Me too. I would listen on Sunday afternoons as I drove between Rockford and Glendale Heights (working in Rockford at the time, my late husband lived in the burbs) It was edifying.
Thirty years ago, newlywed, we moved to Wyoming so my husband could be a firefighter at FE Warren AFB. I was bereft of the gray and green of the PNW, wasn't a fan of pop country music but found Wyoming Public Radio- and Prarie Home Companion. Became instant fans. Endeared once you said, "Wyoming, a place where you can watch your dog run away...for days." We'd listen as we remodeled our little farmhouse and on road trips. One time we were fortunate to see you perform at Chateau St Michelle. We listened when stationed overseas on Crete. A weekly delight, a treasure. Now, as I do these last few years, I bake Christmas cookies and sip gluehwein while your stories, songs and poems envelop my kitchen. Thank you.
You should be a writer. Your post is wonderfully written and thoughtful. I am now enjoying the same life style in our sweet little home built in 1930 7000 ft elevation in Nevada. God bless America
I love hearing your story! I said goodbye to a fellow student from junior college who was moving to Wyoming to finish getting his pharmaceutical degree. I remember his wife said, 'Yeah, there's a about 157 people out there and twice as many dogs.' Amusing.
My wife introduced me to your show before we married in 1985. We would repeat some of the highlights of the news each week to friends who thought we were talking about real people. They are real, in our hearts.
I listened to you with my grandparents every show on the radio ... It was the Greatest of memories... Thank you for your stories your songs and your love ... I share it with my kids now
These stories make up part of the beautiful memories that I have with my grandparents. We would listen to his stories about lake wobegon and play poker once a month when my brother and I would stay at their apartment.
There were a couple of things that my reactionary dad and I agreed upon: Garrison Keillor and Hank Williams. We were both from the upper-Midwest area and had an innate understanding of Keillor's stories. Williams is one of few country singers I like and the best. Even in the 50's we had a two-hole outhouse.
Your show was the favorite thing for me to listen to, during my 9 years in the US. Now I'm back in Germany since 2006, but I still listen to the old podcasts of News from Lake Wobegon, especially during my Holidays on the Island of La Palma. I even started to associate many places there with your stories. It is a strange connection, stories from Minnesota and the winding road up to 2400m above the clouds and beneath the stars for a night of astronomy, but that became my association with Lake Wobegon.
Heard this show on the radio for years and years, never knowing what any of these people looked like. Seeing it on youtube, what a treat. I live in the boondocks. PHC actually came to my neck of the woods to perform one time but I had to work. That was a bad day.
My dad and I used to listen to this on the radio every Saturday evening. And we would be driving back from the lake, and I would lose myself in the Lake Wobegon mysteries.. i always wondered where that show went.
Garrison, so glad you are ok after your heart surgery. We loved you in Fish Creek and you gave a remarkable, inspiring show. I have listened to you since about 1972? since a friend introduced me to your show. Saturday night I would listen while I made spaghetti for my family. The kids moaned but listened and I caught them laughing at your jokes! Blessings and thank you. Mary Anderson, Fish Creek WI
I don’t care about the harassment allegations against Keillor. I do, however, care about hypocrisy. I began listening to APHC in the nineties when you actually had to listen to it on the radio on Saturday evenings. I used to make a point of tuning in before he started the News from Lake Wobegon. I loved it. I would marvel as he seamlessly shifted from entertaining people to preaching a gospel message. He was truly gifted. Fast forward fifteen years. Obama came along, and eventually Trump came along and Garrison began to show his true colors. It’s like he couldn’t control his rage toward conservatives anymore, conservatives who, unbeknownst to him, made up the majority of his audience! And so I went from really enjoying the show to clenching my teeth and shouting at the radio for Garrison to JUST SHUT UP and go back to entertaining! Garrison’s rage toward the right increased week by week, yet I still tuned in, painful as it was. He took subtle shots at my midwestern conservative values, he took subtle shots at anyone on the right, he took subtle shots at whoever was in the news that week, telling me how stupid I was to vote for them and how much smarter he was for supporting Clinton, Obama and the other progressives on the left. He did one monologue where he talked about a bizarre dance troupe who was popular “in the midwest and in the south.” The audience laughed uproariously. Message received, Garrison. We’re lowbrow and stupid. We just don’t get it. Then one day he just came out and said it live on the air, and I wish I had it on tape. “I’m a communist” said Keillor offhandedly. The audience didn’t react and the show went on. I was in utter disbelief, but now it made sense. I continued to listen to A Prairie Home Companion but I wasn’t enjoying it as much anymore. About a year later, Garrison AGAIN proclaimed he was a communist. That broke it for me. I started listening less and less often as Garrison continued to take shots at Donald Trump and all the deplorable idiots who voted for him. Finally I wished that Garrison would lose his platform, and a few months later he did. His replacement was just as much of a liberal progressive as Garrison was. He had to be to get the gig. I never listened to APHC again. Now I only listen to the older recordings of the News from Lake Wobegon, from the time before Garrison lost his way.
