On insulting half your audience: I never watch the Emmys, but if I did I would have stopped by now
Apparently the folks who participate in the Emmys have come to feel that their mission is to put down Trump and his supporters, which is approximately half of the country.
I wouldn’t think that this would be good for ratings—or much of anything else except the swelling of the Emmy participants’ own egos, which were probably sufficiently large to begin with.
Long long ago, back when I was a freshly hatched blogger (January 2005), I wrote a post about this sort of thing—not in connection with the Emmys, but the phenomenon in general. I reproduce it here.
It happens nearly every time. I’ll be reading a short story, let’s say, enjoying myself, lost in the experience—when suddenly, there it is: the gratuitous and mean-spirited and out-of-context slap at Bush, or at those who support him. It’s not as though the story is even tangentially about politics, either; it can be about anything at all, it doesn’t really matter.
The Bush-dissing will be thrown in when you least expect it, just to let the reader know—well, to let the reader know what, exactly? To let the reader know that the author is hip, kindly, intelligent, moral—oh, just about everything a person ought to be. And that the reader must of course be a member of the club, too—not one of those Others, the warmongers, the selfish and stupid and demonized people who happen to have voted for Bush.
Back when I was one of the gang, too, back when I was in with the in crowd (“if it’s square, we ain’t there”), did I notice when authors dragged in their political credentials from left field? Or perhaps it wasn’t quite as commonplace back then for them to do so?
At any rate, now it seems positively obligatory. I’m reading along, sunk deep within the story, bonding with the characters—and then, suddenly, it’s as though the author has reached a hand out of the pages of the magazine (OK, I’ll confess, sometimes it’s the New Yorker—yes, I still read it for the fiction, just as some people claim they read Playboy for the interviews) and slapped me across the face.
Authors, do you really want to do this? Because, with a single sentence, you’ve managed to alienate and offend (not to mention insult) up to half your audience.
I don’t think this even occurs to you. I think you just assume that anyone perceptive and intelligent and downright nuanced enough to be reading your fabulous work couldn’t possibly—no, say it isn’t so, Joe!!—support that disgusting, repulsive, lying POS Bush. Or maybe you just don’t care. Maybe you don’t want people like that for your audience.
It’s not just authors. It’s plays, concerts, performances of all kinds, even those given by friends of mine, people I know and otherwise respect, people with good hearts. It’s poetry readings most particularly. It’s gotten so bad that I go to all cultural events girding my loins and waiting for the blow to fall, waiting for my intelligence and judgment and ethics to be insulted. And this from people who consider themselves culturally and morally superior, although this sense of superiority doesn’t seem to reside in their needing to prove themselves to be well-informed or logical or knowledgeable about the issues—just in letting the world know that they’re on the right side of them (which would be the left side, naturalment).
Maybe Trump-bashing shouldn’t affect me the same way, because I’m not exactly what you’d call a Trump-supporter. But it does affect me the same way; turns me off utterly and entirely. And in the many years since I wrote that post, the phenomenon of liberal entertainers and artists gratuitously bashing the political opposition when performing or in their fiction or at awards ceremonies has only gotten more ubiquitous. I feel a surge of anger and annoyance whenever people do it, and they do it a lot.
Something akin to that anger and annoyance was described by John Updike in an essay he wrote in the late 80s about the Vietnam protests of the 60s and his own reaction among the literati back then:
The protest, from my perspective, was in large part a snobbish dismissal of Johnson by the Eastern establishment; Cambridge professors and Manhattan lawyers and their guitar-strumming children thought they could run the country and the world better than this lugubrious bohunk from Texas. These privileged members of a privileged nation believed that their pleasant position could be maintained without anything visibly ugly happening in the world. They were full of aesthetic disdain for their own defenders, the business-suited hirelings drearily pondering geopolitics and its bloody necessities down in Washington. The protesters were spitting on the cops who were trying to keep their property””the USA and its many amenities””intact…
It was hard to explain my indignation, even to myself. The peace movement’s predecessor and progenitor, the civil-rights movement, had posed no emotional problem…
…Those who deplored the war fit what protesting they could into their suburban schedules and otherwise dismissed it with a gesture of automatic distaste; the technocrats of our acquaintance, the electronic engineers and stockbrokers and economics professors, tended to see the involvement as an administrative blunder, to which they could attach no passion. But I””I whose stock in trade as an American author included an intuition into the mass consciousness and an identification with our national fortunes””felt obliged to defend Johnson and Rusk and Rostow, and then Nixon and Kissinger, as they maneuvered, with many a solemn bluff and thunderous air raid, our quagmirish involvement and long extrication. My face would become hot, my voice high and tense and wildly stuttery; I could feel my heart race in a kind of panic whenever the subject came up, and my excitement threatened to suffocate me…
…Were we really secure enough””high and mighty and smug enough””to become a pacifist nation? “You don’t get something for nothing,” my father, a schoolteacher, would frequently say…I would rather live under Diem (or Ky, or Thieu) than under Ho Chi Minh and his enforcers, and assumed that most South Vietnamese would. Those who would not, let them move North. But the foot traffic, one could not help noticing in these Communist/non-Communist partitions, was South, or West, away from Communism. Why was that? And so on.
