Garrison Keillor, who pined so dearly for a carefree world consumed by mundane everyday life that he named his fictional radio town Lake Wobegon, is the latest major media dude to be canned for reported sexual misdeeds. Minnesota Public Radio, the distributor of A Prairie Home Companion, has reportedly cut ties with Keillor, the show’s creator.
In light of that news, it’s only appropriate to find that the last time Keillor traveled to Charleston a year ago, he recorded his adventures in perfect character for his recurring Washington Post column.
Upon entering Jestine’s Kitchen, Keillor fixates on the first waitress who acknowledges him:
I walked into Jestineās Kitchen in Charleston, and a waitress said, ‘Is there just one of you, sweetheart?’ and her voice was like jasmine and teaberry. There was just one of me, though I wished there were two and she was the other one.
Keillor goes on to:
- Talk about kissing waitresses ā “on the lips”
- Despair over the Rep. Chris Corley’s domestic violence arrest ā “in front of his weeping children”
- Lament Charleston as the start of the Civil War ā Alternately “the ugliness” and “the War of Criminal Apprehension”
We don’t know much about the specific allegations against Keillor, who created two separate fictional characters named “Guy,” but in an email with the Minneapolis Star Tribune today, Keillor dropped this golden line:
“If I had a dollar for every woman who asked to take a selfie with me and who slipped an arm around me and let it drift down below the beltline, Iād have at least a hundred dollars.”
Woe be gone, indeed.