@@jakester455 I think your reply is infinitely closer to rage than anything that ever came out of GK's mouth on the radio. Right? I understand your disappointment when you found out he doesn't share your political conservatism but can't understand why you would think it's some kind of change -or that he ever did in the first place considering the fact that only a minority of Americans are politically conservative and literally nothing you ever hear on American public radio is or ever has been politically conservative.
@@d.lafollette You need to get outside your bubble once in a while. The majority of Americans are still conservative (yes, the Communists have taken over the colleges and the numbers are changing because of that). Garrison Keillor made bank on portraying himself as a down home midwesterner but it was all a facade... He's a New York liberal Communist. My "rage" is based on being lied to for years, and at least I'm being up front with who I really am, unlike Garrison Keillor.
@@jakester455 Bubble? Hardly. I live in a city with 10,000,000 other people. I was born in the south/midwest and visit there several times a year. The people there are as "down home" as it gets and the majority are not remotely conservative. The amount of politically conservative people there -and everywhere else, is shrinking by the day. If you'd step out of your bubble you might even begin to notice that now yourself. Sorry but no one has lied to you. Didn't you ever notice PHC was on public radio? Didn't you ever listen to any of those stations when PHC wasn't on? (You had 40 years to do that). If you had you would've noticed that nothing else on that - or any other public radio station was politically conservative. So why didn't you? See? Your problem isn't that someone lied to you, it's that you weren't paying attention. If you want to step out of your bubble & start paying attention now, you'll find it easy to notice that most Americans are definitely not politically conservative. After that you might even evolve into being someone able to understand that all those people aren't Communists either. That's just a conservative media scare word. It used to be socialism: "Hugo Chavez..., Venezuela..., blah, blah, blah." Remember? When did conservative media change their scare word from socialism to communism?
I don't care about artists political leanings. I just enjoy the art. He's a true artist of words. I'm 100% capitalist and I don't care if he's a communist. I do however care very much if my politicians are communist. Communism is evil and causes worse suffering than capitalism. Anyone who says they're a communist needs to visit Cuba.
On a dark Saturday night in January in Minnesota there was nothing more cozy than to listen to APHC. It was followed by a couple of great music programs, jazz and classical. MN Public Radio was the best.
Gender, race, politics, all these things doesn’t matter when it’s 20 below, we are just mammals, we need each other, so just be nice to each other.... I Love it!!
I loved that too. Remember, the experts say that only mammals with a high intellect know how to laugh. Example: a lady elephant in a Wisconsin zoo threw a rock at my then husband and me. And a zoo employee scolded me and said I couldn't toss it back. I swear that elephant was laughing at me!
Though I recently heard him tell this story, he told a longer, funnier, and different story this time. Wonderful such a wonderful imagination a true original comedian. So much fun to listen to this 💓 thank you ( ps the ending similar but hilarious)
Wow, he's still got it. The nearly lost art of the American raconteur is kept alive by a few plain-spoken individualists who never play to the gallery, but arouse in the hearts of strangers across the country a longing to return to a place they've never been.
This reminds me of the day when my then husband and I went to my Aunt Linda's wedding. It was on a cruise at the Mississippi, a beautiful wedding. I was wearing the best dress and the most expensive hose I'd ever owned. Well, he got impatient on US Route 20 going home. Sadly, the hose did not survive. LOL
Warming house? You had a warming house? You lucky guy. In Illinois we knew what they were but none of us had ever seen one. Course the coldest of winters we might get a whole three weeks to skate.