I wanted to keep quiet, but could not. Something about it all made me very sore. I spoke up, blushing and hating my disruption of a post-liberal socioeconomic-cultural harmony I was pleased to be a part of…
…My thoughts ran as follows. Peace depends upon the threat of violence. The threat cannot always be idle…It was all very well for civilized little countries like Sweden and Canada to tut-tut in the shade of our nuclear umbrella and welcome our deserters and draft evaders, but the United States had nobody to hide behind. Credibility must be maintained. Power is a dirty business, but who ever said it wasn’t?…The Vietnam war””or any war””is “wrong,” but in the sense that existence itself is wrong. To be alive is to be a killer; and though the Jains try to hide this by wearing gauze masks to avoid inhaling insects, and the antiabortionists by picketing hospitals, and peace activists by lying down in front of ammunition trains, there is really no hiding what every meal we eat juicily demonstrates. Peace is not something we are entitled to but an illusory respite we earn. On both the personal and national level, islands of truce created by balances of terror and potential violence are the best we can hope for. Pacifism is a luxury a generous country can allow a small minority of its members, but the pacifism invoked in the anti-Vietnam protest was hypocritical and spurious. Under the banner of a peace movement, rather, war was being waged by a privileged few upon the administration and the American majority that had elected it…
My earliest sociological thought about myself had been that I was fortunate to be a boy and an American. Now the world was being told that American males””especially white, Protestant males who had done well under “the system”””were the root of evil.
It’s a very long essay, beautifully written as Updike’s work always is whether you like it or not. It’s sobering that he could write a line such as “Now the world was being told that American males””especially white, Protestant males who had done well under ‘the system’””were the root of evil” in describing the 60s of about 50 years ago. But yes, I remember the 60s, and I was there.
[NOTE: That last sentence is a reference to this.]
Yep, to all of this. The latest incarnation of this is the labeling of huge swaths of society as ‘white supremacists.’ After pounding ‘racist’ into the ground so much that is has totally lost it’s meaning they have now moved on to an even more absurd slur. It is truly amazing how such a large portion of the mass media has just signed off on slandering such a huge part of their potential customers.
Updike quote
I will relate two anecdotes that will agree with Updike. Many liberals of that era took their cues from the Kennedys. Bobby and LBJ had a visceral and not very well hidden dislike of each other. My uncle told me that in his commuting days from Manhattan to Westchester, one day he saw Bobby and LBJ parked in a limo in front of Grand Central Station. LBJ was shaking his finger in Bobby’s face. It doesn’t take much imagination to infer Bobby’s reaction.
Many liberals followed Bobby onto the anti-LBJ bandwagon.
In a discussion of current events in a class my senior year in high school, I recall a fellow student- and a very bright one- mimicking LBJ: “Mah fellow Americans.” Not too difficult to infer mocking coming from New England. But LBJ merely got this guy’s standard treatment, as his M.O. towards the world was mockery.
My response whenever I encounter gratuitous criticism of conservatives is to instantly stop reading whatever it is. Most of the stuff I read is unpaid or low-paid work produced by someone whose only aim must be to influence others, e.g., blogs like this one, book reviews in small circulation magazines. So I figure that ceasing to read is sufficient punishment for the author.
Concerning the Emmys, I did not watch it since I figured it would be a conservative bashing event. However, I just looked at a list of who was nominated vs who won.
Of all the categories of shows, the only ones that I regularly watch are “reality” – Project Runway, Top Chef, Voice, Antiques Roadshow, and MasterChef. For all of these shows, I record them and fast forward to the parts that I want to watch. OF the other classifications, I didn’t even recognize the majority of the shows and names.
I visited the blog today to see if there was a post on dresses.
