During the election of 2016, I used to read Garrison Keillor’s columns and essays about Donald Trump. I think I even linked to them and quoted them a few times here. I like the way Keillor writes, and I grew up in an NPR family, and I can remember vividly that my mom and dad loved to listen to Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion. I guess all of that is in the past now, because Garrison Keillor is like every other dude with a serious case of toxic masculinity. Keillor has been fired from Minnesota Public Radio after some allegations of sexual harassment were made against him by a coworker.
Garrison Keillor, the creator and former host of A Prairie Home Companion, has been accused of inappropriate behavior with someone who worked with him, according to Minnesota Public Radio, which has announced it is cutting ties with Keillor and his production company. In a statement released Wednesday, the NPR member station says it learned of the allegations in October and has retained an outside law firm to investigate them. That investigation is ongoing.
Keillor, 75, no longer hosts A Prairie Home Companion, the show indelibly tied to his name. But he continues to produce The Writer’s Almanac. Both shows are widely carried by public radio stations across the country. MPR says in its statement that the station and its owner, American Public Media, will no longer distribute Writer’s Almanac and will stop rebroadcasting The Best Of A Prairie Home Companion. In addition, new episodes of A Prairie Home Companion — now hosted by Chris Thile — will be given a new name.
The allegations “relate to Mr. Keillor’s conduct while he was responsible for the production of A Prairie Home Companion,” MPR says. “Based on what we currently know, there are no similar allegations involving other staff.”
Keillor told The Associated Press that MPR cut ties with him over “a story that I think is more interesting and more complicated than the version MPR heard.” The radio personality later told the Star Tribune that he was not, in general, physically demonstrative, and that the incident that led to his firing involved touching a woman’s bare skin. “I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was open and my hand went up it about six inches,” he said. “She recoiled. I apologized.”
“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, I’d have at least a hundred dollars. So this is poetic irony of a high order,” Keillor later said.
On Tuesday, The Washington Post published an opinion column by Keillor in which he defended Sen. Al Franken, accused of forcibly kissing a radio host and groping another woman during a photo, against calls for his resignation.
“On the flight home, in a spirit of low comedy, Al ogled Miss [Leeann] Tweeden and pretended to grab her and a picture was taken. Eleven years later, a talk show host in LA, she goes public, and there is talk of resignation. This is pure absurdity, and the atrocity it leads to is a code of public deadliness,” Keillor wrote. “No kidding.”
Yet another giant falls. Keillor was, like Al Franken, a progressive icon to many, a voice of sanity, humor, homespun wisdom and weirdness. And it’s all gone now. The statements he gave to the Star Tribune about being groped by female fans is one of the strangest #MeToo stories ever – it’s not that I don’t believe that some fans have gotten handsy with him over the years, it’s that he thinks that’s some kind of cosmic justification for groping a coworker. Oh, and he has a history of saying and thinking terrible things about sexual harassment too – in 1994, he said in a speech, “A world in which there is no sexual harassment at all is a world in which there will not be any flirtation.” Burn it all to the ground.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
I guess i’m not understanding here. He purposely put his hand on her back or his hand actually slipped under her open backed short accidentally?
He said he moved to consolingly pat her on the back, then said his hand went UP her shirt, about 6 INCHES. These two things do not comport.
What’s that I smell? More pants on fire.
Is something missing here? He was fired for touching someone’s back while comforting her? Is there more to the story? I’m in no way trying to diminish the woman’s experience, but if he wasn’t trying to harass her, or coerce her, or wield power over her, or touch her intentionally, what gives?
Per NPR:
The radio personality later told the Star Tribune that he was not, in general, physically demonstrative, and that the incident that led to his firing involved touching a woman’s bare skin. “I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was open and my hand went up it about six inches,” he said.
Well Luna, it was her bare back, untucked shirt. Per MPR this was a single incident though. Consoling not sexual situation. He apologized at the time for offending her. Surely there is more to this story. I doubt they fired a money maker for nothing but as this story is written it’s pretty lame. Reprimand, not career ending type offense.
Yes, there is something missing here. This is HIS interpretation of the claims against him. Before we judge, let’s wait to hear from the woman’s perspective.
I don’t even understand his rationalization. He patted her on the back and her shirt opened? That’s…not how shirts work.
No, apparently she was wearing an open-back shirt and his hand wound up going under the upper part of the shirt, or something like that. There seems to be some missing info because it sounds fairly innocent, but then this is his version we’re hearing.
Yeah, I get the open-back shirt part but even then it’s a sketchy rationalization. No one “accidentally” moves his hand six inches too far.
No. He’s working way too hard here. And “I”m 75?” So what? You can be a lech at any age, Dude.
I wonder if he meant the shirt was *untucked,* not open-backed.
Oh, that’s a good point. That makes sense.
Even worse, because he would be perilously close to her bum. Anyone, who feels a hand suddenly on her back skin, would recoil thinking the next move was to grab a breast.
