of it here, as usual.

[krabigirl]

22. I don't think so.

[S_E_Fudd]

15. Interesting reactions here...

http://www.uuworld.org/blogs/web/2009_12_13_archive.php?fs

[BurtWorm]

18. He may have been hitting the sauce before deadline time.

:hangover:

[krabigirl]

21. Yuck...

I don't take offense as a UU, but what an idiot. I can't stand those kind of talk radio shows anyway..they bore me to tears.

[JoDog]

26. Wanna talk about "spiritual piracy"?

Then Garrison needs to talk to the Jews, whose religion Christianity is an addendum to. Then, chat up some pagans and discover how all those nice symbols of Christmas (the tree, Santa himself, the reindeer, the date itself, etc.) have associations with the Solstice. When he's done there, he should really talk to some historians about how if there was a Jesus, he certainly was not born in the dead of winter (We get that from a reading of the Bible itself. Shepherds in the ancient Middle East kept their flocks in paddocks on winter nights, not in the fields.)

As for the songs, no gentile has written a cute jingle for Jewish high holy days because we don't want them. Jews wrote Christmas music because there was business in it. Christians seem to have some need of dressing up the miracles of their faith with albums full of earworms. Don't blame us if we don't have the same desire.