Garrison Keillor’s “erasure” — an update

Michael Barone takes up the case of Minnesota Public Radio’s erasure of Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” and “The Writer’s Almanac” broadcasts from its website. Barone shares my unhappiness, and that of Rod Dreher, that Keillor’s work has been flushed down the memory hole because of the author’s sins.

Barone notes that Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was a criminal, quite possibly a murderer, yet he created great art. Indeed, “if one of his few dozen extant paintings came on the market, it would fetch tens and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars, and rightly so.”

Barone updates us on the status of MPR’s website as it pertains to Keillor:

Apparently Minnesota Public Radio has revised its website since [David] Vossbrink reported he could find no mention of Keillor on it. Here is what I found on their website today:

“A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer’s Almanac

“Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) recently terminated its contracts with Garrison Keillor and his private media companies. (MPR cannot discuss specific details. Here is the full statement.)

“MPR does not fully own the rights to continue to use the names or provide archive content for ‘A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor’ and ‘The Writer’s Almanac’ programs. Garrison Keillor and his companies own many of the rights to this artistic content.”

Barone concludes: “That’s better than complete erasure, but I wonder why they couldn’t provide a link to Keillor’s work as well.”

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