Heard GK for the first time when I moved to Flagstaff over 20 years ago. I remember a bunch of friends from the university were going to see him live and were so excited. I tried to get a ticket and they were sold out but in the meantime my friend gave me some CD’s that he burned from Keillor’s Saturday PHC show on NPR. I was about 2 minutes into the show and all I could think of was how lucky I was that I didn’t waste money on a ticket for a live show. To this day, GK perplexes me. His attempt at humor literally angers me and is even more confusing listening to the audience laughing hysterically at punchlines I seem to always miss. This is for such a specific type of person. They are always super progressive up front but you get some Mead in them and they always reveal that they are just a little bit racist. They are usually the most milquetoast and vanilla among us. Garrison Keillor is the most presumptuous, unfunny person in the planet. His “observations” and satire are spoken in an ancient dialect that only the blandest people can understand.
The printing on the video says December 18, 2019. But I've read that Garrison's last show was years earlier, on July 1, 2016. Why this discrepancy? Thanks
Garrison Keillor you are a national treasure. I'm a Dem, and one of my gripes with the party, is that over nothing they eat their young...throw them under the bus, then throw the baby out with the bath water, etc, etc You along with Al Franken were screwed over. Shameful. So sorry. Time to RISE AGAIN!
It kind of reminds me how much I was hostile to all the girls in my school, knowing that none of them would ever date me, and that's pretty much the way it turned out for me my entire life. In my forties I went to Great Expectations dating service and managed to get 7 dates with 4 different women, and that cost me $5000.
By now you must realize, you get what you give. Hostility is anger, maybe at yourself because you don’t understand why you’re being hostile? Please seek therapy to help ease your feelings; the world needs the best of you.
A single allegation, ended a long career. Hmm. Personally I'd trust garrison over don. Any day of the week. To say there is a double standard is an understatement, of biblical proportions. I miss a prairie home companion. I'm confident he could find a way to make today's headlines. Both to make sense. While also not being ugly, or hopeless. The impression of don would have been terribly authentic, humorous, entertaining. Likely to piss off faux news. You are missed Sir.
Not sure how I feel about this comment by Sean Coppinger after speculating that he may be a kiddy fiddler. Will ponder a little longer. ..and ponder why the thumbs down button doesn't give a number..
Funny but...always seems like these shows are mocking America in a very unkind and duplicitous way...Who is Garrison Kiellor? Or Keillor, however you spell his name or stage name
He’s talking about what it is to be a human being and finding humour in it - he’s not mocking America. If you want to know who he is you don’t need to make a public appeal for information: Google it - once you’ve worked out how to spell his name.
Not mocking America. It's a gentle look at small town Midwest people, much like the people Garrison Keillor grew up with. This, to me, is funny as hell.
Mocking America? Garrison Keillor grew up in small towns full of narrow-minded religious, salt-of-the-earth people. He's just having his funny moments with the hypocrisy of some of these people.
Lord, I miss this on Saturday nights!
So nostalgic to listen to him telling stories. Genius. I missed him and hanks for bringing him back.
Me too. I would listen on Sunday afternoons as I drove between Rockford and Glendale Heights (working in Rockford at the time, my late husband lived in the burbs) It was edifying.
My first child rarely slept, so Saturday night we would put her in the car seat and drive around listening to Prairie Home Companion.
Miss you tons Garrison. Happy for reruns.
Thirty years ago, newlywed, we moved to Wyoming so my husband could be a firefighter at FE Warren AFB. I was bereft of the gray and green of the PNW, wasn't a fan of pop country music but found Wyoming Public Radio- and Prarie Home Companion. Became instant fans. Endeared once you said, "Wyoming, a place where you can watch your dog run away...for days." We'd listen as we remodeled our little farmhouse and on road trips. One time we were fortunate to see you perform at Chateau St Michelle. We listened when stationed overseas on Crete. A weekly delight, a treasure. Now, as I do these last few years, I bake Christmas cookies and sip gluehwein while your stories, songs and poems envelop my kitchen. Thank you.
You should be a writer. Your post is wonderfully written and thoughtful. I am now enjoying the same life style in our sweet little home built in 1930 7000 ft elevation in Nevada. God bless America
Great piece ! But the editor in me must point out it would be " newly wed"..not newlywed.
I love hearing your story! I said goodbye to a fellow student from junior college who was moving to Wyoming to finish getting his pharmaceutical degree. I remember his wife said, 'Yeah, there's a about 157 people out there and twice as many dogs.' Amusing.
