Friday, March 29, AD 2024 1:40am

Garrison Keillor Does the Perv Walk

The man who raised leftist sanctimony to an art form is out at Minnesota Peoples Public Radio:

 

Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) is terminating its contracts with Garrison Keillor and his private media companies after recently learning of allegations of his inappropriate behavior with an individual who worked with him.

Last month, MPR was notified of the allegations which relate to Mr. Keillor’s conduct while he was responsible for the production of A Prairie Home Companion (APHC). MPR President Jon McTaggart immediately informed the MPR Board Chair, and a special Board committee was appointed to provide oversight and ongoing counsel. In addition, MPR retained an outside law firm to conduct an independent investigation of the allegations. Based on what we currently know, there are no similar allegations involving other staff. The attorney leading the independent investigation has been conducting interviews and reviewing documents, and the investigation is still ongoing. We encourage anyone with additional information to call our confidential hotline 1-877-767-7781..

 

Go here to read the rest.  Men with octopus hands, as my bride has designated such behavior, are of course not restricted to the left, but it is intriguing how many leftist icons are falling before the wrath of allegedly abused women.  It is almost as if their paeans to the rights of women were so much hokum they dispensed to gullible stooges for years, not reflecting in the slightest how they led their lives.

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Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, November 29, AD 2017 2:06pm

Keillor around the time A Prairie Home Companion began an affair with an employee (while his wife was performing odd jobs in the studio, no less). After leaving his wife, he shacks up with the employee, with whom he was associated for 13 years. He attends a high school reunion in 1985 and there meets an exchange student he’d had an interest in a quarter century earlier. So, Miss Moos, who had been (in addition to being his common law wife) a crucial component of the production team at A Prairie Home Companion was given the gate. She decamped to the west coast and somehow found other work and eventually a man who would actually marry her. Meanwhile, Keillor marries the quondam exchange student and decamps to Denmark for a time, then New York. The marriage lasts about four years. He eventually marries someone else in 1995 and has another child, one about 30 years younger than his first child.

No clue if he’s guilty of any ‘misconduct’ or not. Just wish to point out that it is a matter of public record that he has a long history as an adipose hydrogen sulfide emitting orifice who treated women like Kleenex until he was too damned old to get away with it. Minnesota Public Radio dozed through this for 40-odd years. Then, they get some complaint that he played grabass with someone and his contract is cancelled, they discontinue any syndication of his programs, and the program he founded will only continue when they’ve changed the title.

Sorry, these people are just not serious.

Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Wednesday, November 29, AD 2017 2:29pm

During the Bush years, W , I couldn’t stomach his constant jabs and slams humorously woven of course into the skits. Seems he might be in one of his own skits now.
(The Skirts of Garrison Keillor; a retrospect.)

Bleuteaux
Bleuteaux
Wednesday, November 29, AD 2017 2:46pm

Art’s comment reminds me that it seems like this process is merely clearing the decks of all the old-timers who are no longer of value to the current left. 50+ year veterans of the struggle who do not appeal to the twitter generation. The perpetrators, lets be honest, are also incredibly ugly. I don’t see any complaints about the 40 and under superstar leftist crowd, yet at least. And don’t tell me they aren’t just as bad as some dinosaur on public radio.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, November 29, AD 2017 3:12pm

Keillor still had a program on Minnesota Public Radio called Writer’s Almanac. It will be discontinued and MPR will no longer be distributing anything in their archive with Keillor’s voice in it. Someone else took over A Prairie Home Companion. His show isn’t cancelled, but the name will be erased and replaced with something else. They’re giving GK the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia treatment. Keillor’s been graceful about it. I’ll give him that.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, November 29, AD 2017 3:16pm

Keillor’s 75 years old. Most of us won’t be pretty when we’re that age. He wasn’t handsome when younger, but he wasn’t ugly either.

I suspect a great deal of what’s up is humbug: women waging bureaucratic warfare. Some of it is borderline behavior stoked by stupid institutional policy. The smart money says the real office lotharios won’t be losing their jobs, because women like being hit on by those guys.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, November 29, AD 2017 3:20pm

During the Bush years, W , I couldn’t stomach his constant jabs and slams humorously woven of course into the skits. Seems he might be in one of his own skits now.

I listened to his program only quite fitfully during the period running from 1983 to 2004. I don’t recall any political bits. What you say doesn’t surprise me, though. The purveyors of mass entertainment and academic instruction have insisted on leaving less and less space for life uninfected by political disputes. So you get craptastic controversies over football ceremonial or what Taylor Swift isn’t saying.

