Author and radio host Garrison Keillor. (photo: MPR)
Garrison Keillor Garrison Keillor's Website
22 April 22
I was in Minnesota for a while in April but weather systems can’t read a calendar and they were delivering more of November, which is satisfying to us Minnesotans. We are great complainers. God made children short so they wouldn’t have far to fall and God put us in Minnesota because joyfulness is absolutely not our thing, Easter is a holiday we dread, the enforced jubilation, the trumpets in the choir loft, and when you wake up Easter morning and a cold rain is falling it’s very very satisfying.
I went to Minnesota alone and it was interesting discover that without my wife, I don’t know where things are or how to get the washer to work when it stops in mid-cycle and won’t resume. I can’t make sense of the instruction manual so I call her back in New York and she tells me to press START and hold it in and I do and the washer resumes. It’s downright embarrassing — my dad did his own auto repair and carpentry and I can’t operate an automatic washer. Thank goodness I still have a sense of shame.
Men are lonely hunters and herdsmen and I turned down dinner invitations because I struggle in social situations. I invited three women friends, strangers to each other, to lunch Saturday and they conversed easily among themselves and I sat at the end of the table, a silent observer. I thought to myself, “Their gender can get along fine without mine, and what will we do when they discover it?”
This was never so clear as in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, watching the hunters Graham, Hawley, Cruz, Cornyn, Cotton, go after Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who sat with calm and patient dignity and said, “Thank you, Senator” to each one and tried to answer their spitballs with reasoned comment. My gender looked stupid and craven on national TV that week and I cannot get that out of my mind, listening to elderly juveniles harass the teacher.
It was enough to make me wonder if men in public office should be required to wear a defibrillator that will shock them when they tell a fib, a little kick in the chest that says, “Shape up or ship out.”
Maybe warfare is the result of sheer stupidity, men needing to find something to do with themselves. The uniforms are wonderful, precision marching is satisfying, but there needs to be a larger purpose and why not go find men in another uniform and shoot them? My Minnesota friends of Viking heritage lead peaceful lives for the most part but in the fall they feel an overwhelming urge to get in a longboat and go burn a village and capture all the women and they satisfy the urge by going to a football game and getting good and drunk and then they’re good again.
The Great War of 1918 was the dumbest war that ever was and it was caused in part by the fact that armies had so much great new stuff they were desperate to use — tanks, planes, armored ships, bigger artillery — and the rulers and prime ministers strove to find an excuse to let them go to it and men marched off to war with bounding enthusiasm and about ten million soldiers died and twelve million civilians in a conflict that accomplished nothing except to lay the groundwork for the War of 1939.
Our institutions are busy pursuing diversity and inclusivity but it’s mostly cosmetic and what we need is detestosteronation of politics. The current Congress is gridlocked and I suggest we give them all a two-year sabbatical and elect a new one — we hope, with a female majority — and take a break from stupidity. Some things need to happen in America. Climate change must be addressed. A system of excellent affordable health care so that people, regardless of race or class, can take advantage of the advances in medical science. Child support and capable public education that guarantees every child a chance in life. Decent care for mentally ill, who now wind up homeless or in prison or in hopeless squalor. And fair taxation to pay for it.
All this can be done in two years if we elect representatives who have the caregiver gene — in other words, women — and then in two years the clown show can return and maybe we can declare war on Canada. Why not? Are you afraid of Canadians? Montreal must fall. Send the dogs to lift a leg on Winnipeg. Use judo on Trudeau. Improve Vancouver with stain remover. Nuts to the North!
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