Forgot about this...

So: Dave, I didn't mean that Keillor is unpopular in Minnesota, but that perhaps it would be easier for a Minnesotan to understand what it is that I find so annoying about him. The same way some dude from the Ozarks might have a better understanding of what's insulting about "The Beverly Hillbillies" than someone from New England would. And, yeah, Keillor's fairly popular among people who listen to public radio. But I'm not alone in feeling that he (and his white, turtleneck'd upper-middle-class audience) isn't laughing with us, but at us.

I don't think he loves "these people," at all. I doubt he even knows any of "these people." He's a rich, pretentious, F. Scott Fiztgerald-fetishising phoney, a WASP from Brooklyn Park masquerading as an outstate-gomer-made-good. He is not one of "these people," doesn't seem to know them, and wouldn't like their usually standoffish and conservative asses if he did know them. This makes him an outsider, and makes his humour at the expense of "these people" insulting. Uh, in my opinion, of course. :)

And I've mentioned this before, I think, but… The moment I realised what an out-of-touch snob Keillor is was during one of his many Jesse Ventura rants. He made some disparaging comments about Ventura's diction and accent, and said that he'd never met anyone from Minnesota who "talks like that." No, I s'pose Keillor probably doesn't hear that accent, much, around his $710,000 St. Paul mansion, or his new 3.5 million dollar Manhattan apartment. To hear people talk "like that," he'd have to go out and talk to real, working-class (*shudder*) Twin Citians. And that's just too much to ask, even of a stout-hearted Norwegian farm boy like Keilor. :P

---Lepus Rex