Nope. I need to hear more before I condemn him out of hand. If there is more, then we can go there but for now this is too vague and unproven. All harassment must stop, full stop, but we can afford to slow down and ask for more information, as well.
I know that he is guilty of sexual harassment. I do not know about this particular incident but I know of another. I knew a woman in the 1990’s who had contact with him and she told me about it. He was married with a 2 year old at the time I believe. Not that it matters, but that’s the time frame.
Haven’t been able to stand the guy since.
Thanks for this. We need to keep speaking out. Have you talked to your friend yet about the firing?
I have not; we’ve been out of contact for a few years now. I don’t think I have her email any more. But I thought of her immediately when I heard about this yesterday.
This is truth. I have heard accounts from interns whom he harrassed mercilessly. Expect to hear more women come forward. MPR has a hotline set up, so if you track down your friend, Bluhare, she could call.
If you listen to the lyrics of his songs & skits, you’ll hear a lot about “girls” sitting on his lap, giving him a kiss, blah blah blah. Gross.
I grew up listening to his show every Saturday night and was so disappointed to hear about his off-stage behavior. Then I started listening closer to his on-stage behavior and was done.
Either he does not understand what sexual harassment means or he doesn’t give a crap. He’s been disrespectful to women for years. What a shame.
He makes a ton of money for Minnesota Public Radio. They have no reason to fire him if they don’t believe the women. I guarantee they have investigated him. This is not an isolated incident.
Good point Pedro…if there is one thing we are seeing from this spate of firings, it’s that it is never just one incident. No-one like Keilor is going to get fired over an isolated mistake, there would have to be a pattern.
But the MPR quote from the above article says, “Based on what we currently know, there are no similar allegations involving other staff.”
Here’s where I am, too. I definitely knew he cheated freely, but that’s not necessarily sexual harassment.
It is if you invite women you don’t know to your hotel room when they are working at events you are involved with.
He isn’t being prosecuted in a court of law; this was a corporate decision to cut losses, before something bigger about his behavior comes down the pike.
Exactly. He is big business for MPR. They didn’t cut him loose for nothing.
Yes! Completely agreed. This doesn’t sound too out of line to me
@tst very well said. And I agree
NPR home here as well. My husband & I love listening to old PHC shows. This is so disappointing.
NPR is on pretty much 24/7 here at my house but I gotta admit I always switched it off the minute PHC came on. I gave it a try a couple times but its contrived folksiness just wasn’t for me and I never could stand Keillor, for no good reason. I can’t listen to the new version of the show, either, because it feels too similar to the old one. I wonder if that will change now.
Me, too Esmom. I find him so saccharine-pseudo-folksy as to be distasteful.
Agree. Not surprised. Grown men who make a career out of being “cute” and wallowing in the alleged innocence and purity of children or the past are profoundly creepy. Like Jimmy Saville
It worked in the 1980s as loving satire about small-town Minnesota, where Catholics vs. Lutherans were as diverse as life got. Some of his stories were beautiful. Some were really funny. Some were spot-on about that strange little piece of Americanna, especially if you grew up in a small Midwest town during the 1950s & 60s. My parents confirmed that was indeed – sort of – how life was. Very white. Very Scandinavian. Very church basement jello salad. I visited those town as a kid, before Reganomics destroyed many of them and people kept moving to big cities.
(But oh, the skeletons in the closet he never addressed…)
So life moved on, the world changed and his stories didn’t. His white male privilege mixed with his old-fashioned viewpoint lost relevance. America became more culturally diverse, his stories didn’t. I wonder if there was ever a person of color or a Muslim or Hindu or Jew in any of his stories?
And hot damn, his views on women became antiquated. Now he’s digging in his heels. I guess it’s hard to go from beloved state mascot to getting fired for your gross behavior. Fifty years in a workplace doesn’t give you the right to treat women like meat.
I’d much rather claim Prince to represent our state than a washed-up a-hole who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word harassment.
Anyway, that’s probably why the show felt saccharine. It was of another time and place when his was the predominant viewpoint. Thank God that’s changing.
He was talking about an area that most likely really didn’t have any Jews or Muslims or black people or anybody other than Scandinavian American Lutherans and Catholics. He was writing about what he knew.
Spike Lee has his characters often in a totally black American environment. That doesn’t make them less interesting. Tyler Perry often does the same. Likewise for any writer who grew up in an area exclusively with their particular ethnic group, such as Chinese American or Irish American. Their stories and characters are still interesting to people of different backgrounds. Even more interesting, since they offer a glimpse into a different culture. They don’t need to toss in a few tokens to create a false diversity – the original environment is already rich in diversity of a different sort.
