Notes In The Margin

A Piperguy48 and Garrison Keillor Production

If you are a fan of the “Prairie Home Companion, Tales From Lake Wobegon” or the “Adventures of Guy Noir”, then you will have a passing acquaintance with the philosophy of Garrison Keillor. Mr. Keillor is a “Rantist of the First Order” and I love a good rant. I’ve always admired the ability of those gifted writers (and especially orators) who could draw forth from a deep well, a seemingly endless tirade of colourful and razor-edged expletives that went on to eviscerate their subject to the marrow, lay them bare and expose every silly, sycophantic, sanctimonious, cyst on their target’s ass. Universities should offer a degree in the art, or at the least offer it as an elective. The following was taken from his book “Homegrown Democrat”. I suspect that he has Democratic tendencies and it is obvious that he’s not a great fan of President Bush. He is a homegrown American who passionately loves his country but voices some concern about the direction of its leadership. But whatever your politics, philosophy, religion, sexual orientation, or the colour of the glasses through which you gaze upon the world, it is a prime example of the Art of the Rant.

“The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, see-through fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, hobby cops, misanthropic frat boys, lizardskin cigar monkeys, jerktown romeos, ninja dittoheads, the shrieking midgets of-AM radio, tax cheats, cheese merchants, cat stranglers, taxi dancers, grab-ass executives, gun fetishists, genteel pornographers, pill pushers, chronic nappers, nihilists in golf pants, backed-up Baptists, Crips and Bloods of the board-room, panjandrums of Ponzi marketing and the grand pooh-bahs of Percodan, censors, spin dentists, Swiss bankers, hit men, body snatchers, mouth breathers and tongue thrusters, testosterone junkies, oversexed hedgehogs, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, line jumpers, randy preachers, marsupial moms and chirpy news anchors, UFO scholars, johns, shroomheads, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, wizened aliens, aluminum-siding salesmen, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, braying, smirking, scratching on the national black-board, Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-a-Sketch president with a voice like a dial tone, who for almost four years has looked as if he were just about to say something smart, not much introspection going on here, no inquiring minds eager to learn about the world, not much chance of anyone picking up a book that isn’t on the official reading list and hearing a still small voice, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions in general, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body-parts trying to walk, supported by millions of good folks who do not share the anarchist dream but sleep well with this West Texas sphinx for a nightlight: Republicans: the No.1 reason why the rest of the world thinks we’re deaf, dumb, and dangerous.“

”Amen”