huffdaddy
Joined: 25 Nov 2005
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 Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:59 am Post subject: Garrison Keillor on Monogamy |
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http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/03/14/keillor/
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Stating the obvious
Nature doesn't care about the emotional well-being of older people. It's about the continuation of the species -- in other words, children.
By Garrison Keillor |
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Monogamy put the parents in the background where they belong and we children were able to hold center stage. We didn't have to contend with troubled, angry parents demanding that life be richer and more rewarding for them. We blossomed and agonized and fussed over our outfits and learned how to go on a date and order pizza and do the twist and neck in the front seat of a car back before bucket seats when you could slide close together, and we started down the path toward begetting children while Mom and Dad stood like smiling, helpless mannequins in the background.
Nature is about continuation of the species -- in other words, children. Nature does not care about the emotional well-being of older people.
Under the old monogamous system, we didn't have the problem of apportioning Thanksgiving and Christmas among your mother and stepdad, your dad and his third wife, your mother-in-law and her boyfriend Hal, and your father-in-law and his boyfriend Chuck. Today, serial monogamy has stretched the extended family to the breaking point. A child can now grow up with eight or nine or 10 grandparents -- Gampa, Gammy, Goopa, Gumby, Papa, Poopsy, Goofy, Gaga and Chuck -- and need a program to keep track of the actors.
And now gay marriage will produce a whole new string of hyphenated relatives. In addition to the ex-stepson and ex-in-laws and your wife's first husband's second wife, there now will be Bruce and Kevin's in-laws and Bruce's ex, Mark, and Mark's current partner, and I suppose we'll get used to it.
The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men -- sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That's for the kids. It's their show. |
He's getting flack for his comments about gays. But I find the biggest irony is his idealized view of monogamy. Keillor has been married three times, dumped a workplace lover for wife #2, and then lost wife #2 when he cheated on her. How many different grandparents are your kids visiting, Garrison?
As a side note, I've heard several second hand stories that Keillor is quite the a$$hole. |
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stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 6:08 am Post subject: |
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Garrison Keillor is a has-been. He was great in the early days of the Prairie Home Companion at the Guthrie Theatre in the Twin Cities before he developed an inflated ego.
Then he became a liberal and then moved to Denmark and became a hater of mankind. His quips more often than not turn to cranky musings just like Twain in his later days.
I do think it's sad that we have so many split families in the West. Among black Americans, fully three-quarters of households are headed by a single mother. Now we have to contend with the obscenity of couples who are partners rather than married parenting children, of people who've remarried two or three times and had kids from more than one woman. This is at least one area where the developing world is in better shape. |
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