Exposing Garrison Keillor as a humorless lout isn't really all that hard. Hell, even I have done that in the past, and I'm no Christopher Hitchens. And yet one has to admire Hitchens' way of deftly pointing out that Keillor rarely knows what he's talking about when he's talking about anything other than how lutefisk smells or how Lutherans copulate. Or maybe it's the other way around.
Keillor attempted a review of Bernard-Henri Levy's new book American Vertigo and demonstrated both an ignorance of what the reviewer's task should be, and reinforced many opinions that he is a little man possessed of a fragile, vindictive and jaundiced ego. So now Hitchens takes him to task. I do wonder why Mr. Hitchens bothers with Keillor, but the product is fun to read (for a look at a blogger who caught this early on, look here).
Maybe it's that Hitchens has become just sick enough of troglodytes who instead of battling ideas, decide that it is finer--and certainly easier--to make insults disguised as humor masquerade for thoughtful arguments. He has been the recipient of many a low blow, usually by those who could not begin to match him intellect-for-intellect.
What's amazing about Keillor's piece is that he has somehow made himself into that which he has to now caricatured and ridiculed, though not very successfully: that is, the Ugly American, parochial and ignorant of history, the world, and everything else just past these shores. Then again, Keillor, to one extent or another has always been backward and choked with aw-shucks self-aggrandizement. Yet on another level, Keillor's snipe at Levy stinks not of America-first nationalism but of the impulse to attack any and all who would have a little touch of good things to say about the U.S. (which, as Hitchens points out, is not all that is in M. Levy's book).
So we have Keillor in a tizzy over what to make of a foreigner who both admires and admonishes this country. He must have it one way only in order not to become too befuddled by too many ideas. Love America, hate America--Keillor can deal with that. But once one drifts into--shall I say it?--nuance, Keillor breaks down, which inevitably leads him to a tantrum.
Still, it is good, though not great, sport to see Hitchens get his dander up over such a lowly adversary. And it serves to remind those who have elevated him above proportion, just how woebegone Keillor is.
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