In praise of … Garrison Keillor at 70

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/06/in-praise-of-garrison-keillor

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Abroad he is known as an author, but Garrison Keillor, the gentle giant of American satirists, is a radio man at heart. His radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, has been running ever since Gerald Ford sat in the White House. As he turns 70, Keillor's loving gutting of small-town America is a weekly staple of public radio, the show you organise your holidays around. Its staple is a 12-minute monologue, News from Lake Wobegon, a mythical town in Minnesota, where cold is a stimulant, the statue is to the Unknown Norwegian, and choice of church is Catholic – Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility – and Lutheran. His plaintive, bemused evocation of local, non-metropolitan America has become as embedded in the nation's urban radio audience, and as loved by it, as the Goon Show was in Britain. An institution, as well as an enduringly funny man, Keillor should keep trucking. Like his town, which time forgot and decades cannot improve.