Being a concise survey of bizarre coincidences in the life of real public figures and wholly manufactured fictional characters.
1. Astonishingly, Garrison Keillor was included in the top 10 of Playgirl’s sexiest men of 1986. Others on that list included Sen. Robert Dole, Billy Crystal, William “The Refrigerator” Perry and Donald Trump—so one begins to sense how horribly wrong things had gone with that particular list.
2. Keillor suffered this exact fate during a recent performance of A Prairie Home Companion. His fly remained down, though he knew the audience knew he knew.
3. Keillor’s first piece in the New Yorker appeared in 1970.
4. Michael Fedo’s biography of Keillor, The Man From Lake Wobegon (St. Martin’s Press, New York 1987), documents donor friction at KSJN over Keillor’s format choices in the early 70s, leading to a series of Keillor resignations and re-hirings.
5. “St. Paul is a city that does not mind having a class D baseball team. Minneapolis is a city that would die if it were associated with Sioux Falls and Fargo and Duluth. They would absolutely perish. So that’s why God made us number 2.” Garrison Keillor to the St. Paul City Council. Star Tribune, October 25, 2001, p.3B.
6. See St. Paul Pioneer Press, August 9, 2002.
7. Protagonist John Tollefson loses his job as a public radio station manager over a “douche bag” joke in Wobegon Boy, Garrison Keillor, (Penguin Books, 1997).
8. Michael Fedo made a similar, if kinder statement regarding Garrison Keillor’s red socks.
9. “I look like a tree toad who has changed into a boy but not completely.” Lake Wobegon Summer 1956, Garrison Keillor, (Viking/Penguin, 2001), p. 18.
10. You don’t believe us, do you. Check it out: Zeus changed his lover Io into a white cow to conceal her from his wife. She was discovered by Hera, who sent a gadfly to chase her through Egypt. She came to rest in the Aegean sea on the island named for her—Ios.
11. The similarly named Greenspring Companies was the holding company of for-profit Rivertown Trading Company, which began in 1981 to handle sales of Powdermilk Biscuit merchandise. Under pressure from an investigation by the state Attorney General’s office into the for-profit partnership with non-profit Minnesota Public Radio, Greenspring unloaded Rivertown to Dayton-Hudson Corp. for $120 million in 1998. Bill Kling was bought out for a reported $2.6 million.
12. MPR routinely declines to disclose Keillor’s earnings from APHC and Writers’ Almanac.
13. Twenty five cents per word.
14. Keillor savages one of his families in “Family Honeymoon,” a chapter in We Are Still Married, Garrison Keillor, (Penguin Books, USA, Inc. 1990), pp.188-191.
15. “The newspaper will walk up to your house and pee on your roses.” We Are Still Married, p. 143.
16. Something similar was printed on an invitation to Keillor’s wedding to Ulla Skaerved, as reported by the Pioneer Press, December 29, 1985.
17. Both Rick Shefchick and Nick Coleman verify that, contrary to a legend that maintains traction to this day, Coleman was at the Star Tribune when the Pioneer Press published Keillor’s Portland Avenue address in 1986.
18. In 1995, MPR and the Democratic National Committee exchanged donor lists, and MPR admitted to purchasing such lists from the DNC prior to then. In 1996, MPR bought donor names from the Wellstone for Senate campaign. (Pioneer Press, July 24 1999, p. 2D.) In 1986, after Lake Wobegon themes were used to promote a DFL fundraising appearance by Garrison Keillor, Bill Kling wrote the Pioneer Press to express dismay over the “crass use of public radio programs and images to promote the DFL party.” (Pioneer Press, October 18, 1986.)
19. Keillor complained, “I wrote a book called Lake Wobegon Days. They put me in my place but good. They marked my front yard with orange rinds . . .” We Are Still Married, p. 141.
20. See the New York Times, March 2 1988, p. 1C. One of the most startlingly sycophantic interviews conceivable of any person, ever.
21. Noah Adams bravely stuck it out for one year as Keillor’s replacement on MPR’s APHC replacement, Good Evening.
22. MPR has declined to disclose endorsement fees collected from SelectComfort for Keillor’s weekly sales pitch for their product. Ditto Premier Radio, distributor for Rush Limbaugh, who reads a nearly identical script for them. SelectComfort has also declined to disclose what they pay for their advertising with Keillor and Limbaugh.
23. Valente is smarter than he appears. He is quoting The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925), p. 182.
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