Garrison Keillor? D'oh!!!!!!!!!!!!

Accompanying Garrison Keillor's inaugural column in the SJ-R this morning was an interview with the public broadcasting legend in which he explains his intent to stay away from political issues that are already over punditcized. Instead, he wants to lighten up the editorial page with some of his prairie home humor. After reading his column, I immediately harkened back to a Simpson's episode in which a distraught Homer, whose channel surfing stranded him on a PBS member station that was showing a Keillor program, began violently pounding the side of the television set while desperately exhorting it to "BE FUNNIER!!!!"

I realize that humor is subjective and that many find Keillor's warmly intoned musings, well, humorous. I used to catch his program on WUIS from time to time and I'll admit that he can spin an amusing yarn. Whether his shtick can translate to print is another story.

Keillor plays the "kindly old gentleman" act to the hilt, dispensing his Wobegone-concocted wisdom in dollops that drip slow like molasses. But recently I've heard him say some pretty nasty, almost hateful things about people who reside on the other side of the ideological lake. Of course he made these comments while preaching to the progressives over the public broadcasting airwaves. It will be interesting to see if he measures his comments more carefully now that he is reaching a broader audience.

He chose, in his first column, to take a curious position on gay marriage. Curious in the respect that I can't figure out exactly what he is saying, but he clearly isn't coming out strongly in support of it. It's a surprising admission from a lefty, although the late Paul Wellstone, who was on the furthest reaches of the political left and of whom Keillor is an acolyte, also surprised his liberal base by voting in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act.

It's likely that Keillor will end up carrying the torch for the Air America crowd more often than not. And that's fine. He is on the OP-ED page and he can't wax nostalgic about fresh strawberries every week. I hope.