Andy Humm wasn't placated by Keillor's "disingenuous ... semi-apology" either.

"I like apologies better when people recognize the damage they have done instead of throwing in all kinds of qualifiers like 'I was just trying to be funny and you're too dim to appreciate it,' as he basically does," Humm said in an interview.

A reporter asked me this weekend if I was satisfied with Keillor’s apology.

Satisfied? Sure, I’m satisfied. Does that mean the column Keillor wrote wasn’t bigoted and offensive? No and no. And his apology is merely satisfactory. Below average, as apologies go.

...

The final irony, perhaps, is that Keillor didn’t apologize for the column itself. He didn’t apologize for what he said. He apologized for the “misunderstanding.” It’s typical of the politicians Keillor likes to mock: Apologize if someone took offense, not for the offense you gave.

LBJ would never have sent federal troops into Little Rock...

"I think that gay marriage is also an issue that does no good for us and I want to see us divest ourselves of this" Keillor says. "The symbolism of gay people marrying is terribly potent, terrible powerful, and we ignore this at our peril in our party.

I ask Keillor if there any other positions Democrats should jettison.

"I think that gay marriage is also an issue that does no good for us and I want to see us divest ourselves of this" Keillor says. "The symbolism of gay people marrying is terribly potent, terrible powerful, and we ignore this at our peril in our party.

"I think that gay marriage/union/benefits must be a state and city matter. Gays have tended to migrate from hostile places to friendlier places -- San Francisco, New York, New Orleans -- and this migration has been a boon to the friendlier places. Gay-friendly areas are the richer for it, in all sorts of ways. Tolerance has economic and cultural benefits. And so we can allow Missouri or South Carolina or South Dakota to be hostile to gay marriage and suffer the consequences.

"A recent survey by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a black-oriented research think tank, showed that Bush's African-American support is at 18 percent, up 9 percentage points from the Center's 2000 poll. One of the prime reasons given for that increase in support is our current President¹s belief that marriage "is between a man and a woman." Chew on that while you consider the fact that since Bush took office, African American unemployment has risen 28 percent, reversing Clinton-era prosperity, when it declined by nearly 50 percent.

"Personally, I¹m all for gay marriage. In fact, I¹m all for straight marriage, too. Yet, I wouldn¹t sacrifice economic justice on either alter."

Yeah, Garrison, I would love to see you say the same thing about black folks! "Yeah, African Americans should just move to cities that want to give them rights, and let the places that want to LYNCH them be allowed to carry on with their time-honored traditions... it'll be their loss in the long run."

THAT is the argument he makes on gay civil rights, people.

... what Keillor has been saying is that gays should just shut up (= forget about pursuing civil rights) because gay marriage won't play in the midwest, and it'll hurt the party's chances. That is what he has said. The 'shouldn't trump economic fairness' BS? -- he's covering his ass, because he knows damned well that what he's saying is bigoted.

He wouldn't dream of saying that any racial group that was protesting against discriminatory laws should just shut up.

A friend told me that she thinks the article was written as a tantrum after a gay barista at Starbucks failed to recognize Keillor as the literary celebrity that he thinks he is.

The column was done tongue-in-cheek, always a risky thing, and was meant to be funny, another risky thing these days....

My prediction... an immediate mea culpa (within 24 hours) with the excuse that it was all SATIRE, and how very much Mr. Keillor regrets the misunderstanding.

Ordinarily I don't like to use this space to talk about my newspaper column but the most recent column aroused such angry reactions that I thought I should reply. The column was done tongue-in-cheek, always a risky thing, and was meant to be funny, another risky thing these days, and two sentences about gay people lit a fire in some readers and sent them racing to their computers to fire off some jagged e-mails. That's okay. But the underlying cause of the trouble is rather simple.

I live in a small world — the world of entertainment, musicians, writers — in which gayness is as common as having brown eyes. Ever since I was in college, gay men and women have been friends, associates, heroes, adversaries, and in that small world, we talk openly and we kid each other and think nothing of it. But in the larger world, gayness is controversial. In almost every state, gay marriage would be voted down if put on a ballot. Gay men and women have been targeted by the right wing as a hot-button issue. And so gay people out in the larger world feel besieged to some degree. In the small world I live in, they feel accepted and cherished as individuals, but in the larger world they may feel like Types. My column spoke as we would speak in my small world and it was read by people in the larger world and thus the misunderstanding. And for that, I am sorry. Gay people who set out to be parents can be just as good parents as anybody else, and they know that, and so do I.

Nothing like those bigoted midwest values.

I allude to remarks tendered by Keillor in a recent essay published in Salon, wherein he lets loose, in a mocking tone, a string of gay stereotypes that, if I had hair, would’ve curled it. Surely you’ve seen it by now? It’s the one where Keillor, a sexist asshole and serial mack-daddy of some renown, makes himself ridiculous as a shill for heterosexual monogamy, on the grounds that it protects innocent children from the horrors of “hyphenated” — i.e. step — relatives, and from pairs of “sardonic,” “flamboyant,” campy-performer-worshipin’, chartreuse-pants-wearin’ “daddies.”

Yes, Keillor's statements are offensive, lewd and terribly backward, but we have to say we're not that surprised. He is a man born in Minnesota in 1942 - do you really expect him to be the most progressive person in history? No.

...

Do we expect an apology? Yeah, we do - not because we think he should apologize (which we do), but because that's what people in this situation do. He's famous and, we're sure, has a publicist who will release some sort of statement. Will we believe it? Absolutely not. Do we hope Keillor's learned his lesson? Certainly. Do we think he's learned his lesson? Well, you know that saying about an old dog... Let's take this one out to pasture and move on with our lives, huh?

Keillor is just vomiting up his own homophobic impressions.

Write Salon and ask why they're giving bigotry a platform.

Hey, the "satire" excuses are already being trundled out in his "defence"...

Garrison Keillor longs for the good old days in this essay on what children need in Salon. You know, the days when the world wasn't bothered by all these non-monogamous, flamboyant homosexuals that want to raise children.

Oh. My. God.

Where to start? How about that one sentence that somehow manages to pack in six flaming stereotypes about gay men—fussy hair, small dogs, over-decorated apartments, and on and on. Yes, Garrison, all of us gay men—particularly us gay parents!—are decadent, flamboyant creatures. Sure, having kids means puke on your chartreuse trousers and candy ground into your expensive sofa—but, hey, those are small prices to pay if it means getting to show off your chartreuse pants at PTA meetings!

What an asshole. Asshole, asshole, asshole. What Keillor wrote today on Salon is every bit as offensive as Ann Coulter’s “faggot” joke about John Edwards and relies on the same set of cultural prejudices.

Taking a page from the Ann Coulter Handbook, alleged humorist and "A Prairie Home Companion" radio host Garrison Keillor has made some queer comments about homosexuals and gay parents.

In an article titled "Stating the Obvious" in salon.com, the Minnesota author wrote, "The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men -- sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts." Apparently, Keillor's research consisted entirely of watching a Netflix copy of "The Birdcage" and reruns of "Queer Eye."

Dan Savage, offended by Keillor's recitation of gay stereotypes, replies in a piece with the pithy title, "Fuck Garrison Keillor":



Which is all true, of course. It'll be interesting to see if Keillor, beloved by people claiming to be liberal, pays a price for his obvious bigotry. Stay tuned.