Garrison Keillor loses it again
It takes real talent to anger both the Bushies and the anti-Bushies, but Garrison Keillor has managed to do it. First he launched a bizarre tirade against Rudy Giuliani:
Back in 2000, for a City Hall roast, Mr. Giuliani got himself dolled up in drag and made a video in which Donald Trump flirts with him and kisses his breasts. It’s included in a new movie, “Giuliani Time,” and you can see it on YouTube just by typing “Giuliani in drag” into the search box.
Say what you will about the Current Occupant, there is no video out there of him waltzing around in a long lavender gown and a brassiere, and blond wig, while an aging tycoon nuzzles his chest. He may have sunk low back in his drinking days, but he managed to keep his adventures private. I doubt that Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney or Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) ever donned women’s apparel for the cameras….
There are plenty of bigger issues. But the video has a creepy fascination to it. The man in the lavender dress and the blond wig surely never contemplated running for president. It was the two planes hitting the towers a year later that made him a celebrity and then a candidate, nothing he had accomplished himself in public office.
Mr. Giuliani should put the issue behind him by answering a few questions: (1) How much did he have to drink that night, and what was he drinking? (2) Whose idea was it–his own or an aide’s? If the latter, was there wagering involved and how much was bet? (3) Were the garments new or used, and who picked them out? And was he wearing male or female underthings? (4) On a scale of 1 to 10, how good did he feel in that dress?
Now he’s taking on gay marriage and gay parents:
I grew up the child of a mixed-gender marriage that lasted until death parted them…. Back in the day, that was the standard arrangement. Everyone had a yard, a garage, a female mom, a male dad, and a refrigerator with leftover boiled potatoes in plastic dishes with snap-on lids….
Under the old monogamous system, we didn’t have the problem of apportioning Thanksgiving and Christmas among your mother and stepdad, your dad and his third wife, your mother-in-law and her boyfriend Hal, and your father-in-law and his boyfriend Chuck. Today, serial monogamy has stretched the extended family to the breaking point. A child can now grow up with eight or nine or 10 grandparents—Gampa, Gammy, Goopa, Gumby, Papa, Poopsy, Goofy, Gaga and Chuck—and need a program to keep track of the actors…
And now gay marriage will produce a whole new string of hyphenated relatives. In addition to the ex-stepson and ex-in-laws and your wife’s first husband’s second wife, there now will be Bruce and Kevin’s in-laws and Bruce’s ex, Mark, and Mark’s current partner, and I suppose we’ll get used to it.
The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men—sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That’s for the kids. It’s their show.
Of course, Keillor’s act has always been based on his fuddy-duddiness, but he does seem to be going off the deep end a bit, seeing a chartreuse-panted cross dresser around every corner. Now that both the conservatives and the liberals recognize that he’s an ass when he’s not rolling out the well-worn Guy Noir schtick, can we just kill his syndicated column already?
