Garrison Keillor
Garrison Keillor writing on just about anything is great. This one here is one of my favorites: "Love Will Outlast Bush." I read that essay pretty regularly.
But reading Keillor write about Abilene, TX, for which I'm pretty sure I'm always going to feel a pretty homelike tug, is very interesting. I'm so sad I didn't get to see him.
posted by John Pierce @ 11:11 PM
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4 Comments:
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I saw him in the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. He was amazing.
Ugh...I like Garrison Keillor, but I really can't stand it when "outsiders" write about Abilene. There was a write-up in the New York Times a couple of years ago about a 48-hour vacation in Abilene. Brittany sent me the link, but I don't have it any more. We both wondered if the author had even gone to Abilene. She described it basically as a desert full of friendly, but uneducated, hicks. I don't really think of Abilene as "the desert." Hello, have they seen Odessa? Plus, those little vignettes are always so one-dimensional. Sure, Abilene's a friendly place. But it's not like everyone's lived there all of their lives and knows everyone by name. This is why people always think that Texans are from another planet or something. Writers come visit and only write about the events and people that fit their pre-exisiting stereotypes. I find Keillor's piece condescending and a very backhanded compliment. It's like saying, "Yeah, pretty much everyone in West Texas is simple-minded, but at least they're really nice."
Which is one of my biggest complaints about Democrats (being a former Republican, now independent, myself). They often make statements that assume that everyone who is Republican is only Republican because they haven't really thought about it. This may be true of some, but there are definitely some Republicans (my dad included) who are extremely smart and have well thought-out reasons for their political beliefs. But if Garrison Keillor or anyone else ever meets one of them, they certainly won't write a piece about it.
Okay, sorry about that. I didn't realize this comment was going to turn into such a soapbox. I definitely don't love Abilene, but I don't think it's as one-dimensional a place as many want to make it.
John, in the Abilene article -- I thought one of the best comments was the one titled "It's not about the Kumbaya." Did you catch it?
If people really do mean this kind of stuff, and aren't just saying it in the hope of a certain election result, then we should be marching to Zion by Thursday, lol...
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