GK: It's an amazing country

[spicedogs]

Garrison Keillor has been on a tirade against McCain. Now, I have no problems with that, as I myself am not voting for the older candidate. What bothered me about all his essays was that he made his tirades without really supporting why he disliked the man. I find this article a bit better focused.

Where else could an Arizona multimillionaire attack a Chicago South Sider as an elitist and hope to make it stick?

By Garrison Keillor

Aug. 6, 2008 |

It's a simple, cheerful life but with occasional grim complications that one simply ignores, such as mortality or the '70s or the demise of the downtown department store. I love my downtown store, a block from the old stone courthouse where Alvin (Creepy) Karpis of the Ma Barker gang was tried for kidnapping in 1936, near a fine old popcorn shop, just down the street from a haberdashery where the other day I got fitted for a seersucker suit and was shown how to tie a bow tie. A great mystery, like the Trinity, suddenly made clear. You don't get this sort of instruction at a mall.

With a seersucker suit and a bow tie, I am equipped to run for public office on the States' Rights ticket and stand up for Our Way of Life and let's support our boys fighting for Unconditional Victory in Korea -- that's what I associate with seersucker, a man perspiring heavily and mopping his brow with Coca-Cola and crying out against the gummint and pointy-heads who interfere with Our Way of Life. A charlatan, in other words. My daily uniform is black T-shirt and jeans, which, if you saw me on the street and didn't know me, might lead you to believe I speak French and love jazz. Non non non, madame! Je suis un authentique Americain.

An American guy is capable of many costumes -- Riverboat Gambler, Sensitive Aesthete, Wilderness Scout, Lounge Lizard, House Husband, Dangerous Radical and Scourge of Society, Aging Preppie -- and I've tried out most of them, but as you enter your golden years, your interest in masquerade naturally diminishes, and so it's interesting to see America's Oldest Presidential Candidate out on the hustings transforming himself into a yahoo and a cracker. Whatever consultant told him to do this is being paid way too much.

The political exploitation of wounded American soldiers by Sen. McCain and his eagerness to introduce race into the race was yahoo behavior, but never mind -- if you lived through the Nixon years and then read the transcripts of the tapes, you are not surprised by anything in politics whatsoever. A bitter, paranoid man of towering personal insecurity, Nixon talked like Broderick Crawford and thereby beat a decorated war hero, George McGovern, even as Nixon was directing an American retreat and defeat in Vietnam that he (and Sen. McCain) blamed on student protesters. And the famous G-man J. Edgar Hoover was gay. He and his lover, Clyde Tolson, brought Alvin Karpis to St. Paul for the trial. So what? It's an amazing country.

It's an amazing country where an anthrax researcher working for the Defense Department may have carried out a murderous campaign with anthrax and thereby succeeded in winning vast new appropriations for the anthrax program.

And it's an amazing country where an Arizona multimillionaire can attack a Chicago South Sider as an elitist and hope to make it stick. The Chicagoan was brought up by a single mom who had big ambitions for him, and he got scholarshipped into Harvard Law and was made president of the law review, all of it on his own hook, whereas the Arizonan is the son of an admiral and was ushered into Annapolis though an indifferent student, much like the Current Occupant, both of them men who are very lucky that their fathers were born before they were. The Chicagoan, who grew up without a father, wrote a book on his own, using a computer. The Arizonan hired people to write his for him. But because the Chicagoan can say what he thinks and make sense and the Arizonan cannot do that for more than 30 seconds at a time, the old guy is hoping to portray the skinny guy as arrogant.

Good luck with that, sir.

Meanwhile, the casual revelation last month that Mr. McCain has never figured out how to use a computer and has never sent e-mail or Googled is rather startling. It's like admitting that you've never clipped your own toenails or that you didn't know that toothpaste comes out of a tube because your valet always did that for you. It's like being amazed at the sight of a supermarket scanner. What world does Mr. McCain live in? Where does he keep his sense of curiosity? My 94-year-old mother has sent e-mail. Does somebody plan to show him how it's done and will they explain to him what "LOL" means?

Source: Salon.com
  

 
  

Comments

[katje0711.livejournal.com]

I think it's great that even though you really like GK you have no problem voicing when you disagree with him. I really respect that and that makes you a true supporter.

[spicedogs.livejournal.com]

Why, thank you. That is a very nice thing to say. I really, really appreciate it.

[notsofriendly.livejournal.com]

I've always respected that about people. I've known way too many people that would prefer to kiss arse and try to be on someone's good side no matter what. But that's just it, they aren't doing anyone any favors when they do that.

I never told you about this. I grew up with Clinton as my Governor. When he was running for re-election one term he said he would serve his full term and not run for President. This was before he did run. Anyway, I had served as a Page in the legislature that spring and we all got to meet him and get our pics with him. I had a button that said, "Go for it." When it was my turn for my pic, he asked if he should go for it. I just smiled. However, I did write him a letter telling him I felt it was wrong for him to consider running for Pres, since he'd promised to serve his full term as Gov. You know what he did! I received a typed letter back from him PLUS a handwritten note at the bottom! Not to mention not long after I'd written that letter, I ran into his Chief of Staff and she mentioned that letter to me!

[spicedogs.livejournal.com]

That is so nice of him.

I don't believe in kissing arse. I don't know whether you remember that I was upset on how he treated GK treated his neighbor. I don't believe in blindly following. I do like the writer and I do appreciate his mind. But to tirade just to tirade is not my cup of tea.

[katje0711.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I totally remember that. How was that resolved, anyway?

[spicedogs.livejournal.com]

They settled out of court and he moved. He moved a few houses away to a humongous house (which, to me, being a social democrat that he claims to be just doesn't follow suit), claiming that he needed a bigger and airier office to work in. He now has 10,000 sq ft, 5 bedrooms, and 9 bathrooms which seems really adequate for a family of 3 (mother, father, and preteen daughter). (Add sarcasm here.)

[katje0711.livejournal.com]

What does being a social democrat have to do with buying a bigger house? Could you link me to your original post about this?

[spicedogs.livejournal.com]

It has to do with what he preaches, but doesn't practice. (Now, I may not follow my principles very thoroughly, but if I preach it, I will try my damnest to follow it.)


http://spicedogs.livejournal.com/211414.html

http://spicedogs.livejournal.com/212101.html

http://spicedogs.livejournal.com/212399.html

[katje0711.livejournal.com]

Those are links to the house he bought, not the article where he was suing his neighbor.

[spicedogs.livejournal.com]

Sorry, misunderstood you.

http://spicedogs.livejournal.com/189619.html

http://spicedogs.livejournal.com/211192.html

[katje0711.livejournal.com]

So, what was the problem? Was he upset because the addition in back of his neighbor's house was going to block the sun from his backyard?

[spicedogs.livejournal.com]

I have no clue. It was a terrible thing. They got along just fine and then, boom. Very similar to my neighbor problem. She was fine and all of a sudden my son's car irrated the daylights out of her.

[katje0711.livejournal.com]

That's too bad. I wonder if they were able to at least make amends before he moved.