Dear Mr. Keillor,
I am puzzled by your recent acerbic political comments. Why do you assume all your listeners are Democrats? I understand you have a political position- so do I. The fact that you have a platform on which to express your opinion does not make it any more valid than mine. It makes me unhappy to realize that I must constantly set aside my feelings to listen to your show. I always continue to hope the public in public radio includes us all- even us "nasty" Republicans, but I have been feeling very left out from your show lately, since the humor is so often directed at me and other non-Democrats. After a while it tends to become less than humorous.
Shirley Brander

Dear Shirley, I don't know how many listeners are Democrats, how many are Republicans, how many are something else. We don't survey them. We don't try out the material in front of focus groups. We just let fly. Now you have got yourself a president who is going to restore honor to Washington and stop the partisan bickering. I think you should be happy about that and whoop it up and have an inauguration party with champagne and not fuss about some puny radio show in Minnesota. You have Rush Limbaugh, who has twenty times the platform of this show, and you have nine out of ten talk radio hosts in America. Can't you be satisfied with that? You may feel left out when I do satire but Washington and the airwaves belong to you. Winners are supposed to be gracious. Bear with the rest of us. Allow us to grumble. It's not so often a man of Mr. Bush's distinction gets elected president by a minority.

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Mr. Keillor:
I appreciate your speaking your mind about this election fiasco. I fear that we're in for some very hard times in this country and I appreciate your honesty, wisdom and humor. Please don't stop doing what you're doing.
Linda Dee

Linda---- I fear for the country too. But it's a durable country, and the values I fear for ---- respect for public service and democratic institutions and hard work and intellectual merit and a sense of idealism about the future ---- are pretty solidly engrained in us, it seems to me, despite the cynicism we've seen. The past month is a shameful one in our history, but it's also liberating. I don't see any need to read a newspaper for the next year or so. It's a good chance to catch up on other things.

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Dear Mr. Keillor,
We listen to your show often and enjoy it greatly. You can imagine our disappointment, then, when the Guy Noir skit tonight (Dec 2, 2000) seemed to be written so below your abilities. We enjoy political satire when done well, but the satire seemed to be missing from this skit. Instead we had to hear your own personal rantings. Surely, you noted, as we did, the uncomfortable silence in the crowd. We hope you will continue your wonderful work, and that you'll choose to separate your comedy from your political campaigning.
S & L
Worthington, Ohio

Dear S & L, I don't know how you separate comedy from real life, but I'll try. Yes, I can imagine your disappointment on hearing Guy Noir rant about the hijacking of Florida. I haven't heard any human being talk about the Florida vote count who didn't rant but evidently Guy Noir's rant wasn't in line with yours and you expected it would be and you were disappointed. If this is the worst thing that happened to you all month, you're pretty lucky. It wasn't political "campaigning" though. It had to do with the basic principle of counting votes. When you have a winning margin of 537 votes in a state in which machines could detect no votes on 170,000 ballots, it makes a person curious about those ballots, whether the machines counted them properly, whether an inspection might reveal an entirely different result. This is akin to a man who finds a trail of bread crumbs leading into the forest ---- you're naturally curious to know what it means. When the stepmother prevents you from following the trail, and when the U.S. Supreme Court backs her up, it only makes you more curious. Eventually those ballots will be examined. You know it, I know it. In a couple years, we'll know the answer. Why not now?

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Dear Garrison Keillor,
I think that you should leave politics out of your program. I have enjoyed A Prairie Home Companion for many years, but I was disappointed with your criticism of George Bush the other night. I just wanted to let you know that Republicans do listen to and enjoy your program. I realize that you are from Minnesota (The Red Star of the North), but the rest of the country doesn't necessarily share your politics. I was so angry with your program that I thought about never listening again, but I know that won't happen, I enjoy it too much. Please try and remember that we are not all Socialists.
Gary Culver

Mr. Culver, According to the election results I've seen, more of the country shares my politics than shares yours. But if you consider me a socialist, there's no point in discussing politics with you. If there's a way we could help you to stop listening, let us know. There must be a way to lock your FM dial onto another station.

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Dear Garrison,
I write to protest your "slur" in last evening's (12/10/00) program--in the suggestion that George W. "thought Colin Powell was a waiter." Your flippant attribution of a simplistic racism to "W" was, in my opinion, tasteless and unbefitting your stature among us. I've/We've no desire to impose a wooden political correctness on your humor. But this, we respectfully suggest, crossed the line.
I'd be pleased to hear your thoughts.
Bob (and Phyllis) Schultz

Dear Bob and (Phyllis), I stand by the joke. It's racism that's tasteless, not jokes about it. The Republican party has risen to power by successfully harnessing the racial resentments of white males, and Governor Bush's devotion to the execution of Texans (predominantly minority) without benefit of competent legal defense is deeply racist. It's a moral blight on that state and then for Governor Bush to exploit Colin Powell in his campaign invites that very joke that offended you. I'd be ashamed of myself if I had excised that joke.

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Dear Garrison,
Thank you so much for Guy Noir's election 2000 observations on your 12-2-2000 broadcast. That took some courage. (I could hear the hostility in audience silence!) But our boy Guy is RIGHT. He said what needs to be said, and heard, again and again. Please don't stop!
Eve Ott
Emporia, KS

Dear Eve, It took no courage at all. Just anger was enough. Yes, the audience was quiet, but that's their business and not mine. Maybe they were in awe of the sheer literary brilliance of the script. Who knows? Their perfect privilege to react as they wish. We're not a political campaign, we don't bring in shills and claques, and we don't conduct exit polls. As for stopping, that's exactly what I intend to do. As anyone who listened to the show knows, it was Al Gore I enjoyed satirizing, it's liberals who are fun to make fun of. Then the Florida vote count and the flurry of lawyers was funny for awhile. Mr. Bush is of no particular interest to me. Sorry. His lack of curiosity is remarkable in a grown man, but how do you satirize that? It's like satirizing boredom. It can't be done in an interesting way.