“Maybe Trump-bashing shouldn’t affect me the same way, because I’m not exactly what you’d call a Trump-supporter. . . . ” Neither am I. But it helps to keep in mind who the ultimate target is: not Trump, but you and me, or anyone who values liberty and doesn’t want to be a serf of the “liberal” Hive.
It was quite a few years ago, maybe back in the ’90s, that I read a remark by Linda Ronstadt to the effect that she didn’t want conservatives in her audience. I had been interested in hearing her Nelson Riddle-arranged album of standards, but that kind of killed it. I’ll only put up with that kind of stuff from an artist if I *really* want to hear/see/read their work. Non-geniuses can go elsewhere.
Kind of wrote off Garrison Keillor a long time ago for similar reasons. He was/is an especially odd case because so much of his schtick for so long was this genial affectionate satire of small-town people, but then he started unleashing this rage that was, intentionally or not, directed at the real-life incarnations of the same sort of people.
” . . . when suddenly, there it is: the gratuitous and mean-spirited and out-of-context slap . . .”
That is a perfect description of what it is – a slap!
I’ve gotten to the point that a book, or movie, whatever it is, I simply put down, or walk away from. It makes me realize that I was wasting my time on listening to or reading someone who has no sense of common decency.
It has gotten much worse since Trump’s win. So many of the left think that everyone thinks like they do and, so, they do these “slaps” all the time.
Worse, is that the higher ups (CEO level) in my company are doing it and don’t realize (or maybe just don’t care) that they are referring to their own workforce!
Excellent post as usual Neo.
Liz:
The fashion post.
“when suddenly, there it is: the gratuitous and mean-spirited and out-of-context slap” neo
We’ve all experienced it and the proper response is to slap back. A critical review of a movie, book or album can go a long way. I’ve avoided any number of movies and books as a result of reading a critical review that highlights leftist virtue signalling.
Reportedly, the Emmy’s had poor viewership. Let them preach to the choir. I long ago tuned out Hollywood’s annual self-congratulatory celebrations. That won’t end it but I won’t support it. They are TWANLOC.
“Reportedly, the Emmy’s had poor viewership.”
They’ve joined ESPN in the hunt for a much more exclusive audience. I’m not at all sure discouraging media from auto-asphyxiation is a worthwhile endeavor. Perhaps encouraging them to yell even louder would accelerate the trend towards achieving the audience level they deserve?
Stephen Colbert doesn’t look well, either his secretly sick or he is a vampire. This man doesn’t look normal, you can see the hate in his eyes. Scott adams said it best, you can say everyone is biased but conservatives don’t have those hysterical hypnotized crazy eyes that the liberals have during their typical bashing. Liberals are scary, you can tell they have lost their minds, only thing that is stopping them from massacring conservatives like so many communist countries in the 20th century is our law and order.
Stephen Colbert has the facial expression of the Joker in batman whenever he does his usual Trump bashing, especially with his eyes of a psychopath.
Neo:
you might not be a Trump supporter but it doesn’t matter to the liberals because they have grouped all conservatives together with Trump. Ben Shapiro hates trump, he still does, he was part of the Michelle Fields fiasco, but it doesn’t matter to liberals they have identified him as a Trumpian anyway.
You really nailed it, Neo. (And Updike too, of course).
Reading your post took me back to one of my favorite C.S. Lewis essays: “The Inner Ring”. (What a very wise and prescient man he was). Have you heard of it?
http://www.lewissociety.org/innerring.php
Lewis notes that all of us, at some stage, will be tempted first to join, and then to conspicuously display our membership of, what he calls “The Inner Ring”.
The Inner Ring is “the lure of the caucus”; the desire to be “in” or “in the know”; or to savor: “the delicious knowledge that we – we four or five all huddled beside this stove – are the people who know”
The real allure of being in the Inner Ring of course is not the knowledge or the values espoused, or even the company of the fellows within the Ring, but the fact that others are excluded from the rarefied circle.
That is the key for those who seek the Inner Ring: it excludes lesser people. Lewis called the excluded: “the public, the ignorant, romantic public, who would never understand”. Hillary called them “the deplorables”.
Like the biblical treatment of money, an Inner Ring, per se, is not to be condemned as it is often necessary and arises spontaneously in order to perform some necessary cation or achieve some good. It is the love of or desire to be an “Inner Ringer” for its own sake that is to be condemned.
I would bet that, like me, all who read your post thought of Hillary, the ultimate insider who stands for nothing except being an insider.
