A Tender Unitarian Christmas II: Yankees and Jews Slapping Norwegians
I like Garrison Keillor. There, I said it. Not everyone on the Chronicles staff agrees. But that is not the point of this yuletide tale.
A fellow editor who shall remain nameless (for job-security reasons) sent me a link to GK the Lesser's latest editorial, "Nonbelievers, please leave Christmas alone." (Apparently, the title-writer did not get the memo from Bill Hybels about "Seekers.") The link was to the Baltimore Sun, and I enjoyed the article very much.
So much so that I thought I would share it with some friends. So I sought the uniform resource locator from the Chicago Tribune, where I normally read GK. And what do you know? Some of the piece is missing.
Some of it is not missing, of course, because there is a there there. The there that is there is stunning enough for the Trib, as it follows up a healthy dose of nerd-bashing with some unvarnished Unitarian excoriation:
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.
But here's the part that apparently works in Baltimore but not in the City of Broad Shoulders:
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 that shofar for Rosh Hashanah"? No, we didn't.
And just to make matters worse, the Baltimore Sun allowed GK to get all Aristotelian with his A and non-A, which clearly is not appropriate for in the town that Billy Sunday couldn't shut down:
Christmas is 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 falalaing until you fall down, eat figgy pudding until you puke, but don't mess with the Messiah.
Naturally, Jeffery "IDF" Goldberg of the Atlantic let out a Geschrei upon reading GK: "I was pretty sure I didn't enjoy listening to Garrison Keillor even before I read what he had to say about Christmas music."
Across the pond, the Independent's Dominic Lawson pooh-poohed Keillor the "curmudgeon" and (ignoring GK's slights on nerds and Unitarians) naughty-naughty'd him with a rather ominous turn of phrase: "Don't blame all of that on the Jews. Irving Berlin is not the Anti-Christ." In the process, he scolded Christians for trying over the centuries to "de-Jew Jesus" and blamed THAT on . . . ready? . . . "the Roman Emperor Theodosius." Graciously, Lawson left "aside the murky matter of anti-Semitism." I mean, you weren't even thinking about anti-Semitism, were you? You weren't? Not till I brought it up? I didn't bring it up. I clearly said I was "leaving it aside."
Yes, that Babe was both a Jew and God. And no, Christians won't leave either truth aside.
I suddenly have the urge for a powder-milk biscuit.
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I was rather taken aback by Keillor's commentary on the issue, to tell the truth. I'm not used to such utterances from unreconstructed leftists like GK, who no doubt genuflected for the Mau-Mau Messiah last November. Perhaps he's unhappy at the nonexistent lobby that cannot be named over Zero's planned expansion of the Global War on Violent Extremism to make the Umma safe for sodomy and feminism (and perhaps a non-existent figment of a little country than cannot be named). With advisors like Rahm (a foreign veteran who served out the Gulf War at a base in the non-existent country alluded to above) pulling the strings, I really have to wonder how doofus lefties like GK ever believed Zero's actions would be any different from those of his predecessor, the Imam al-Duhbya (PBUH).
I've always liked Keillor. Despite being a liberal Democrat, his show is traditionalist, in its way, generally featuring old music, lovingly presented, and often featuring religious music, presented the same way. Keillor's "News from Lake Wobegon" does not mock small town America, but celebrates it, and the point of his story--if there is a point other than gentle humor--is often related to the importance of following traditional morals and mores.
I think he misses the mark in his criticism of secular Christmas music, but I understand his point: such songs are fine as an appetizer before the main course of traditional carols, but terrible as a main course. I enjoy "A Christmas Song" and "Silver Bells" so long as they are not used to displace "Adeste Fideles" and "Silent Night," as too often they are.
The redeeming fact of GK is that he is more poet than politician. He is a traditionalist in the sense that he has an eye for quality amidst all the quantity available to him and can, therefore, tell stories and enjoy music. I am not a regular listener for GK's show but if he happens to be talking on the radio while I am driving some distance I listen and usually enjoy.
If we are going to parody religious and ethnic groups in the Big Apple on Saturday Nights Live, why not out on The Prairie where folks still enjoy a good tale.
Hilarious pieces, both by my friend, Aaron Wolf, and by GK.
I agree with Tom Piatak about GK's PHC radio program.
Fact is, Christ's DNA more closely approximated the prototype modern Palestinian than the prototype Ashkenazi (Majority) Zionist
Israeli.
Mr. Keillor has fastened upon a fact well-known in Norway and the Midwest but little appreciated elsewhere: all Norwegians ARE above average (and not just the ones in Lake Woebegone)!
Say what you want about Keillor but I challenge anyone to find the kind of quality of music on PHC anywhere on the radio. He does have taste.
Good job Aaron but I'm surprised you didn't refer to GK's jab at Larry Summers whose financial disaster at Harvard prepared him ("the genius") for the White House.
GK's slam on Emerson, (who really was a fraud), was priceless. Heaven only knows how much damage that man caused by inspiring generations of valedictorians to urge their graduating classmates to go out and change the world. How much better for the world it would have been if Emerson had urged his listeners first toward deeper self-knowledge and reflection before acting.
After a few years of logging the remains of my grandfather's farm in backwoods Connecticut in the early '80s, I moved into a rented former farmhouse on the edge of New Haven with a bunch of Yalies of various ages for housemates. When PHC came on, I and one of the older guys, who hailed from small-town Indiana, would sit by the radio in the big, high-ceilinged kitchen absorbed in it, while our younger roomies came and went, laughing at a bit here and there, but otherwise not seeing the point.
He and I savored every nuance, and felt the show as an affectionate, if satirical, tribute to the 50's and people like our parents. I especially treasured the way he conjured up the atmosphere of Lake Woebegone, a town that sounded just like the one my dad took me fishing to in northern Wisconsin.
After awhile, his liberalism began to rankle and I stopped listening, but I'm still grateful for some moments of comfort during a time of transition, as the phrase has it, from life on my own land back to life in the city. His liberalism strikes me as being in the Hubert Humphrey mold - just progressive enough to be "with it" enough to attract some of the younger crowd, or at least not repel them - but not so far left as to jettison completely all traditional Western values. I wasn't listening, but I can't see him "genuflecting" to BHO; rather, giving more like pro forma support. And I'm pleasantly surprised by his pro-Christmas militancy. Perhaps it's time I checked the news from Lake Woebegone.
Though HHH is surely way moldy, GK is as yet only in his mould. It strikes me now that in that household full of New York liberals, GK must have sounded positively Paul Harvey-ish
Not a writer but one who reads, it appears when the polish of the
illustrious "lit" group wears off or wears thin, there are other
words that bring our feet to where there is firmer grounding to be
had. But many would disagree. Nevertheless, evidence would show,
some writers are enthusiastic to change with "the times", but others
will not. Why this is only God knows.