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Dear Mr. Keillor:
I really liked when you sang the Powermilk Biscuit song and started with "2,4,6,8. welcome back from the station break." Is there a reason you discontinued it?
Linda Erdberg

Linda, I forgot the words a couple times and then got gunshy. I will resume.

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Dear Garrison,
I found your website while visiting my mom. My question is what is your favorite part of your show, and who do you think is funny? I am anxiously awaiting your response.
Your biggest fan, but not in a weird, stalker type way,
Janet Shelton

Dear Janet, I've really enjoyed Tim Russell's impersonations of Gore and Bush the past couple months. I think he does a devastating Gore and a pretty good Bush. It's a lot of fun to stand up there and be his interlocutor ---- and then last week he brought in Clinton and Kissinger too. A masterwork.

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Dear Mr. Keillor and Company,
I am embarrassed that it took me several years of listening to your show, and enjoying it, before I noticed that there is a big piece missing in your shows. That is, the native people of Minnesota, North Dakota, etc. Where are they?
Paul Anderson

Dear Mr. Anderson, The native people of Minnesota are all around us, and if you're curious about them you can seek out their company at pow-wows, you can read Louise Erdrich and Sherman Alexie and Gerald Vizenor, but I do not have the freedom to talk about native people, not even my first-hand experiences. Were I to speak a word about them, I would be eaten alive. I can talk freely about my own Scots-Anglo fundamentalists or about Lutherans or about German Catholics, but it is not possible for me or any other white person to talk about Indians except in mythic terms. I say that in all good humor. Life is full of limitations. They don't bother me.

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Garrison:
Are there any plans for a new album by the Hopeful Gospel Quartet? If so, I dearly hope you will include the beautiful "Crossing the Bar," the poem by Tennyson that was set to music.
Mary Lee

Dear Mary, the Hopefuls are retired now, since our alto, Kate MacKenzie, decided to quit the music business, and so there won't be a new album. We are defunct. That beautiful song, though, has already been recorded by a fabulous band out east, and their name is on the tip of my tongue. Darn. I'll remember it.

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Mr. Keillor,
My question is this: do you memorize your monologues? I've seen your show several times and see no teleprompter or notes of any kind.
David Mowry

Dear Mr. Mowry, I don't memorize them. I don't use notes. I just walk around with a microphone and talk and tell a story that I have thought a lot about a few hours before and that I sometimes forget and must patch up and fill in with other things.

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Dear Garrison Keillor
I recently had the dubious pleasure of occupying a seat on a tour bus jammed with Lutheran ladies headed for one of those huge outlet malls for a shopping spree. A scary experience, not at all what I expected. So how do you account for this surprising behavior?
Mary Beth Worman

Dear Mary Beth, I don't know who you were with but of course Lutheran ladies can get excited and if you find that scary, well, okay. I don't need to account for their behavior. All I know is that, when it comes my time to leave this world, I'm going to do it in the company of Lutheran ladies. I will come to them feeling that my death is a catastrophe such as the world has never seen, and they will convince me otherwise. They will persuade me that it is natural to die, and that, on the day after my death, the paper will still print a crossword puzzle and the weatherman will forecast a partly cloudy sky.

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Mr. Keillor:
Your statements about the Florida vote recounts grossly misrepresented the situation. George Bush is not simply trying to keep people's votes from counting. There is much more to it than that. Everyone who heard your statements and who follows the news in more depth than it is reported by the mainstream press knows that you were incorrect and are irresponsible. Walter Knowles

Dear Mr. Knowles, George Bush set out to freeze his lead, with no real regard for the will of the Florida voters, and if that doesn't amount to stealing an election, then I am a hat. He used the Republican machine in Florida, from his brother on down, to resist opening those machine-rejected ballots and looking at them. I take my hat off to him for successfully stealing the election right out from under our noses. But I am not required to rework the English language in his behalf.

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Dear Mr. Keillor:
Twenty-five years of PHC and I have yet to hear the first barbershop quartet. That music is such a natural for your show that I can only assume its absence is no accident. What is it? Were you once dumped by a quartet? Do you find the harmony too tough to woodshed? What? Please, please get over it.
Regards,
Gary Griner

Mr. Griner, We've had numerous barbershop quartets on the show---- sorry you missed them ---- and we very much hope to have the quartet in the current Broadway production of "The Music Man" on our Dec. 23 show.

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Mr. Keillor:
My three year old daughter, Maddie, asked me last night, "Why are we alive?" I must confess, I was stumped, because I'm 41, and I still don't know why I am here. Any suggestions? Thank you. Ann Flynt,

Dear Ann, Good for Maddie to ask the question. The answer of course is in life itself. My daughter Maia is three but she doesn't talk yet, so this question is easier for her: she lives for the joys of her school and her beloved teacher Mai-Britt, and for her beloved aunts, and her doll Emma, and lately for the pleasure of watching the video of "Babe," and this past week her mother took her into Zabar's on Broadway and Maia loved looking at people and touching them, reaching for their hands, smiling at them. She's an outgoing girl, not like me at all. She is full of love ---- of food, of baths, of playgrounds, of other children, of Episcopal high mass ---- and whenever I'm in doubt about the purpose of my life, I think about my daughter and my son, and I think that to produce such people is maybe good enough.

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Dear Garrison,
I recently turned 46. I'm curious, did you have a midlife crises? If not, how about a midlife urgency or instability?
Jim Price

Mr. Price ---- I had many midlife crises and now I'm 58 and in an age group that the New York Times refers to as the "near elderly" and I'm done with those crises, thank God.