David Griffey
David Griffey
Wednesday, November 29, AD 2017 3:34pm

I’m waiting for all the editorials and commentaries that say this shows something about liberal America. Almost as soon as Roy Moore was accused, I saw a wave of pieces and opinions saying how that just goes to show the seedy underside of conservative evangelicalism. One guy accused with no real evidence, and it was used (and not just by liberals) to blast American Evangelicals and their culture. So, by that logic, shouldn’t we be seeing a tidal wave of editorials and opinion pieces about how the multiple high profile liberal and progressive entertainers, advocates, politicians, and commentators accused also shows something about liberal America?

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Wednesday, November 29, AD 2017 4:27pm

Art Deco wrote: “The smart money says the real office lotharios won’t be losing their jobs, because women like being hit on by those guys.”

I think that’s true just based on my observations. The young pretty airhead snowflake millennial girls like being hit on by powerful older men. It’s flattering and they use their prettiness to get into high paying positions with fancy useless titles. Thankfully, (with one notable exception I know of) they usually don’t select anything in real hard core engineering that requires skull sweat and responsibility in front of our Federal Regulator when you sign your name on the dotted line. For all their talk about STEM occupations (Science Technology Engineering Math) they usually can’t do it. And no, I am not anti-woman in my industry. The best engineer I ever worked with was an emergency diesel generator system engineer at a PWR and happened by accident of birth to be a woman. Being a woman has nothing to do with it. Being an immoral unprincipled ambitious upstart (man or woman) ready to compromise at any turn to get ahead has everything to do with it.

But these men had better beware (and stop thinking with their genitalia) because those snowflakes, when they encounter something that makes their delicate progressive feminist feelings melt, will turn on the men who gave them their positions quicker than snake snot. And boy oh boy will the accusations fly.

My advice? Never be alone in a room with these women. And watch what you say around them and what you write in email to them.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, November 29, AD 2017 4:39pm

I’m waiting for all the editorials and commentaries that say this shows something about liberal America. Almost as soon as Roy Moore was accused, I saw a wave of pieces and opinions saying how that just goes to show the seedy underside of conservative evangelicalism.

George McGovern is dead. Nat Hentoff is dead. Alan Dershowitz is pushing 80. Camille Paglia is 70.

You’re assuming the current generation of liberal journalists have principles rather than improvisations they employ against those they define as the enemy. Ha Ha

Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, November 29, AD 2017 4:46pm

But these men had better beware (and stop thinking with their genitalia) because those snowflakes, when they encounter something that makes their delicate progressive feminist feelings melt,

I.e. when they’re past a certain age and they realize the tomcats have moved on to younger targets (‘a.k.a. ‘upstarts’).

Angelo Codevilla recently penned a brief article on how these transactions worked when he was a Senate aide (he estimated that about 1/3 of the employees engaged in them). His view is that it was (in that particular setting) decadence of a mutually exploitative sort, not men extorting favors from women. Harry Truman once wrote of the Senate that when he was sworn in, he said to himself “I can’t believe I made it here”. After six months, he said to himself “I cant believe they made it here”. I do wish our political class wasn’t so infected with the grossest among us.

Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Wednesday, November 29, AD 2017 5:05pm

George W. Bush.
2001 – 2009

I remember because at a dinner party, after listening to Prairie Home Companion, the disgust on my face was noticed by my liberial brother in law and friends. Knowing my affiliation, they rubbed the salt into the pro – life wounds that the episode cleverly tried to use to belittle President Bush. The explosion was Bush’s policy preventing taxpayers from being forced to pay for new embryonic stem cell research that destroys human life. Adult human stem cell research had been productive while embryonic stem cell research had only achieved results that were inferior, not to mention the moral consequences.

I was in Lacrosse WI at the time.

Mr. Keillor’s blatant disregard for President Bush’s policies and those who supported Bush was bait for the sophomore conservative at the dinner table.

Easy guess…. I wasn’t taken seriously because they do not value embryos as human potential, only parts to be used like a second hand used car. After all.. legalized abortion helps to devalue life and my in-laws are “pro-woman…
Pro-choice.”

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, November 29, AD 2017 6:44pm

Philip: I am sorry that your in-laws are complicit in cannibalism.

Hank
Wednesday, November 29, AD 2017 6:53pm

A thought.

Perhaps, the pro-abortion policies supported by those accused, come form the realization tht an abortion costs a lot less than child support, rather than any concern for the rights of women.