I certainly think of Hillary too when Lewis says:
“Of all the passions , the passion for the inner ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things”.
I am sure we can all come up with incongruous digs by the Left but my “favorite” is in the movie Jerry Maguire of show me the money fame. Half way through the movie, the character played by Tom Cruise is making a move on the female lead and he says something like “I hope I wasn’t all Clarence Thomas with you.” LOL I of course immediately stopped the streaming but I did get a good laugh so I guess I owe them whatever they got for my streaming the first part.
One of the best things about living abroad is not being able to see US TV. I don’t know or care to know most of these people.
always the sinners of vanity, the liberals are the real supremacists, they are truly the ones who believe they are better than everyone else while enjoying the feeling of being superior.
I wonder why the line wasn’t written as “I hope I wasn’t all Bill Clinton with you.”
As is often the case, “This is Spinal Tap” said it best:
Marty: The last time Tap toured America, they where, uh, booked into 10,000 seat arenas, and 15,000 seat venues, and it seems that now, on their current tour they’re being booked into 1,200 seat arenas, 1,500 seat arenas, and uh I was just wondering, does this mean uh…the popularity of the group is waning?
Ian: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no…no, no, not at all. I, I, I just think that the.. uh.. their appeal is becoming more selective.
http://www.moviequotedb.com/movies/this-is-spinal-tap/views.html
It’s flat out __ Derangement Syndrome. I really think they can’t help themselves. I used to say that as a joke, but I’ve started believing it now.
They truly hate us (us = Not “Them”, and they pick the biggest target at the time – Bush, Palin, etc, but it’s really us, not just Bush, Palin, Trump). Our existence bothers them.
And THAT scares me. I feel like a Kulak, constantly being demonized. This white supremacist crap – calling all non-liberal white people “evil” is shocking. How is this any different than the Rwanda massacres where they started off by calling the opposition ‘cockroaches’ and other dehumanizing things?
“Apparently the folks who participate in the Emmys have come to feel …”
I had to stop and think about what the Emmys are for. Television dramas as I now recall. Looking at the background in pictures of the chicks, one or whom is pretty good looking, should have made that obvious, I guess.
There is another awrd show of some kind for stage productions and something for musical types too. The Grammys.
Probably other awards too, when it comes down to that. Maybe something for radio.
On point from elsewhere
http://neoneocon.com/2017/09/15/car-question/#comment-2257713
Ed Bonderenka Says:
September 18th, 2017 at 12:30 pm
AesopFan Says:
“Anybody here missing Car Talk yet?”
No. I was a huge fan and listened religiously (burnt incense) until they went so annoyingly liberal political in their show content.
Reading Updike’s words about the Vietnam days was like sitting in front of a warm fire and absorbing the warmth of his wisdom.
A chance encounter with a fellow Vietnam vet today at the Costco book section. We discussed the book about the Ken Burns NP Broadcasting TV Vietnam series. For several minutes we were like two teenagers talking about our memories. Such a wonderful feeling to chat with a kindred spirit. We’re both broken old men, but for a short time we felt like young men again. That’s a kinship that the progs will never know.
My bride and I spent two weeks on a cruise recently and expected to hear Trump bashing aplenty. Big surprise – we heard little. Heard some from Canadians, which wasn’t exactly a surprise. They heard he is trying to take health insurance away from the majority of the country. Sheesh. I tried to enlighten them. They seemed amicable to listening.
I think the elites are going way over the line and more and more people are tuning them out.
Shapiro doesn’t like Bannon, because Bannon split the Breitbart staff into two camps with the high handed handling of Breitbart reporter.
Then Trum fired Bannon. The damage control got a little bit too high maintenance.
As for Shapiro on Trum, Shapiro doesn’t trust Democrat Trum nor the Alt Right that made Trum a power house.
All this civil war talk doesn’t really affect me. Been there, done that from 2003 to 2006. At least this time I don’t have to defend the CINC, I can make fun of him now too.
It is no worse than what the Left called me or treated me. The new gen and the old gen now have to fight, because they are now left with no choice. Before, they would have called me an internet troll or tl;dr when I was arguing, debating, fighting, and attacking the Leftist alliance. Even some conservatives from California would look at me as if I was some right wing fanatic.
Now you’re all in the same boat, whether you like it or not, because the Leftist alliance has mobilized enough of their strategic reserves that you don’t have a choice except to react to them.