It’s hard for people who live in urban areas or academic small towns to realize how many white Americans especially probably have never seen people in their school or town who weren’t ethnically just like themselves. This perhaps can make it easier for them to believe Trump’s version of the world, where foreigners and non-Christians are scary threats. Apparently just seeing other people on tv isn’t enough. But it doesn’t mean their lives are dull or everybody is identical or that they are all bigots.
And there is plenty of bigotry in the middle of ethnically and religiously diverse neighborhoods. Just living next door to each other and attending the same schools doesn’t guarantee tolerance either. Economic competition between groups often makes it harder to combat bigotry, actually. As that eases, things can relax a bit. It’s really a complicated problem.
But that’s the problem. He didn’t include diversity even though he has lived in St. Paul for decades. He kept telling old white man small town stories, which the world is already saturated in. He was cruel to people he saw as “other”, including Jews, Muslims, people of color and often women. He made creepy comments on stage about teenage girls walking around the State Fair. He’s lecherous and gross and no amount of “he didn’t know better” or “he didn’t know any other way” is going to cut it.
St. Paul has seen huge growth recently in Hmong and Somali immigration. Prior to that our population of Latino, South-East Asian and other African immigrants grew steadily. Surely the man has seen people of color on a regular basis for decades.
Plus he grew up in Anoka, which is a suburb not a small town. He did not grow with his audience and his misogyny in the workplace? Turns out to be illegal.
He’s written liberal commentary for local and national newspapers, but he doesn’t speak for us.
If you’re interested in stories about people of color living in Minnesota, I recommend the new anthology of essays called “A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota” edited by Sun Yung Shin.
It’s always nice to know you’re not the only one. Literally, it’s like the only NPR program that would cause me to turn the dial. Everything about it /him caused irrational annoyance on my end. I just never “got” it, I guess. This American Life, Fresh Air, Serial, World Cafe-et all-all golden.
Me too. That show was like nails on a chalkboard to me.
Right there with you. I listen to pretty much everything my local station broadcasts except for PHC. I couldn’t flip it fast enough–for whatever reason it just grated on me. Nice to know I’m not alone!
I don’t know anything about him but there was a guy on Twitter last night talking about the soft pedaled white supremacy of PHC. And apparently he’s said some bad stuff about immigrants, Jews, and Rep Ellison. So not sad to see him go.
and that too. His recent “editorial” was grotesque and oozing white chauvinism. The whitest guy at NPR. Which is saying a lot.
I come from a small town in the Midwest, and I found PHC incredibly unfunny and contrived and wholly unrelatable. But mostly, I found his sketches, humor, and essays so focused on sex and misogynistic that I couldn’t bear to even hear his voice and would turn off NPR when it came on. When the news came out, one of my Midwest friends texted me immediately and said “you called it!”. For years I had been telling anyone who brought him and PHC up that I found the show grossly misogynistic. It clearly reflected his attitudes. Hate this guy. Glad to see him gone.
I saw him read from his newest book of poetry a couple years ago, and I had him sign it afterwards. He seemed like a very unusual person to me. I liked his poems, and being from the Midwest have appreciated some of his humor over the years. I also appreciated that he was a rare public voice that plugged libraries, Liberal Arts degrees, and literature. I had one small pet peeve about him, though, which is that on his Writer’s Almanac on NPR, it seemed like he mostly just featured male writers and poets. I’m disappointed to hear this news. I suspect he won’t be the last well-known man I’ve admired who is going to be exposed.
Maybe he was a liberal icon to straight people, but to the LGBT community he’s always been awful.
http://www.tmz.com/2007/03/14/garrison-keillor-a-prairie-homophobic-companion/
Good riddance.
Well, if he thinks flirtation and sexual harassment are the same thing, maybe that’s where his problem lies. As for him ‘accidentally finding bare skin up 6 inches on her person, is like the tree that jumps out into the road in front of the car in an ‘accident’. There’s more to that story. Everyone knows the difference between accidental touch and inappropriate touch so I don’t buy it.
It’s unlikely that the leap to get rid of him would be based on that one incident as described. Straight white men at least are not losing their jobs over one accusation. Institutions are more cautious than that and investigate. Yes, there will be more to the story.
I am so glad that other commentators share my befuddlement (and disgust) at his explanation. I “I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was open and my hand went up it about six inches.” Huh!?!?! For someone who professes to love the written word, he sure failed at providing a sensical explanation. He also sounds incredibly conceited.
Add me to the list of people who can’t stand to listen to GK or PHC. Just the sound of his voice is irritating let alone what he was saying. I found his writing more tolerable sometimes even lol funny. Has to be more about this story tho. MPR is taking a scorched earth stance with GK. They very quickly want to be far far away from him.
And, folksiness is just such a tedious white people thing. Appropriation, sanitisation, white-ification of working-class culture in a woeful attempt to appear “authentic” and democratic.
Everyone knows real american peoples’ culture is the blues.
Lake Woe Be Gone (they wish), aptly named indeed.
Not gone soon enough