Just a thought.

Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Wednesday, November 29, AD 2017 9:51pm

Hank.

Yes. Devaluing sacredness of human life.
The ends justify the means in this world which places money above human life. Forget adoption because it’s just too painful for the birth parents to imagine. (?) Another thought.

When the balance sheets dictate life and death you have entered a level of hell. Enter America 2017 with license to kill for ANY reason.
Oh how sweet the sound, the freedom for me but not for thee poor fetus. We just can’t afford you.

Hank. Economics 101; genocidal practices as acceptable measures to cut costs.

Stephen Dalton
Stephen Dalton
Thursday, November 30, AD 2017 8:12am

What was the song Keillor started his PHC show off with? I believe it was the country western song “Hello Love”. Well, it looks like it’s “Faded Love” now!

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Thursday, November 30, AD 2017 10:45am

It is almost as if their paeans to the rights of women were so much hokum they dispensed to gullible stooges for years, not reflecting in the slightest how they led their lives.

It’s part hypocrisy (e.g., Rush Limbaugh’s old joke about loving the women’s movement when he’s standing behind it —except Keillor, Franken, Lauer, et. al. aren’t joking) and part self-delusion a la Nixon’s it’s not a crime when the President does it. Think Orwell’s Julia in 1984 explaining why she never misses a Jr. Anti-Sex League rally because that makes it easier to hook-up with other Party members.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Thursday, November 30, AD 2017 11:00am

Art Deco wrote: “The smart money says the real office lotharios won’t be losing their jobs, because women like being hit on by those guys.”

I think that’s true just based on my observations. The young pretty airhead snowflake millennial girls like being hit on by powerful older men. It’s flattering and they use their prettiness to get into high paying positions with fancy useless titles.
[. . . .]
But these men had better beware (and stop thinking with their genitalia) because those snowflakes, when they encounter something that makes their delicate progressive feminist feelings melt, will turn on the men who gave them their positions quicker than snake snot. And boy oh boy will the accusations fly.

I wonder how much influence pornography has had on the behavior of everybody, victims and perpetrators alike, in this scandals. You hear or read about the behavior the men involved are accused of, and it sounds more or less like the standard “plot” of a porn film. And on the victims’ side: isn’t the standard plot of a “romance” novel more or less “why am I, the female protagonist, tittilated and aroused by this creepy/brutish/thuggish man’s creepy/brutish/thugish behavior?”

Only in the real world, the guy doesn’t change and there’s no happily ever after for poor Cinderella. Thus the well-after-the-fact (at least for the most part) revelation of one’s victimization.

And then there’s the whole sympathy/celebrity for the victim thing in our empathy drenched culture.

Foxfier
Admin
Thursday, November 30, AD 2017 1:31pm

Sarah Hoyt hit a nail on the head about the abortion/”women’s rights” link:
Like Bill Clinton, they think they’re entitled to a “little something-something” for “doing so much for women.” This mostly translates into abortion rights, something that mostly facilitates men fooling around without the consequences catching up to them (which might be a discussion for another time).
https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-moving-finger/?singlepage=true

smk, sfo
smk, sfo
Sunday, December 3, AD 2017 9:42am

In response to Art Deco, et. al.:

Sexual harassment is indefensible. The “office Lotharios” and “pretty airhead snowflakes” you refer to may exist. But I am here to tell you, their actions are unwelcome and unprofessional.

As a secretary of nearly 40 years, I have had to endure harassment at the workplace from inappropriate discussions (being called a “sexytary” by a man 30+ years older, given unwelcome information about his wife’s bra size, given unwelcome advice about my personal marital life, etc.), to catching men looking down my blouse and up my skirts, to inappropriate touching (forced kissing – on the mouth, being brushed into unnecessarily, and enduring being felt).

As a faithful life-long Catholic, who dresses modestly and who does not engage in suggestive and inappropriate discussions, this was intolerable. When I went to management with my complaints, I was told to let it go in one ear and out the other, that “no harm was done”, and that the creeps who targeted me were “raised in another time and that they are too old to change.” Nothing changed. I was also given to believe that if I pursued my complaints, no one would believe me and that any advancement in my job would be jeopardized, and perhaps I would lose my job.

I do not know any women who have not experienced some kind of harassment at work, and often at their parishes. This is not an isolated issue that only affects a few people in Hollywood and Washington. It happens everywhere in America.

