Dear reader, a query: when historians look back at our beloved America, will they recall our great technological triumphs, our unprecedented wealth, and, above all, our grand experiment in Republican self-government? Or will our memory be tainted by
the bad apples, the flamboyant outliers, the progressive taxers? I ask because the inquiry raises still more questions, themselves unanswerable – and I must confess that they gnaw at me.
Now consider my question anew in light of
this article:
brazen sexual pervert “Hollywood” Garrison Keillor has returned to the news, and this time not for another paternity suit. No, it is in fact a restraining order issued by a St. Paul judge against one Andrea Campbell, who is charged with “stalking” the swaggering radio host. On what basis, you inquire? She is said to have sent “explicit e-mails and disturbing gifts, including a petrified alligator foot and dead beetles.” As well, the lady stands accused of sending “disturbing, unintelligible and rambling" letters in which she "graphically described making love to [him.]" Finally, Keillor claims that this Campbell attempted to break into his home.
To which I cry: Well of course! How far can the American people be
tempted, tweaked and titillated before the man provokes this inevitable eruption? After all, have we not seen Keillor swaying rakishly before a stupefied crowd of 500,000 geriatric hippy-dippies and SDS radicals, numbing their minds with his baritone appeals to “peace,” “small town decency,” and “mutual masturbation”?
Is it not common knowledge that his audience of amateur pornographers, Black Panthers, and North American Unionists rapturously
breathe in his cheddary exhalations as though it were the smoke of the cannibis tree?I ask you: have we not all witnessed him pacing the circular stage
like a Norwegian lion, stalking his audience in his skin-tight, day-glo, striped bell-bottomed pants, his
no-doubt-musky chest hair enticingly exposed? Have we not heard him crooning sweet lies about climate change and human-ape descent as the crowd, besotted, revels in the sheer carnality of what they breathlessly term
The Simultaneous Keillorgasm? Who among us has not heard whispers about the 72-hour tantric sexual revelries taking place behind the high walls of Woebegon Manor? Have we not each shuddered at hearing
the heaving, gulping sobs of unknown creatures and the hysterical laughter of children echoing over the wet flagstones?
And who of us, while seated in our red velvet armchairs at the mid-night hour, has not despised Keillor? Even now the memories of him strutting impudently to and fro rush into my mind unbidden, and
my blood stirs.
Beyond these questions lie deeper enigmas: given all that we know about this shameless man, are we to believe that he of all people was distressed
by a dowager peering into his privy? And by being mailed fossilized reptile parts? I trust I do not need to repeat the story about
Garrison in the hotel room with Marianne Faithful and a petrified alligator foot. You have read the same supermarket journals as I, perhaps even multiple times
as an example to one’s own rebellious loins.
Take heart! If anyone is to blame for letting these dangerous erotic energies out of the djinni bottle, it is
the Minnesotan nudist himself. A more likely story is that he staged the entire matter in order to generate controversy – the coin of the realm in these confused times. I do not yet have all the answers to these manifold mysteries, but I am confident on this point: history’s millstone will grind down your lies and your will to resist, sir, until one day you consent to wear modest garb. And I swear this, Keillor:
I will be there that day to watch you clothe yourself, stitch by bloody stitch if need be.For if America is to remain great, our anatomies must remain covered –
especially those of Garrison Keillor! On that count I am in agreement with the reverend Mullahs and Ayatollahs.
I will leave you with a final quote from the Campbell woman:
"It's transcendental love, that's all…between a writer and a reader."
Indeed.