Entertainer, author and beloved NPR radio personal

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Entertainer, author and beloved NPR radio personality Garrison Keillor has had plenty to say about Donald Trump during and after Election Day. On November 10, an article about Keillor’s Washington Post op-ed went viral. Keillor wrote — with disgust:


“Raw ego and proud illiteracy have won out, and a severely learning-disabled man with a real character problem will be president.”

He added:

“‘Alas for the Trump voters, the disasters he will bring on this country will fall more heavily on them than anyone else. The uneducated white males who elected him are the vulnerable ones, and they will not like what happens next.”

One week later Keillor penned an op-ed in the Stamford Advocate. He begins snidely suggesting Trump should get a new hairdo rather than continuing to look like a “hotel lounge pianist in 1959.”

Keillor says a makeover would take about 15 minutes max. And while they’re at it, get a speech therapist “to smooth out the Tony Soprano accent and give him a presidential voice like Nixon's or Reagan's and cut out those irritating repetitions for emphasis.” Keillor mocks, “Do you know what I mean? Am I right? Am I right? You know I'm right. You better believe I'm right.”

As many are finding, you can joke about Trump just so far, because in essence there is nothing funny about America’s incoming president. That’s when Keillor writes what so many Americans feel:

“He will never be my president because he doesn't read books, can't write more than a sentence or two at a time, has no strong loyalties beyond himself, is more insular than any New Yorker I ever knew, and because I don't see anything admirable or honorable about him.

This sets him apart from other politicians. The disaffected white blue-collar workers elected a Fifth Avenue tycoon to rescue them from the elitists -- fine, I get that -- but they could've chosen a better tycoon.

One who served in the military or attends church or reads history, loves opera, sails a boat -- something -- anything -- raises llamas, plays the oboe, runs a 5K race now and then, has close friends from childhood. I look at him and there's nothing there.”

But politics is not everything, says Keillor. “Life goes on.” And in that classic Garrison Keillor style, he concludes his piece by writing about the simple things in life — like buying and changing bulbs with his wife, adding, “I voted for Hillary, so I'm an elitist, but still… We use regular old G.E. light bulbs.”

Donald Trump was the cruelest candidate since George Wallace. Keillor says Trump won on fear and bile and that alone will make a great study on political pathologists, but even Trump’s own voters are tired of him and he is likely to become the most intensely disliked president since Herbert Hoover.

“His children will carry the burden of his name. He will never be happy in his own skin. But the damage he will do to our country — who knows?” Keillor adds Trump supporters voted for change, “and boy, are they going to get it.”

In conclusion, Garrison Keillor brings us back to the goodness in America and in the human spirit as he talks about two of his former teachers:


“Back to real life. I went up to my home town the other day and ran into my gym teacher, Stan Nelson, looking good at 96. He commanded a landing craft at Normandy on June 6, 1944, and never said a word about it back then, just made us do chin-ups whether we wanted to or not.

I saw my biology teacher Lyle Bradley, a Marine pilot in the Korean War, still going bird-watching in his 90s. I was not a good student then, but I am studying both of them now.

They have seen it all and are still optimistic. The past year of politics has taught us absolutely nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nada. The future is scary. Let the uneducated have their day. I am now going to pay more attention to teachers.

Something about Keillor’s last line gave me a gush of hope. And being still shell-shocked from the election, most of us will take optimism wherever we can get it. Thank you, Garrison Keillor.

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