First, we read a well-written smackdown of Garrison Keillor by an anonymous Stribber; second an equally brilliant commentary by TwinCitiesJim; third, a sensible, informed, and succinct presentation on housing values, complete with chart--and then there’s Vlad’s
This “persecuted conservative underground†schtick has been out of date since around 1980.
If that’s a joke, “T’aint funny, McGee!†A shtik is a gimmick of sorts, a running gag that identifies a comic and usually gets a chuckle from an audience: Jack Benny taking several minutes to get to his safe and never growing older than 39. It ain’t funny to experience the smug blindness of journalists, like the folks at CNN who blamed “vested interests†for criticism of the questions in the CNN debate fiasco. It ain’t funny that few newspaper staffers are conservatives nor that most run-of-the-paper columnists--the ones who write columns on news pages, not op-eds or sports--are liberal. The Strib has one conservative columnist. How many columnists at the paper are liberal? How many conservative columnists does the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have? My local newspaper has one conservative staffer who gets to write a conservative column of minimal bite, perhaps once every three months. The rest of the time, which is nearly every day, local lefty staffers get to write columns that chew into conservatives or conservative beliefs and practices.
News reports often betray liberal presumptions and attitudes that conservatives properly question. A newspaper where I worked ran an article Wednesday by Joe Garofoli, five days after it appeared in his San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/11/23/MNJNTG272.DTL “Iraq war is hell on the bottom line at the box office,” the headline in both papers claimed. Garofoli quoted two members of Iraq Veterans Against the War for his story and likely a third person quoted is a member of that group, too: a member of the Green Party, she took part in an enviro demonstration in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. They tried and failed, I think, to explain why people weren’t interested in Iraq war films. I cannot explain why the people who flocked to Michael Moore films didn’t buy tickets to the recent crop of preachy anti-war films, but I have a clue as to why many conservatives snubbed Robert Redford’s opus and are cool to Brian DePalma’s work. The article didn’t even hint at conservatives’ dislike for the films’ content and messages, nor did it so much as infer that the movies sent messages, secular sermons preached to people who will never lunch at a Hollywood table.
Keller does not understand the press, blogs, which he discusses to some extent, the government, or the responsibilities of the press. Keller/Keillor. Could they be related?
He saw an opportunity to make lots of dough from taxpayer funded public broadcasting and its Democratic supporters in congress, sheltered from the accountability that comes from working in the competitive marketplace, and Lord only knows what promises made in the exchange. Now, as for decades, it’s the taxpayers left holding the bag.
Gee, if you’re going to throw out accusations like that, you might consider stopping to get your facts straight. Of course, that wouldn’t support your smarmy criticism of Garrison Keillor and public broadcasting.
In fact, a good chunk of MPR/APM’s income derives from—brace yourself—syndication of the Peabody award-winng “A Prairie Home Companion,” including—brace yourself again—the sale of related goods. O Capitalism, my Capitalism! How free market and conservative! Adam Smith would be proud.
Public broadcasting “sheltered from the accountability that comes from working in the competitive marketplace”? Hardly. Start by reading MRP/APM’s 2006 financial report, cited above. Then maybe check out its IRS Form 990 on http://www.guidestar.org. Then think before your writing inflammatory nonsense like, “and Lord only knows what promises made in the exchange.”
From the MPR website:
1987
With funding from the Blandin Foundation, Minnesota Public Radio creates a news unit dedicated to covering the people and issues of rural Minnesota. Minnesota Public Radio creates Greenspring Company to oversee for-profit operations, including Rivertown Trading Company (catalog sales), MNN Radio Networks (commercial radio) and Minnesota Monthly Publications (magazine publishing).
Of course we KNOW that Garrison Keillor would never stoop so low as to be involved in a for profit company! I am also certain that he in no way benefited from the sale of Rivertown Trading Company for 120+ million dollars in 1997 even though a lot of it’s value was based on his show.
Gee, if you’re going to throw out accusations like that, you might consider stopping to get your facts straight. Of course, that wouldn’t support your smarmy criticism of Garrison Keillor and public broadcasting.
True. Our smarmy criticism of Garrison Keillor and public broadcasting is not borne out by the financial records. It’s supported by the fact that Keillor sucks. Sucks hard. Stings the taste buds like a sour lemon.
Granted he’s not the only one. It would be a fun to have a Michael Savage diatribe minced and patched into a Garrison Keillor rant, and try to guess which horny old curmudgeon was which.
In fact, a good chunk of MPR/APM’s income derives from—brace yourself—syndication of the Peabody award-winng “A Prairie Home Companion,†including—brace yourself again—the sale of related goods.
Syndicated to other public broadcasting companies…
Public broadcasting “sheltered from the accountability that comes from working in the competitive marketplaceâ€? Hardly. Start by reading MRP/APM’s 2006 financial report, cited above. Then maybe check out its IRS Form 990 on http://www.guidestar.org. Then think before your writing inflammatory nonsense like, “and Lord only knows what promises made in the exchange.â€
Then go read the Arbitron ratings, and go back a few years, and find some for-profit station that pulled the low numbers public radio does, year after year, without a format change.
The other issue with the public broadcasting debacle is that so many of the actual outlets are operated by colleges and universities. Those stations are supported by the budgets of the schools which recieve money from both the students and the taxpayers.
