Post to the Host

Host Garrison Keillor answers your questions about life, love, writing, authors, and of course, A Prairie Home Companion.

Send GK Your Question »

Dear Garrison, My wife and

October 25, 2004 |

Dear Garrison,
My wife and I have enjoyed your show for as long as we can remember. I appreciate byour ability to poke fun at all of us, especially politicians. However, I think it's unfortunate that you don't give equal time to both political parties. While I agree that the President deserves considerable criticism, Senator Kerry should get his share, especially on a radio show that bills itself as
entertainment. If not, perhaps you could change the name of the show to "A Kerry Home Companion."

Jim Klusman
Lafayette, Indiana

Jim,
I'm sorry that I've offended you, I really am, but I don't know how to write in a fair and equally distributed way. I just write what I'm given to write. Thus, you hear a lot about Minnesota on the show and almost nothing about Indiana. Lots about Lutherans, very little about Presbyterians. Writers are biased. Anyway, I am. The President is easier to do, his voice, his style of speaking, and of course he has a track record. And when you do the President and get his voice as well as Tim Russell does, everybody laughs. Same as when he does Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Gray Davis didn't get laughs.) We've done Kerry a couple times, most recently in a funny segment called "Cooking With Kerry," which made fun of some of his locutions, but probably it didn't hit hard enough for your taste. What troubles me is how we're ever going to manage to live together in this country. If "A Prairie Home Companion" loses all its Republican listeners and our sponsors drop us and the show folds, that's okay by me — I'm retirement age anyway — but there's a war in this country over some basic American values and it won't be settled on November 2. We need more moderates.

Previous Post: « GK, I work in Europe

Next Post: Mr. Keillor, I've enjoyed the »