Baloney alert!

Keillor.

Last night (Saturday, January 15, 2011) my wife turned on WXXI-FM at 6 p.m.
WXXI is the classical-music radio-station out of Rochester we listen to.
It was time for Garrison Keillor’s (“KEY-ler”) “Prairie Home Companion.”
But it wasn’t Garrison Keillor. It was a guest-host, apparently appointed by Keillor.
“It’s all about the music,” Garrison said.
“What a buncha baloney that is,” my wife said.
She turned the radio back off.
I wasn’t privy to this, as I was taking a nap.
Except I noticed the radio wasn’t on.
But it’s true. It’s not about the music. It’s also Garrison, his gentle offbeat humor. His poking fun at Lutherans and Unitarians, and life on the “frozen tundra.”
Years ago we didn’t listen to Prairie Home Companion; it seemed kind of schmaltzy.
But we gravitated to it. It’s that offbeat humor.
Tub-thumping Conservatives tell me Keillor is of-the-Devil. Just like Barack Obama.
Like, who is the Devil-incarnate anyway, Barack or Garrison?
It’s because Keillor proclaims himself a “liberal” (dread).
Like me, I don’t know as he’s actually “liberal,” but if you’re not avowedly Conservative, the Conservatives loudly badmouth you as “liberal.”
(Cue Rush Limbaugh and goosestepping Ann Coulter.)
“All Liberals should be lined up and shot,” I was once told.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Does that include me?”
But it wasn’t Garrison.
We protest!

• My wife of 43 years is “Linda.” Like me she’s retired, but she worked part-time at the West Bloomfield post-office. She retired as a computer programmer. She no longer works at the post-office.