@@sealyonesssounds heavenly.❤
@@HughGard-rc7cc AHA! Another Grammar NAZI! (Me too, and I try to control it IRL)
Mr. Keillor, your news from Lake Wobegon is comfort food for my soul. Thank you.
My wife introduced me to your show before we married in 1985. We would repeat some of the highlights of the news each week to friends who thought we were talking about real people. They are real, in our hearts.
I love listening at bedtime. Beautiful
I'm so comforted by this...I miss this America so much...thank you... hugs Joanie
Garrison Keillor is The Greatest!!
Missed this...thanks for bringing me back to home. May your voice carry these stories for many years to come.
I listened to you with my grandparents every show on the radio ... It was the Greatest of memories... Thank you for your stories your songs and your love ... I share it with my kids now
These stories make up part of the beautiful memories that I have with my grandparents. We would listen to his stories about lake wobegon and play poker once a month when my brother and I would stay at their apartment.
Brilliant, simply Brilliant. 🤣😂😅🤣🥰 Bless you Garrison! On floor. In tears. 😂😂😅🤣❤❤❤
There were a couple of things that my reactionary dad and I agreed upon: Garrison Keillor and Hank Williams. We were both from the upper-Midwest area and had an innate understanding of Keillor's stories. Williams is one of few country singers I like and the best.
Even in the 50's we had a two-hole outhouse.
amazing as ever...love that story...
Man, I’ve heard a lot of News from Lake Woebegone episodes, but THIS, this is an epic !!!!!
Your show was the favorite thing for me to listen to, during my 9 years in the US. Now I'm back in Germany since 2006, but I still listen to the old podcasts of News from Lake Wobegon, especially during my Holidays on the Island of La Palma. I even started to associate many places there with your stories. It is a strange connection, stories from Minnesota and the winding road up to 2400m above the clouds and beneath the stars for a night of astronomy, but that became my association with Lake Wobegon.
I first time listening was when I studied in SIUC in 1981
And love it immediately. Though I am Thai student.
I was also listening to this on WSIU, in 1981 (from a small town an hour from Carbondale).
Heard this show on the radio for years and years, never knowing what any of these people looked like. Seeing it on youtube, what a treat. I live in the boondocks. PHC actually came to my neck of the woods to perform one time but I had to work. That was a bad day.
Garrison has a face MADE for the radio.❤
My dad and I used to listen to this on the radio every Saturday evening. And we would be driving back from the lake, and I would lose myself in the Lake Wobegon mysteries.. i always wondered where that show went.
Garrison, so glad you are ok after your heart surgery. We loved you in Fish Creek and you gave a remarkable, inspiring show. I have listened to you since about 1972? since a friend introduced me to your show. Saturday night I would listen while I made spaghetti for my family. The kids moaned but listened and I caught them laughing at your jokes! Blessings and thank you. Mary Anderson, Fish Creek WI
I love this man
Love Garrison, forever❤❤❤❤❤
"It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, out there on the edge of the prairie..."
I don’t care about the harassment allegations against Keillor. I do, however, care about hypocrisy. I began listening to APHC in the nineties when you actually had to listen to it on the radio on Saturday evenings. I used to make a point of tuning in before he started the News from Lake Wobegon. I loved it. I would marvel as he seamlessly shifted from entertaining people to preaching a gospel message. He was truly gifted.
Fast forward fifteen years. Obama came along, and eventually Trump came along and Garrison began to show his true colors. It’s like he couldn’t control his rage toward conservatives anymore, conservatives who, unbeknownst to him, made up the majority of his audience! And so I went from really enjoying the show to clenching my teeth and shouting at the radio for Garrison to JUST SHUT UP and go back to entertaining!
Garrison’s rage toward the right increased week by week, yet I still tuned in, painful as it was. He took subtle shots at my midwestern conservative values, he took subtle shots at anyone on the right, he took subtle shots at whoever was in the news that week, telling me how stupid I was to vote for them and how much smarter he was for supporting Clinton, Obama and the other progressives on the left.
He did one monologue where he talked about a bizarre dance troupe who was popular “in the midwest and in the south.” The audience laughed uproariously. Message received, Garrison. We’re lowbrow and stupid. We just don’t get it.
Then one day he just came out and said it live on the air, and I wish I had it on tape. “I’m a communist” said Keillor offhandedly. The audience didn’t react and the show went on. I was in utter disbelief, but now it made sense.