If it was your wife, daughter, mother, or sister being treated like me or as the victims of the currently publicized stories were treated, would you call them “pretty little snowflakes” or their tormentors “office Lotharios”, and laugh it off as a ploy for attention and a money payout? Wouldn’t you want them to be taken seriously and protected if they were being targeted for this kind of bullying and harassment?

There is no defense for anyone who treats anyone else like this. People who engage in this are bullies, targeting people who are at a lower rung on the office chain of command and using it to their own personal advantage. It is un-Christian, un-Catholic, and un-American. And it must stop. Now.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, December 3, AD 2017 4:46pm

In response to Art Deco, et. al.:

Sexual harassment is indefensible. The “office Lotharios” and “pretty airhead snowflakes” you refer to may exist. But I am here to tell you, their actions are unwelcome and unprofessional.

‘Unwelcome’ to whom and ‘unprofessional’ where? A well-run enterprise discourages people from mixing their work life and their personal life and failing to keep a civil distance from each other. The U.S. Senate is not a well-run institution, per Mr. Codevilla.

As a secretary of nearly 40 years, I have had to endure harassment at the workplace from inappropriate discussions (being called a “sexytary” by a man 30+ years older, given unwelcome information about his wife’s bra size, given unwelcome advice about my personal marital life, etc.), to catching men looking down my blouse and up my skirts, to inappropriate touching (forced kissing – on the mouth, being brushed into unnecessarily, and enduring being felt).

No, you didn’t ‘endure’ that ‘for 40 years’, unless you aged like Barrie Chase. All of that’s unpleasant, but lots of unpleasant things go on at work.

As a faithful life-long Catholic, who dresses modestly and who does not engage in suggestive and inappropriate discussions, this was intolerable.
When I went to management with my complaints, I was told to let it go in one ear and out the other, that “no harm was done”, and that the creeps who targeted me were “raised in another time and that they are too old to change.” Nothing changed. I was also given to believe that if I pursued my complaints, no one would believe me and that any advancement in my job would be jeopardized, and perhaps I would lose my job.

I’ve never heard of a ‘secretary’ who had much chance of ‘advancement’. It’s a staff job and hourly except at the highest levels. You say your situation was ‘intolerable’ and your managers thought you were making too much of nuisance problems. None of use here can be expected to adjudicate these claims absent a mess of granular details about what was said to you, how often, and what sort of street cred you had in the organization when you made the complaints.

I do not know any women who have not experienced some kind of harassment at work, and often at their parishes.

You need to get out more.

This is not an isolated issue that only affects a few people in Hollywood and Washington. It happens everywhere in America

Yes, unpleasantness happens. It is seldom actionable. Whether or not it should cost someone their job turns on a mess of particulars.

If it was your wife, daughter, mother, or sister being treated like me or as the victims of the currently publicized stories were treated, would you call them “pretty little snowflakes” or their tormentors “office Lotharios”, and laugh it off as a ploy for attention and a money payout?

There are gripers in offices who irritate others with the issue of their free-floating dissatisfaction. There are men in offices who tomcat around and are adept at spotting prospects and appealing to them. The presence of any of my relatives in an office does not cause such phenomena to disappear.

Wouldn’t you want them to be taken seriously and protected if they were being targeted for this kind of bullying and harassment?

I’d like to think they’d have the sense not to confuse vulgar remarks with ‘bullying’. I’d also like to think they’d have the grace to manage in disagreeable situations and to know when to fold ’em and leave that workplace. The women in my family, like yours truly, aren’t always who they’d like to be and aren’t always on the ball.

There is no defense for anyone who treats anyone else like this.

Whether there’s a defense or not depends on the circumstances.

People who engage in this are bullies,

Some are, some aren’t. I’ve known real bullies in offices. Their vices were orthoganal to vulgar behavior. You haven’t described any extortion, just table talk with irritated and disgusted you.

targeting people who are at a lower rung on the office chain of command and using it to their own personal advantage.

Again, neither I nor anyone else here knows how valid this gloss on their actions is.

And it must stop. Now.

Who me? Oh, I’ll get right to it…

You know, you only have one chance to make a 1st impression, ma’am. I’m getting a vibe from this exchange which gives me a clue as to why your managers didn’t bother about your complaints.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Sunday, December 3, AD 2017 5:19pm

To SMK, SFO:

You wrote in part:

“I do not know any women who have not experienced some kind of harassment at work.”

