We listened to Tales from Lake Wobegon on CD from a collection I checked out from the public library. Very good way to pass the time on a 5 hour drive to Cincinnati. I am also reading The Gospel According to America by David Dark, and that, in combination with listening to the Lake Wobegon stories and Keillor’s narrative poetry and humourous insights and observations about the folks in what he always affectionately refers to as “Lake Wobegon, my hometown” as he opens each story.

When we got into town and had some time to kill before Janet’s parents got back home from another family event, I stopped off at the Barnes and Noble and picked up the CD version of Keillor’s book Homegrown Democrat, unabridged and read by him. We’ll probably listen to that on the way home.

I am often struck by how many of America’s most revered story-tellers (and revered by all, Republican or Democrat or the Undecided) have become anahema to so many in the Religious Right and the Far Political Right because they dare to express some of their concerns about the tendencies of the rulers of late to be quite rigid and much less forthcoming about thier intentions, and protective of questions about how they’re actually running things, and how little of what they claim to stand for seems to ghet done, and how much of what they claim to “not oppose” gets opposed. (I haven’t read- or in this case, heard, Keillor’s book yet, but I know from the blogs last fall that he was not exactly thrilled; and voiced concerns. His wit and his inherent humane and affectionate treatment (and with that, often poking fun at them without being condescending) makes me seek out the wisdom of such for their take on things, and how I might learn to speak witrh a less harsh (often taken for being yet another example of just that which I am accusing the Religious Right and the Bush administration of transgressing).

David Dark’s A Gospel According to America is careful to point out how the “prophetic voice” need be watching their own rhetoric, and being cognizant of how easily our own voice becomes just a mirror image of abuse from the opposite point of view.

I don’t view this as a clash of two opposite points of view, however. Liberal vs Conservative, Patriot vs whatever-the-opposite of-patriot-is, “with us or against us”. Somewhere in between is truth. But if there is indeed truth, there’s veru little chance that both sides own 50% of it, and all things are equal. David Dark offers quite a few observations of the ongoing debates, and a view of the demonization taking place in public discourse. HIGHLY recommenended, (and I’m just a bit over a third of the way through it).