Nope, there is no way I can be convinced that public broadcasting isn’t an attack on the treasury.
Gee, if you’re going to throw out accusations like that, you might consider stopping to get your facts straight. Of course, that wouldn’t support your smarmy criticism of Garrison Keillor and public broadcasting.
In fact, a good chunk of MPR/APM’s income derives from—brace yourself—syndication of the Peabody award-winng “A Prairie Home Companion,” including—brace yourself again—the sale of related goods. O Capitalism, my Capitalism! How free market and conservative! Adam Smith would be proud.
Howzabout this straight fact? How much is 10% of $65 million? Are you here to tell us that 6.5 million taxpayer dollars to support one Minnesota radio network is not substantial? Are you here to tell us that MPR would survive just hunky-dory without taxpayer dollars in the free market? Man, the hubris of you liberals is mindblowing.
I’ll bet there are a few radio station general managers out there who would love to have that $6.5 million. But they don’t get it. If they can’t survive in the marketplace, they go out of business. Not so, MPR. They just go feed at the government trough.
And I noticed you have your figures all in a row when it comes to the percentage of funds that come from taxpayers. Why the ambiguity when it comes to your citation of the “power” of Prairie Home Companion? How much is a “good chunk”? How many dollars? What percentage of MPR’s operating revenue?
Soaking the taxpayer for radio and TV broadcasting is an antiquated idea that does not serve the public interest. If the programming is good, it should be able to be innovative, light on its feet, flexible, and responsive to the market. Then it can survive without tax dollars.
If the programming is not good, why the hell should we take it for granted that our tax dollars are to be confiscated to support programming that has so little public interest, it cannot survive in the marketplace like every other broadcaster?
* To Mary Guntzel, from 1965 to 1976. The couple has one son, Jason, born in 1969.
* To Ulla Skaerved (a former exchange student from Denmark whom he famously re-encountered at a high school reunion), from 1985 to 1990. Keillor is mildly notorious for having left his long-time lover and PHC producer Margaret Moos to marry Skaerved.
* His current wife, violinist Jenny Lind Nilsson (b. 1958), from his hometown of Anoka, whom he married in 1995. They have one daughter, Maia, born in 1998.
oh! heavens!! as an old-school First Assistant Director once told me, “Nepotism begins at home.”:
-The man’s name is Jason Keillor; he’s stage manager for his dad’s famous show. Jason is about as tall as Garrison, and nearly as low key. He plays piano pretty well, but when Ringsak suggests he might one day take over his dad’s show, he balks. His interest is mainly in the technical aspect of things, he says.
Note: Since this article was written, Jason Keillor, Tiffany Hanssen, and Mike Danforth no longer work for the show.
Who’s the real victim here? The unqualified homebuyer who go into a home for nothing, lived there for however long and walked away to the financial detriment of the funding party? The existing homeowner who used inflated home values to borrow beyond the homes worth, and then use those funds however he saw fit. With no intention of ever paying the loan back. Yes, it is to be a victim to get service/cash without having to repay it when socialists stand to gain from it politically. The real victims are those fervant investors who did so without following instinct. A mistake? Yes, but I doubt you’ll see these rookie capitalists clamoring for the cameras unlike those who wanted thier cash and to keep it too. First time blogging. Hope I’ve followed protocal.
So I should assume that you’re a fan of W. Lance Anderson?
This is a first class example of a petty mind. Why is when someone uses an example as a lead in to a larger point and then when another criticizes the larger point, some nitwit seem to think that it is an intellectually deft move to draw the conclusion that must automatically support the case of the example?
Your personal story is nice. Thanks for sharing. You should keep in mind that it was Bill Clinton who suggested that it should be made easier for people like you to get into a house.
Here is another thing that I don’t get about liberals, if Bill Clinton simply pays lip service to something, they want to give him credit for it. In order to get credit for something, isn’t it usually required that you have to actually DO something?
A thoroughgoing liberalism rules the Minneapolis Star Tribune from stem to stern with the exception of metro columnist Katherine Kersten—and one columnist who has asked us to protect his or her identity.
You guys really need to get over yourselves. This “persecuted conservative underground” schtick has been out of date since around 1980.
Of course, what would a thread on liberal idiocy be without an inanity from Vlad the Inhaler?
It doesn’t exactly take a rocket scientist to read the Strib and reach the conclusion that it leans very solidly to the left. But Vlad is unable to see this and instead of offering substance to back up his claim, he simply resorts to the “ignore the man behind the curtain” method.
I like “a Prairie Home Companion” because when “Gary” leaves out his political views, nobody does a better job of making light of the scandanavian/lutheran community. Part of our makeup is not to take ourselves to seriously and we delight in poking fun at ourselves and when others do it a
I like “a Prairie Home Companion” because when “Gary” leaves out his political views, nobody does a better job of making light of the scandanavian/lutheran community. Part of our makeup is not to take ourselves to seriously and we delight in poking fun at ourselves and when others do it as well.
But I think “Gary’s” appeal to the Manhattan towny set is that he is their Jeff Foxworthy. None of them would want to be caught dead laughing at a redneck joke because that would imply that they would have a familiarity and understanding of that lifestyle, but when one of their own, “Gary”, makes fun of simple country folk, well that is a time honored type of humor that re-enforces their sense of superiority.