I cannot obviously testify to your situation, but sexual harassment in my industry – commercial nuclear power – has always been an offense punishable by termination, usually immediate. While male engineers and reactor operators invariably outnumber female ones (because we got our people from the US nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers), and while female secretaries outnumbered male ones [because woman usually – not always – prefer non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields], men who preyed on women got sacked. Why? No nuclear utility can afford newspaper headlines that read, “Sexploitation at local nuke plant while operators ignore indications.” Further, no nuclear utility was willing to endure the wrath of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission inasmuch as sexual harassment chills the safety culture work environment.

Three short stories. These are not exactly sexploitation, but they will give you an idea of the wrath visited on those who violate the rules. (1) Decades ago when I was working at a Westinghouse Pressurized Water Reactor that employed about 1000 people, two security guards were caught (on the security CCTV system no less – some people are really stupid) engaging in amorous activity. They were terminated the next day. (2) At the same plant one young man – a sick individual – was caught titillating himself at a desk (not his own) after normal working hours. Big investigation because it was right near the NRC Resident Inspector’s Office. Again, the Darwin Principle applies. Boom – fired. (3) At a different company – a Nuclear Steam System Supplier – a man (about my current age) was caught with semi-nude photos of women on his computer. Boom! He was walked out that very afternoon when the IT Cyber Security sweep detected the offending pictures.

Now all that said, maybe it’s different in other companies where public health and safety isn’t number one. But we don’t tolerate sexploitation in commercial nuclear power ANYWHERE. In fact, I imagine that if anyone did that, he would be visited by the local sheriff to cart his sorry behind off to jail. Why do I say that? Because I have seen it happen for lesser offenses. For example, one time a Chemistry Supervisor falisified a single reading on sulfur concentration in the fuel oil for the Emergency Diesel Denerators. Boom! The US NRC told plant management and the sheriff came to the man’s house to cart him away. US DOJ investigation on that one. Why? Because the EDGs are safety-related backup power for the 1000 MWe nuke if we were to have a complete loss of all AC power event, however unlikely.

You don’t mess with log indications. You show up on time. You do what the freaking procedures say. You obey regulation. And you darn sure don’t harass your co-worker, sexually or otherwise. You just got no idea.

smk, sfo
smk, sfo
Monday, December 4, AD 2017 5:59am

To Art: I was not a serial complainer. I was offended and disturbed by the treatment I received from a male foreman, who was supposed to be supervising a work crew on the road, at least 30 years my senior, who habitually “visited” me when I was alone in the office, doing my work. I did not welcome his visits, and I did not encourage him. When I saw this was becoming a habit and not likely to stop, I went up the chain of command to our supervisor, who told me what I related in my previous post. This was a government, Civil Service position, where we received regular sexual harassment training. I was not a serial complainer or troublemaker. I was in a position of trust and was given years of positive performance reviews. Your comments are way out of line.

To Lucius: Sir, I am glad your industry is vigilant about this kind of behavior. This is as it should be everywhere. Unfortunately, this is not the case for many of us. I have worked in government positions, private nationwide industry, and the public schools and have endured this treatment in each place, as have other individuals. It is not confined to secretaries, either. I am acquainted with a male nurse who has been bullied by coworkers and supervision while he is trying to do his job. It happens everywhere in America, from politicians in Washington, from media celebrities, and in more humble circumstances like my own.

Gentlemen, I stand by my words – this is un-Christian, un-Catholic, and un-American. – smk, sfo

Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, December 4, AD 2017 6:43am

Your comments are way out of line.

Ma’am, you brought up your work life. You can bloody well put up with someone else’s critical distance from whatever tales you’re telling. If I’m to take what you say at face value (lacunae aside), you’ve been stewing over this for 30 years. What do you think that says about you?

Mike Petrik
Mike Petrik
Monday, December 4, AD 2017 7:08am

SMK, What you endured should be unacceptable, and certainly would be at our law offices. Don’t let Art get to you. He is a very smart gent who is also a serial know-it-all of the highest order. Think of him as amusing and often clever.

Mary De Voe
Monday, December 4, AD 2017 7:33am

for my two cents: ask him about his mother, his wife, his children and about his father. Then tell him about your father. Better yet ask him to pray with you. Say The Lord’s Prayer when an hot breathing phone call comes across too.

just joan
just joan
Monday, December 4, AD 2017 10:40am

keillor wants to leave the usa,,,,,great go to syria, iraq, iran, somalia, n.k….a sanctimonious golem, huge bo fan activist,,,,perhaps he will hang himself, judas style, there is a god, by god.

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