COMMENTARY: Garrison Keillor Must Have Immunity: Anti-Semitic Tirade Unchallenged
By Joseph J. Honick
Almost a year ago to the day, Garrison Keillor launched a tirade aimed at Jewish songwriters for having the nerve to write songs for Christmas. And he did it under the purifying cover of public radio and his “aw shucks” "Prairie Home Companion" program. Here is what he had to say in December, 2009:
“If you don’t believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn “Silent Night” and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write “Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow the shofar for Rosh Hashanah”? No, we don’t.
“Christmas us a Christian holiday — if you’re not in the club, then buzz off. Celebrate Yule instead or dance around in druid robes for the solstice. Go light a big log, go wassailing and falaing until you fall down, eat figgy pudding until you puke, but don’t mess with the Messiah.”
There were those who claimed the droll and often boring commentator on rural life was just sort of kidding around and being “curmudgeonly”. Reality is that far less “kidding around” has cost numerous folks their jobs in commercial and public radio when aimed at other groups.
The real question is why that kind of stuff was tolerated. A call to National Public Radio got the quick comment that Keillor is not an employee of NPR and his program is just one of many bought and paid for by local public radio stations. But the courteous person with whom I spoke lost not a split second in emphasizing the disconnect when it came to this kind of stuff and especially Keillor.
It seems that his program is distributed by something called American Public Media with headquarters in Minneapolis. According to its web site:
“American Public Media is the largest owner and operator of public radio stations and a premier producer and distributor of public radio programming in the nation. American Public Media reaches 15.5 million listeners each week through 768 public radio stations. Among its portfolio of more than 20 nationally distributed programs are such public radio staples as A Prairie Home Companion®, Marketplace®, Performance Today® and others. It is also the parent organization for Minnesota Public Radio, Southern California Public Radio and Classical South Florida, operating 40 public radio stations and 29 translators in California, Florida and the Upper Midwest.”
Although NPR disavows any direct connection to the Keillor programming, if the APM claims are correct, the NPR network sure carries Keillor’s messages to the largest audience on its wavelengths….reportedly, according to its own claims…to more than 15 million listeners over 768 public radio stations!
In this era of hypersensitivity to racial, religious and other prejudice, it remains unclear why the purveyor of rural myth could get away unscathed professionally. Of course, he included in his tirade that actually used an offensive Yiddish term for fecal matter…the composer of “God Bless America”(Irving Berlin) who happened to compose the massively popular “White Christmas” whose singers and listeners over the years have enjoyed it ever since it was introduced by Bing Crosby movie more than a half century ago with the song’s title.
Thanksgiving, Hannukah and Christmas would all seem intended for people to express only the warmest thoughts and greetings. It is then altogether strange that non-commercial radio would have tolerated commentary that made Scrooge look and sound like a cuddly bumpkin.
And the question simply hangs out there: WHY?
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Joseph J. Honick is a frequent contributor to Huntington News Network and is president of the international consulting firm GMA International Ltd., based in Bainbridge Island, WA.