In the end, I do find the whole Keillor episode a little baffling.
A Talking Points Memo commenter insists it is just satire. Certainly, in the face of things like this, satire would seem all too easy -- and tempting.
But if satire was the intent, it's no Modest Proposal. Instead, a lot of people have missed the point. Including me.
I really did -- and until this evening was still inclined to -- believe that the infamous gay marriage column was satirical. (More on that in a moment.) And yes, I've read Dan Savage's response to Keillor's subsequent apology on that one. I frankly
And clearly not so much with other commenters around the Internet.
If Keillor's Christmas column was intended as satire, it fails -- and the gay-marriage-column episode should have been a lesson to him on the perils of the form for his audience.
It fails because, in the end, too many people miss the point. Not just us touchy Unitarians, but Jews as well.
Worse yet, if it was satire, a number of people who have responded in the comments section at Salon, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun to roundly endorse his screed never got the memo, either.
And then DairyStateMom and I got to talking this evening, and she offered the opinion that she wasn't so sure the aforementioned gay marriage column was satirical, either. Since I take what she says seriously, I'm having to rethink that, too.
Up to now I've enjoyed his jokes on UUs. He makes fun of Lutherans and Catholics, too, after all. So the jokes about us simply made me feel part of the club. Until this current controversy I had been ignorant of the amount of distaste for him in some UU circles.
Now I'm starting to wonder if I'm just some sort of self-hating UU for laughing.
~DSD, who has long admired that famous Swiftian satire and was beside himself some years ago teaching a night-school college class of students who thought Swift was serious.
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Once upon a time I enjoyed listening to Keillor every Saturday evening. He's become downright grumpy, though. I'm fairly certain he's not laughing with UUs, but laughing at UUs at this point. I'm with DSM in thinking his column on marriage was not meant satirically, nor was this most recent one on Christmas for "Christians only." He's lost me entirely.
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