A great line from a Slate piece on Garrison Keillor...
When he speaks, blood pressures drop across the country, wild horses accept the saddle, family dogs that have been hanging on at the end of chronic illnesses close their eyes and drift away.
The article walks a strange line between praise and punishment for Keillor, host of A Prairie Home Companion. It's the journalistic equivalent of the Southern expression, "Well bless your heart." The piece actually captures my contradictory thoughts on Keillor, too. Is he brilliant or tranquilizing?
My one quick side note. There's an obscure Ken Burns documentary about the history of radio and TV, and Keillor makes some fascinating observations. That was the turning point for me, when I actually saw him talking about something other than Wisconsin harvest seasons or whatever. I also gained respect for him when I heard him give a random soliloquy about the word "eighth," and how a strange bit of inflection (almost like a mini-hiccup) keeps it from sounding like "aeeth." Props to a guy who can still ponder the unpondered.
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