Garrison Keillor writes a column for the Baltimore Sun. This week he angered Magnes Zionist and Jeffrey Goldberg by taking a crack at Jewish songwriters who do Christmas songs.
And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write "Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah"? No, we didn’t.
I agree that the comment shows a little anti-Jewish feeling. But I’ve always liked Keillor, and I don’t feel the least bit threatened. What interests me is that in the same column, Keillor also attacked
the brilliant economist Lawrence Summers, whose presidency brought Harvard to the verge of disaster. He, against the advice of his lessers, invested Harvard’s operating funds in the stock market and lost the bet. In the cold light of day, this was dumber than dirt, like putting the kids’ lunch money on Valiant’s Fancy to win in the 5th. And now the genius is in the White House, two short flights of stairs above the Oval Office.
Keillor is a good liberal, a thoughtful guy, and in the Minnesota antiwar tradition– and maybe too in the Minnesota Lindbergh tradition, i.e., isolationist. I wonder if Keillor’s anti-Jewish-songwriter/Summers feeling isn’t a mask for his real rage: at the neoconservatives and liberal hawks, the Jewish Israel-supporting part of the warmaking Establishment. Summers has been an active Israel lobbyist. Just wondering.
