Garrison Keillor's Blog, page 81

So many Trumpists have written in since the election, and I am grateful for their interest and also impressed by the sheer variety of their profanity. I never learned to swear that well because by the time my mother died, at 97, it was too late for me to learn. I gather from the letters that their lives were devastated by the advent of gay marriage, political correctness, the threat of gun control, the arrogance of liberals, and now a champion rises from Fifth Avenue & 56th Street and God forbid that any dog should bark when he speaks or any pigeon drop white matter on his limousine.

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So we have split up. Democrats and Republicans. Mutual loathing. So Thanksgiving is ruined, maybe Christmas. We Hillarians look at strangers in the airport and think, “You did, didn’t you? Yes, you did.” And they know who we are. If I were drowning and calling for help, they would throw me a large rock. If they were drowning, I’d toss them an anvil. Scripture says to love your enemy but it doesn’t say exactly when or how.

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It was gratifying that after Wisconsin voted him into the presidency, the gentleman did not talk about putting Hillary in prison. That was a nice surprise. And when he met with Obama of Kenya, the white sahib was well-behaved, listened to what the African had to say, did not interrupt or call him stupid, and in fact thanked the alien for meeting with him. He did a good impersonation of modesty.

Read the full column at the Chicago Tribune’s site →

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So he won. The nation takes a deep breath. Raw ego and proud illiteracy have won out, and a severely learning-disabled man with a real character problem will be president. We are so exhausted from thinking about this election, millions of people will take up leaf-raking and garage cleaning with intense pleasure. We liberal elitists are wrecks. The Trumpers had a whale of a good time, waving their signs, jeering at the media, beating up protesters, chanting “Lock her up” — we elitists just stood and clapped. Nobody chanted “Stronger Together.” It just doesn’t chant.

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I cannot speak for others, but I do not believe that James Comey of the FBI has used KGB hackers to plant e-mails in Anthony Weiner’s laptop and thereby rig the election for Donald Trump whose double is waiting in a Russian sub off Staten Island, but I keep hearing this from people and so I’ll have to look into it. Nor has it been established for certain that Mr. Comey is the love child of Clyde Tolson by J. Edgar Hoover (the J. stands for Jennifer), but on the other hand we don’t know that it’s not true, and Mr. Comey does seem to have J.’s lovely liquid eyes.

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It’s time for recombobulation, after this long-running smash-hit presidential campaign, which you have enjoyed to the hilt and don’t deny it. Never been anything like it. The hulking duke of darkness, the nasty lady in white. Goodbye, high school civics. Hello, Shakespeare. But now we must deal with serious business, such as the foolishness of the Smithsonian wanting to spend $300,000 to preserve Dorothy’s ruby-red slippers from “The Wizard of Oz.” (No, no, no, no, no. They’re only shoes, folks. If you want to see them, watch the movie and Judy Garland will click the heels together. Spend the money to sweeten the retirement plans of museum guards.) And we must deal with Bob Dylan and his attitude toward the Nobel Prize in Literature, and will he go to Stockholm in December?

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I know, it seems outrageous, But it’s getting a lot of attention on some very respectable Web pages — which mainstream media won’t mention:

Donald Trump was not born in Queens,

He was born in the Philippines,

In a hotel in downtown Manila.

Where his hair turned bright vanilla

Due to vitamin deficiencies.

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I saw Hillary Clinton once working a rope line for more than an hour, a Secret Service man holding her firmly by the hips as she leaned over the rope and reached into the mass of arms and hands reaching out to her. She had learned the art of encountering the crowd and making it look personal. It was not glamorous work, more like picking fruit, and it took the sort of discipline your mother instills in you: Those people waited to see you, so by gosh you can treat them right.

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The sight of Percherons makes me happy. So do deep-fried cheese curds, newborn lambs and those designer chickens with feathery pompom anklets, and then you enter the Horticulture Building and see pumpkins the size of studio apartments, large enough to house a man and his wife, so today I am happy, having attended the Minnesota State Fair, our Mardi Gras, when normally cautious people can go out and be jovial in public. My wife is not a Fair person. Her problem is good taste and a limited tolerance for gluttony and barkers and violent centrifugal experiences in motorized contraptions operated by tattooed men who might have done prison time for larceny. But my daughter is Fair-bred, so I have company.

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The cap does not look good on you, it’s a duffer’s cap, and when you come to the microphone, you look like the warm-up guy, the guy who announces the license number of the car left in the parking lot, doors locked, lights on, motor running. The brim shadows your face, which gives a sinister look, as if you’d come to town to announce the closing of the pulp factory. Your eyes look dead and your scowl does not suggest American greatness so much as American indigestion. Your hair is the wrong color: People don’t want a president to be that shade of blond. You know that now.

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