I continued to listen to A Prairie Home Companion but I wasn’t enjoying it as much anymore. About a year later, Garrison AGAIN proclaimed he was a communist. That broke it for me. I started listening less and less often as Garrison continued to take shots at Donald Trump and all the deplorable idiots who voted for him. Finally I wished that Garrison would lose his platform, and a few months later he did.
His replacement was just as much of a liberal progressive as Garrison was. He had to be to get the gig. I never listened to APHC again. Now I only listen to the older recordings of the News from Lake Wobegon, from the time before Garrison lost his way.
@@jakester455 I think your reply is infinitely closer to rage than anything that ever came out of GK's mouth on the radio. Right?
I understand your disappointment when you found out he doesn't share your political conservatism but can't understand why you would think it's some kind of change -or that he ever did in the first place considering the fact that only a minority of Americans are politically conservative and literally nothing you ever hear on American public radio is or ever has been politically conservative.
@@d.lafollette You need to get outside your bubble once in a while. The majority of Americans are still conservative (yes, the Communists have taken over the colleges and the numbers are changing because of that). Garrison Keillor made bank on portraying himself as a down home midwesterner but it was all a facade... He's a New York liberal Communist. My "rage" is based on being lied to for years, and at least I'm being up front with who I really am, unlike Garrison Keillor.
@@jakester455 Bubble? Hardly. I live in a city with 10,000,000 other people. I was born in the south/midwest and visit there several times a year. The people there are as "down home" as it gets and the majority are not remotely conservative. The amount of politically conservative people there -and everywhere else, is shrinking by the day.
If you'd step out of your bubble you might even begin to notice that now yourself.
Sorry but no one has lied to you. Didn't you ever notice PHC was on public radio? Didn't you ever listen to any of those stations when PHC wasn't on? (You had 40 years to do that). If you had you would've noticed that nothing else on that - or any other public radio station was politically conservative. So why didn't you?
See? Your problem isn't that someone lied to you, it's that you weren't paying attention.
If you want to step out of your bubble & start paying attention now, you'll find it easy to notice that most Americans are definitely not politically conservative. After that you might even evolve into being someone able to understand that all those people aren't Communists either.
That's just a conservative media scare word. It used to be socialism: "Hugo Chavez..., Venezuela..., blah, blah, blah." Remember?
When did conservative media change their scare word from socialism to communism?
I don't care about artists political leanings. I just enjoy the art. He's a true artist of words. I'm 100% capitalist and I don't care if he's a communist. I do however care very much if my politicians are communist. Communism is evil and causes worse suffering than capitalism. Anyone who says they're a communist needs to visit Cuba.
I miss this so much ❤
Wonderful. Thank You for the News. I needed a laugh.
I got to listen on the weekend while I was working these past the days. thank you so much
On a dark Saturday night in January in Minnesota there was nothing more cozy than to listen to APHC. It was followed by a couple of great music programs, jazz and classical. MN Public Radio was the best.
Gender, race, politics, all these things doesn’t matter when it’s 20 below, we are just mammals, we need each other, so just be nice to each other.... I Love it!!
Amen!!!
I loved that too. Remember, the experts say that only mammals with a high intellect know how to laugh. Example: a lady elephant in a Wisconsin zoo threw a rock at my then husband and me. And a zoo employee scolded me and said I couldn't toss it back. I swear that elephant was laughing at me!
Though I recently heard him tell this story, he told a longer, funnier, and different story this time. Wonderful such a wonderful imagination a true original comedian. So much fun to listen to this 💓 thank you ( ps the ending similar but hilarious)
He makes it look so easy standing up and telling these stories. Like there is no effort.
Wow, he's still got it. The nearly lost art of the American raconteur is kept alive by a few plain-spoken individualists who never play to the gallery, but arouse in the hearts of strangers across the country a longing to return to a place they've never been.
I love snow, too!
This reminds me of the day when my then husband and I went to my Aunt Linda's wedding. It was on a cruise at the Mississippi, a beautiful wedding. I was wearing the best dress and the most expensive hose I'd ever owned. Well, he got impatient on US Route 20 going home. Sadly, the hose did not survive. LOL
11:03 Gives me chills and nostalgia
Warming house? You had a warming house? You lucky guy. In Illinois we knew what they were but none of us had ever seen one. Course the coldest of winters we might get a whole three weeks to skate.
