4 Walmarts by Baker Maultsby - Its a free market free-for-all!

[Wickerman]

This guy was on a repeat of A Prairie Home Companion this weekend. I laughed bitterly during the song, finally got around to looking him up today.

Four Wal-Marts
Maultsby/ Peter Cooper
(dedicated to John W. Cooper)

Strip malts on both sides of the street
Asphalt on top of concrete
We're fifteen miles from the county seat
But man, we've really got it made
We got a new traffic circle on the north side of town
My haby likes to go and ride around and around
Pickv her up when she gets down
And washes her btues away

Chorus
We got four Wal-Marts
In the tri-county area
An outlet mall
It's bargain hysteria
A new Burger King so our kids get jobs
We don't need you big city snobs
It's small town America

We got a cement confederate we march on by
In our big parade on the 4th of July
The old money folks and the neckus redekai
We're bursting at the seams
They closed the door on the five and dime
But the west side's growing like a kudzu vine
Standing for an hour in the Applehee's line
'Cause we know what it means

Repeat Chorus

Maybe the downtown has seen its better days
But think of all of the money we can save
A free market free-for-all
Has come to save the day
Join your local wholesale club
Or get out of our way

We've got four Wal-Marts
In the tri-county area
An outlet mall
It's bargain hysteria
We got a HP with a cappuccino machine
An Exxon attached to a Dairy Queen
'Cause it's small town, mall town America
It's small town America
Strip malls on both sides of the street
Asphalt on top of concrete

Baker Maultsby
Bingo=Sin

http://insurgentcountry.net/baker_maultsby.htm

[indigo32]

1. I missed PHC this weekend

I'm kinda pissed at Garrison Keillor at the moment anyway.

The song is dead on BTW, I'm gonna check out that website

[Wickerman]

2. what did Garrison do?

ya gotta like a CD entitled Bingo = Sin.

[indigo32]

3. See his editorial about summer

with a completely unrelated paragraph about gay marriage in it :wtf:

[Wickerman]

4. finally found it

http://www.qctimes.net/articles/2005/07/02/features/weekend/doc42c6198672a55318102975.txt

--snip--
I favor marriage between people whose body parts are not similar. I'm sorry, but same-sex marriage seems timid, an attempt to save on wardrobe and accessories. Marrying somebody from your team. Still, it's probably good for them to have to fight for the right to marry. My parents eloped against strong opposition from both families and they were in love for the rest of their lives and held hands and were tender on into their eighties.

I can understand where that would be seen as offensive. Not to try to hard to defend him I think it wasn't intended as anything but humorous. Garrison has been on record as supportive of the liberal Dem package and I believe he made statements in the NYT in summer of '04 that were supportive of Gay marriage.

That said, I think he went a tad overbord here.

I also found this blog on this subject and he says it better than I could hope to.

Knowing Keillor's rambling storytelling style, I can't say I am particularly offended by the comment as I doubt he really thinks the gay marriage movement is primarily motivated by a desire to lower the J. Crew credit card bill, and I agree with Keillor that there is experience and wisdom to be gained in having to fight for the ability to marry. However, I don't know if it was really relevant to the general message of the column, which seemed more about summertime, kindness, and America with a sprinkle of lament over the good old days.
http://www.acepryhill.com/