Good news, America! You no longer have to pay Garrison Keillor to sneer at you. After his 30-city “America the Beautiful” tour, the Prairie Home Companion radio host is retiring for good (and good riddance). His tour should have been called “America the Liberal.”
Keillor is a malicious parasite who spent his career soaking up federal funding through NPR while wrapping his off-the-shelf anti-American leftism in a cloying Midwestern folksiness.
So, if you’re not one of Keillor’s 4 million listeners worldwide, count yourself lucky, and enjoy these top five ridiculous quotes from the man himself.
- In 2012, Keillor mocked Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, saying, “The Republican primaries go on – great fun – the Mormon running against the polygamist.” Keillor, like Gingrich, has been married three times.
- In 2008, Keillor ridiculed “the roar of hollow patriotism” on Memorial Day, attacking the motorcyclists – many of them veterans – in the “Rolling Thunder” parade. “They are grown men playing soldier,” he said, “making a great hullaballoo without exposing themselves to danger, other than getting drunk and falling off a bike.” Keillor never served in the military, and that sure doesn’t sound like homespun heartland wisdom.
- In 2009, he ranted about Republicans and conservatives, declaring that they should be “cut out of the health-care system entirely … Thirty-two percent of the population identifies with the GOP, and if we cut off health care to them, we could probably pay off the deficit in short order.” Let’s think about the backlash if he had said anything but “GOP.”
- In 2013, the NPR personality tweeted that “According to the Earth Day Network, Earth Day is celebrated – observed in some form by a billion people every year.” Really, Keillor? That’s almost twice the population of North America. But maybe folksy exaggeration is part of the charm of Lake Wobegon denizens.
- In 2009, Time asked Keillor about the role that public radio plays in America. Keillor responded: “Its role is to talk to people who are stuck in traffic. And conservatives become incensed enough listening to public radio that it keeps them awake so they don't drive into a fire hydrant. That's what we do: we save the lives of thousands of right-wingers every year. And they never thank us for it.”
Well, Garrison, we’re thanking you now. That is, thank you for leaving.