The love song!!!
❤❤
A time when I went back to Minisota The Mall of America., saw tapes I brought them home to Thailand
Hope you have them! Cheers.
ps. I will look for your new cd for my birthday which is today (30th).
Is an unknown car still spending the night outside pastor Liz's house?
LOL!
Heard GK for the first time when I moved to Flagstaff over 20 years ago. I remember a bunch of friends from the university were going to see him live and were so excited. I tried to get a ticket and they were sold out but in the meantime my friend gave me some CD’s that he burned from Keillor’s Saturday PHC show on NPR. I was about 2 minutes into the show and all I could think of was how lucky I was that I didn’t waste money on a ticket for a live show. To this day, GK perplexes me. His attempt at humor literally angers me and is even more confusing listening to the audience laughing hysterically at punchlines I seem to always miss. This is for such a specific type of person. They are always super progressive up front but you get some Mead in them and they always reveal that they are just a little bit racist. They are usually the most milquetoast and vanilla among us. Garrison Keillor is the most presumptuous, unfunny person in the planet. His “observations” and satire are spoken in an ancient dialect that only the blandest people can understand.
Where can we purchase multiple NFLW sets(ie box set) ?
Was this actually done in 2019, or is it a repeat of an earlier show?
The printing on the video says December 18, 2019. But I've read that Garrison's last show was years earlier, on July 1, 2016. Why this discrepancy? Thanks
He retired
Then suddenly
Fred
Rich
Tim
Sue
Lost their gig.
And now their back together.
I love this🙏👍
Where?
Garrison Keillor you are a national treasure. I'm a Dem, and one of my gripes with the party, is that over nothing they eat their young...throw them under the bus, then throw the baby out with the bath water, etc, etc You along with Al Franken were screwed over. Shameful. So sorry. Time to RISE AGAIN!
What year did he retire ?
It kind of reminds me how much I was hostile to all the girls in my school, knowing that none of them would ever date me, and that's pretty much the way it turned out for me my entire life. In my forties I went to Great Expectations dating service and managed to get 7 dates with 4 different women, and that cost me $5000.
By now you must realize, you get what you give. Hostility is anger, maybe at yourself because you don’t understand why you’re being hostile? Please seek therapy to help ease your feelings; the world needs the best of you.
13:21 This aged well sadly lmao
A single allegation,
ended a long career.
Hmm.
Personally I'd trust garrison over don.
Any day of the week.
To say there is a double standard is an understatement,
of biblical proportions.
I miss a prairie home companion.
I'm confident he could find a way to make today's headlines.
Both to make sense.
While also not being ugly, or hopeless.
The impression of don would have been terribly authentic, humorous, entertaining.
Likely to piss off faux news.
You are missed Sir.
Everyone so afraid to clap when he went colorblind. What have we become?
It could be worse.
Not for you of course. I am from India. My sojourn in MN gave opportunity to listen to this legend. I just love him.
9th
not sure how I feel about this knowing about the allegations of sexual misconduct by him
So called allegations are due to a photo done in jest. People need to calm down
I miss this show I used to listen to it for years
@@WickedPluto the facts seem to suggest otherwise. www.mpr.org/stories/2018/01/23/a-note-from-jon-mctaggart
You don’t know how you feel? Why not have a little think about it and make an announcement when you have decided - if you must.
Not sure how I feel about this comment by Sean Coppinger after speculating that he may be a kiddy fiddler. Will ponder a little longer. ..and ponder why the thumbs down button doesn't give a number..
Funny but...always seems like these shows are mocking America in a very unkind and duplicitous way...Who is Garrison Kiellor? Or Keillor, however you spell his name or stage name
Utuber2019 it’s humor. It’s meant to be funny and not dividing
No, it's cherishing America, and the ways of small quaint America. It's a gem.
He’s talking about what it is to be a human being and finding humour in it - he’s not mocking America. If you want to know who he is you don’t need to make a public appeal for information: Google it - once you’ve worked out how to spell his name.
Not mocking America. It's a gentle look at small town Midwest people, much like the people Garrison Keillor grew up with. This, to me, is funny as hell.
Mocking America? Garrison Keillor grew up in small towns full of narrow-minded religious, salt-of-the-earth people. He's just having his funny moments with the hypocrisy of some of these people.