World News Trust World News Trust
World News Trust World News Trust
  • News Portal
  • All Content
    • Edited
      • News
      • Commentary
      • Analysis
      • Advisories
      • Source
    • Flatwire
  • Topics
    • Agriculture
    • Culture
      • Arts
      • Children
      • Education
      • Entertainment
      • Food and Hunger
      • Sports
    • Disasters
    • Economy
    • Energy
    • Environment
    • Government
    • Health
    • Media
    • Science
    • Spiritual
    • Technology
    • Transportation
    • War
  • Regions
    • Africa
    • Americas
      • North America
      • South America
    • Antarctica
    • Arctic
    • Asia
    • Australia/Oceania
    • Europe
    • Middle East
    • Oceans
      • Arctic Ocean
      • Atlantic Ocean
      • Indian Ocean
      • Pacific Ocean
      • Southern Ocean
    • Space
  • World Desk
    • Submit Content
  • About Us
  • Sign In/Out
  • Register
  • Site Map
  • Contact Us
  • Russia's War and the Global Economy | Nouriel Roubini
  • U.S. Considers Radical Rethinking Of Dollar For Today's Digital World | David Gura
  • Why is Israel Amending Its Open-Fire Policy?: Three Possible Answers | Ramzy Baroud
  • WATCH: Republican National Committee Abandons America
  • ‘Previously Unknown Massacres’: Why is Israel Allowed to Own Palestinian History? | Ramzy Baroud
  • The Revolt of the Imagination, Part One: Notes on Belbury Syndrome | John Michael Greer
  • Human gut bacteria have sex to share vitamin B12 | University of California - Riverside

Whipping-Post Politics | James Howard Kunstler

More items by author
Categories
Edited | Hate | Peak Oil | Culture
Tool Bar
View Comments

Garrison KeillorGarrison KeillorJames Howard Kunstler -- World News Trust

Dec. 1, 2017

Charlie Rose skulked offstage like a punch-drunk palooka with barely a whimper, and Matt Lauer offered up the now laughably pro forma press release of bathetic apology and contrition -- no doubt micro-managed by his attorneys. But the hit on Garrison Keillor by his old friend Minnesota Public Radio seemed like a new low in the whipping-post politics of the moment.

Unlike the cases of Rose, Lauer, Louis CK, Harvey Weinstein, and Kevin Spacey, there seemed next to nothing in the case against Keillor. He says he placed his hand on a lady’s bare back, someone on the crew or cast or a guest on The Prairie Home Companion radio show he hosted for close to 40 years. Maybe MinnPR has a file full of complaints against the old trooper, but if so they’ve released nothing, no details whatsoever, and unlike the previously “outed” line-up, in Keillor’s case no other “victims” have come forward on their own to establish anything like a pattern of truly bad behavior.

I happen to admire Keillor’s substantial body of work in print and radio, and the public persona he presented, which portrayed a lot of what was honorable, intelligent, charming, and funny in our national character, something we need to be reminded of in this new era of pervasive racketeering, affronts to the first amendment, ubiquitous porno-culture, and Deep State mischief. This may amaze some of you, but to me, Keillor deserves to be ranked with Mark Twain as a literary icon. What he gave to his large radio audience over a very long run was of uniformly high quality -- something manifestly absent in so many other areas of contemporary life and art.

Keillor was reputed to be a cold-fish backstage and offstage, a prickly Aspergery personality who avoided personal contact. He said as much in his very brief published response to getting fired.

“Anyone who ever was around my show can tell you that I was the least physically affectionate person in the building,” Keillor said. “Actors hug, musicians hug, people were embracing every Saturday night left and right, and I stood off in the corner like a stone statue.”

To me, the job on Keillor was a hit too far. I hope others out there with their frontal cortexes intact felt themselves crossing a threshold into a strange new un-American society where the merest allegation can instantly send anyone to perdition. It’s gotten to the point where any man who ever made pass at someone is now defined as a sexual predator, feeding the delusional trope that all women are everywhere and always “victims,” and that human nature itself has to be transformed to correct this flaw in human design.

Well, guess what -- that’s not going to happen. Men will continue to initiate sexual liaisons and relations. They will make the first move. They will take a chance. They will be advised to act like gentlemen in doing this, but I don’t think that’s quite what the witch-hunters really want right now. The PC movement, with its branches in the media, on campus, and professional politics, is out for coercion and punishment by any means necessary. That’s why there are kangaroo courts in the universities, in case you haven’t noticed. Due process is not just unwelcome, it’s officially scorned as passe. The method du jour in the case of Garrison Keilor, so far, is career and reputational castration.

The so-called thinking class in this country seems unaware that the mixed-gender office workplace -- where most jobs can be done by anyone -- is a relative novelty in human history. Not only that, but if indeed we’re heading into a long emergency of collapsing techno-industrial arrangements -- as I have asserted in my books and blogs -- then we may once again find ourselves in a world with different divisions of labor, and a manifest change of values to attend it. It’s laughable to me that so many well-educated people assume that our current mode of living is permanent, but I suppose that’s part and parcel of the religion of progress. In the meantime, adults of the two sexes -- and there are two sexes, not 32 -- consort in the workplace with all kinds of stimulation and frisson quickening the scene, and we are foolish enough to be surprised when sexual mischief happens.


New Paintings by JHK 2016 -- 2017


Great Fall Reading… JHK’s new book!

“Simply the best novel about the 1960s.”

Read the first chapter here (click) on Patreon

Buy the book at Amazon or click on the cover below

or get autographed copies from Battenkill Books


Other Books by JHK

The World Made By Hand Series:
Book 1:
Book 2:
Buy World Made By Hand Signed and local from Battenkill BooksBuy World Made By Hand on Amazon Buy The Witch of Hebron signed and local from Battenkill BooksBuy The Witch of Hebron on Amazon
Book 3:

Book 4:
Signed and local from Battenkill BooksAvailable on Amazon Signed and local from Battenkill BooksAvailable on Amazon
Available on Kindle Buy The Long Emergency signed and local from Battenkill BooksBuy The Long Emergency on Amazon
James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency, and Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation. His novels include World Made By Hand, The Witch of Hebron, Maggie Darling -- A Modern Romance, The Halloween Ball, an Embarrassment of Riches, and many others. He has published three novellas with Water Street Press: Manhattan Gothic, A Christmas Orphan, and The Flight of Mehetabel.
back to top
  • Created
    Friday, December 01 2017
  • Last modified
    Monday, December 04 2017
  1. You are here:  
  2. Home
  3. All Content
  4. Edited
  5. Whipping-Post Politics | James Howard Kunstler
Copyright © 2022 World News Trust. All Rights Reserved.
Joomla! is Free Software released under the GNU General Public License.