But their mobilization efforts aren’t over. And you still have yet to encounter the Full Power of Islamic Jihad, the Full Power of the Deep State, the Full Power of the factions and societies behind the Deep State, and the other hidden factors that you don’t know that you don’t know.
Well, enjoy the onion suspense layer thriller called in this virtual shadowy Plato cave life.
Liberals are scary, you can tell they have lost their minds, only thing that is stopping them from massacring conservatives like so many communist countries in the 20th century is our law and order.
What happened to all the warriors of the West, they all volunteer to become eunuchs and have their family jewels trans gendered and cut off?
For those that don’t get it, if you can’t kill Islamic Jihadists and wasted your time in prosperous society getting fat on the circuses, then of course you’d be scared of “liberals”.
Being scared of a few zombies that need to eat brains because they don’t have brains, isn’t exactly worthy of praise.
It is truly amazing how such a large portion of the mass media has just signed off on slandering such a huge part of their potential customers.
Customers? It is truly amazing that the slaves of the Leftist US Regime actually think they aren’t slaves of the mass sewer propaganda arms.
They actually think they are potential customers instead. Hence this makes the prophetic line “the slaves will think themselves free” true.
Goodness.
Goodness is the root of evil — evil is the desire to end the goodness, especially the goodness of others.
Only without goodness, or God, will there be no evil.
But goodness comes from people; historically … “especially white, Protestant males who had done well under ‘the system’–”, those were are the root of the Goodness of America, they are, and “were the root of evil”.
Envy is the motivation of most evil, activated by the existence of Goodness.
“…Kind of wrote off Garrison Keillor a long time ago for similar reasons. He was/is an especially odd case because so much of his schtick for so long was this genial affectionate satire of small-town people, but then he started unleashing this rage that was, intentionally or not, directed at the real-life incarnations of the same sort of people.”
I bailed on Garrison and PHC for exactly the same reason; the constant slams against George Bush, and then the constant, bitter, hateful rage against real-life Americans in flyover country – the real-life residents of a thousand towns like Lake Woebegon. I simply couldn’t handle that any more. It was like seeing the gilding wear off and revealing the lead underneath, knowing that GK really despised the people that he wrote about.
My daughter and I also write about small-town America, in our Luna City series … but we love and respect our characters and those people in Texas who inspired us to create them.
I loved Garrison Keillor for years. His post-9/11 PHC show hit just the right note with everyone singing all the verses of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” at the end. And with Mollie O’Brien singing a marvelous descant I might add.
But that changed with his Bush Derangement not long after.
I thought Keillor was smarter than that and had a bigger heart. I was mistaken. I felt like I lost a friend.
The horror of this is people like Keillor believe they are expressing their intelligence and love by hating and denigrating half of America.
Yeah, I pretty much stop reading when I see gratuitous and out-of-nowhere slams against conservatives. As far as Trump goes, I would take attacks against him somewhat personally because I know that these people would be attacking a Republican President no matter who he or she would be.
For similar reasons, I have no tolerance for people who insist on the overly precious (i.e., immature) affectation of deliberately misspelling, or parodying, a public figure’s name, be it “Shrub”, “Obummer” or “Trum”. Maybe they have something useful to say, but I can’t be bothered.
For similar reasons, I have no tolerance for people who insist on the overly precious (i.e., immature) affectation of deliberately misspelling, or parodying, a public figure’s name, be it “Shrub”, “Obummer” or “Trum”. Maybe they have something useful to say, but I can’t be bothered.
ConceptJunkie: Amen to that!
I never liked Keillor and his show. I kept trying to listen to it because so many people said it was good, but his humor was too low-key for me, or something. I didn’t find the humor funny, and he bored me almost to tears.
So, fortunately, I missed it when he started with the political stuff.
I heard about Prairie Home Companion from hippie friends. It was a gentle Americana we could live with. Many of us were trying to find our way back to America after the strife of the sixties into the seventies.
PHC then was a place big enough and friendly enough for all of us. You could hear country, folk, bluegrass, Christian music, corny comedy skits plus Keillor’s monologues which hit my ear as up there with New Yorker comic pieces. (I still say GK is a formidable writer–I have no idea how he managed his productivity while running a weekly radio show.) I don’t recall any political jabs back then, just genial nods to the human condition.
Politics aside, turns out GK is not as nice a person as his genial PHC persona.
@huxley:
There are plenty of media types (e.g., movie and TV stars) who I really like, and even though I expect that the average person of that kind will be a hard-core leftie, it still disappoints me when I see it in black and white.
