I was in the audience for Saturday's broadcast of the "A Prairie Home Companion" at the Performing Arts Center.
It was a good show, and remarkable to watch live. The opportunities for things to go awry seem legion, but they still do it in front of thousands of people every week (thus increasing the awry possibilities, it would seem).
The show had a more than occasional political bent to it, although always in good humor, I thought. Garrison Keillor makes no secret any more of his Democratic allegiances, but his show is certainly not propaganda.
He said that one of the reasons he agreed to bring his show to Tulsa was that he wanted to study people in such a red state. An "old northern liberal" needs to be exposed to that sort of thing occasionally, he said.
One of his funniest jabs about Tulsa was that it was full of people who hate the power of big government, but love their religion. He claimed to have seen a sign that said, "Jaywalk for Jesus."
I remember when he first started producing his newspaper column there was a pretty good debate hear at the Daily World about what to do with it. His politics was a little bit less obvious then.
The editorial department and the Living department both seemed to think it would fit well in their pages. This was right about the time that Dave Barry stopped writing his column, and the Living section was looking for something to fill that considerable void. I remember thinking to myself – I was on the sidelines for this argument – that Keillor seemed ideal for the Living section, but editorial won.
Good thing that. His weekly column is much more stridently political, although still wonderfully funny and very well written. It absolutely belongs on the editorial page.
Here's an interesting point. All the political polling and smart money tells us that Keillor is much more liberal than the Tulsa market. But as the guy who answers the phone when his column isn't in the paper (hypothetically) and who has seen our readership surveys, I can tell you he's remarkably popular, perhaps our most popular columnist.
I guess people would rather read a good column than one they agree with.
