In February, we reported that Garrison Keillor mocked Newt Gingrich as a "polygamist" on his NPR show "A Prairie Home Companion" -- even though Keillor has also had three wives.
On Saturday, Keillor returned to mocking Gingrich as he folded his presidential campaign. Using his "Guy Noir, Private Eye" schtick, Keillor satirically imagined that Gingrich was kidnapped by several public-radio hosts as he spouted the usual rhetoric about sick Islamic traitors and secular socialists with Kenyan anti-colonialist worldviews:
GK: So I ordered myself a serving of pecan pie and it came and underneath was taped a note. Someone had written. "I am an advocate for civilization who has been betrayed by sick pathetic radical Islamic traitors seeking to promulgate their secular socialist Kenyan anti-colonialist world view and corrupt our country through their bizarre and permissive ideas who pose the greatest threat to this nation since 1939." The words "secular socialist Kenyan anti-colonialist" told me it had been written by Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives who had suspended his campaign for president. (FOOTSTEPS THROUGH CAFÉ) I went back in the kitchen. --- Excuse me, anybody see a large man with white helmet hair?
FN (LADY): I believe he went out the back door, darling.
GK: I went out in the street just in time to see a heedful of white hair being shoved into a pickup truck by a woman with a shotgun. (TR NEWT: Help Help Help) (TRUCK REV AND PULL AWAY) And they headed east. And on the sidewalk I found a note. “We have Newt. Pay ten million dollars or else. Signed, L.M.E.” I called the Georgia State Police and (SIREN OFF) soon I was meeting with Lieutenant Roy Bob Eikenberry.
FN (GEORGIA): Call me Roy Bob.
FN (GEORGIA): Let's go find Newt— Let's go. We went to State Police headquarters. Lieutenant Eikenberry got a radar fix on Mr. Gingrich's head and located the pickup heading for the Georgia coast.
FN (GEORGIA): Heading for the Sea Islands, I reckon. We'll take the chopper.
GK: We flew east and when we got to the coast we saw the pickup truck abandoned on the shore. And offshore sat a submarine.
FN (GEORGIA): See the flag on the conning tower. It's the Kenyan navy.
GK: From Kenya?
FN (GEORGIA): See? Up in the air? They've been releasing helium balloons with secular socialist literature to float over Georgia for schoolchildren to find. But thank goodness we have shotguns. (THREE SHOTGUN SHOTS) Got em.
GK: So what do we do now, Lt. Eikenberry? (SFX: "YOU'VE GOT MAIL")
FN (GEORGIA): Let me check my computer here. (CLICKS) An email from L.M.E. And two sound files. Listen. (CLICK)
TR (NEWT, ON TAPE): This is Newt Gingrich, in the hands of atheists doing the work of the liberal media elite, and I will fight their invidious plots with every resource at my disposal so that I can fulfill my mission to establish a colony on the moon so that as this nation is taken over by secular socialism the forces of civilization can regroup. Thank you." (CLICK) --
The ongoing gag is that the media elitists keep dropping the ransom demands, and then start offering hundreds of thousands of dollars for someone to take the loathsome, prattling Gingrich off their hands. To a liberal, this is the heights of hilarity, but not so much the involuntary conservative contributors to NPR. The skit/satire ended with Gingrich literally leaving Earth:
GK: Ira Glass headed out to sea and a half-mile off shore, the Kenyan submarine surfaced and the boat pulled alongside and Glass leaped aboard. The Navy Seal gave chase but the sub dove. Moments later, an enormous rocket launcher rose slowly from the sea and sat straddling nose cone, holding onto a rope.
TR (NEWT): It is a better thing I do now than I have ever done, and it is a better place to go than I have ever been. (ROCKET BLASTING, SLOWLY RISING)
TR (NEWT): There are diamonds on the moon, Callista, and they're all yours.
GK: And he held onto the rope as the rocket rose up into the sky (TR NEWT: YEEEHAW....WHOOPI) Up into the clouds it rose and off toward the moon. He left earth to continue his battle for truth from a new location.
[Hat tip: John Williams]