In some cases, I can divorce the person’s talents from his or her politics. Some of them can still keep it out of their art. Some people can still find parts of their lives where they don’t feel the need to bludgeon you with their agenda. I can respect that.
Strongly agree about the people with the childish ‘Obummer’ or ‘Trum’ affectations. I automatically tune these people out. Combine them with rambling thousand word diatribes and well…
Until the regime mobilizes all of their power, Americans can still make fun of the US President, for whatever reasons.
When that goes away, people here will most likely have more serious issues to worry over than whether they want to ignore the minority or not.
Calling the minority “childish” or tuning them out, may be a choice made freely, but it won’t be free of consequences. Trum’s power came from ignoring public belittling of his political enemies, well his previous political allies were not his current political enemies.
Bolstering Trum’s power base by adhering to, promoting, and appreciating his anti Leftist MSM resistance seen via his various belittling and ridicule-Alinsky like tweets and Cruz is part of the JFK assassination team obsessions, while treating people online for making fun of the US President as “childish” and tuning them out, isn’t a choice without consequences.
It’s part of the US national circle the wagons drop into hell.
Even if you can’t be bothered with it, eventually you will have to face the consequences of it. It’s much akin to the Alt Right that weren’t political nor were they interested in political movements or Alinsky methods just a few years ago. Yet they are the poster boy for promoting the use of Alinsky freeze target ridicule tactics.
Their problem is that they can’t use the attack methods that Trum and Alinsky likes to use, when they act like SJW weaklings in a glass house. If they can’t take the heat, why are they utilizing such power methods. Are they truly as fragile as these SJW weaklings they used to belittle and ridicule.
In other words, people approve of Trum tweeting a magic golfball gif shooting The Wicked Witch of the West in the back and her falling down. That’s funny. But when their Dear Leader gets lightly mocked by not using his Trump brand name… then suddenly it’s childish. Does this make sense to conservatives back in 2003? No, they would have thought this was some kind of Leftist irrationality.
It’s America falling into hell and liking it.
huxley, as I’ve noticed before you and I have a lot of experiences in common. Your 2:22 comment describes my experience of PHC exactly.
For similar reasons, I have no tolerance for people who elevate ignorance to a place of worship, while using arrogance and vices as weapons to attack people they disagree with.
For example, I once used the word “Junior” to refer to Donald Trump Junior in the comment section of an OP. Somebody decided to personally attack me as a result for that because they assumed by “Junior” I was talking to them in the comments. My tolerance for ignorance is about zero, since even if it is curable, most people lack the virtue to do anything about it. Not the capability, they have the capability, but not the virtue because they have weaknesses.
Now these events I can overlook, for my own reasons, due to the Holy Spirit.
When the US President has to become intolerant of parodying public officials… well, time to put an end to this fake republic and democracy then.
A sign of the times. Californians don’t like free speech and find it intolerable and offensive. So does many others elsewhere in the US, the majority; they just don’t like admitting it.
The hell is not about the religious fiction, but about the world people create and then blame on other powers. It is a hell created by their own behaviors, ethics, and actions, but so long as they have some minority to blame, it feels tolerable. It won’t be tolerable for long.
Humans are like crabs in the bucket. Whether you use their name or not, they’ll still drag you down and prevent you from escaping the Pit. And if you originate a personal style, then you are considered immature and inferior, worthy for the State and the Social Hierarchy to suppress or ignore. Ignoring people in the US is why Trum is so popular. But that lesson hasn’t dawned on some people it seems.
I listened to PHC for years. Loved it all- the music, Lake Wobegon, Tales of the Cowboys, Guy Noir. I stopped listening to PHC circa 2001 when I got tired of the reruns. I couldn’t understand why PHC couldn’t have something from the ’80s for a rerun instead of a show that was only three months old. As such, I pretty much missed Garrison Keillor’s catching Bush Derangement Syndrome, though I believe I did hear some of it.
Neo, one reason I liked the Lake Wobegon monologues was my small hometown in New England reminded me of Lake Wobegon. No, we didn’t have Norwegian Bachelor Farmers, but we had our own eccentrics. There was one who made the New York Times- and jail- for his political stunt. Not to be outdone, his brother made Life Magazine for another political stunt unrelated to what his brother did. And kept at it for years and years. Eccentrics in small towns are harder to avoid than they are in big cities.
In addition, both sets of grandparents lived in small towns on the plains or prairie. Both sets of grandparents used dry, low-key humor, which made Garrison Keillor’s humor rather familiar.