Columnist issues warning to readers, By Garrison Keillor

[madokie]

http://www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/article.aspx?articleID=070825_7_G5_spanc35543

They put Jose Padilla away for having filled out an application form to attend an al-Qaida training camp, a milestone in criminal-conspiracy law that makes me wonder about you readers and what you might do that some ambitious prosecutor could trace back to something I wrote 16 months ago.

I'm serious. Here we are, consorting on the page, in the old conspiracy between Author and Unnamed Others, my hand on your shoulder, whispering stuff, speaking freely -- including things I may not have thought through a-l-l-o-f-t-h-e-l-e-g-a-l-i-m-p-l-i-c-a-t-i-o-n-s-o-f -- so let me just say this: I accept no liability for whatever you may or may not do after reading my column. It has nothing to do with me. Zero. Zilch.

You readers know me and I don't know you. This now makes me nervous. We are invisibly linked through words I have written, and yet the meaning of those words, as determined by a jury of 12 men and women good and true, could be far, far from what I intended, and as I sit there at the defense table in the Miami, Fla., courtroom, smelling the musky cologne of your idiot attorney, looking past him at you, you wretched cretin, as the linguistics expert for the State, a tall bunheaded woman with a Ph.D. in literary deconstruction, testifies that the subtext of my column in question was a command that you plant an explosive device in the heel of your cowboy boot and try to run through airport security hollering "I'm a-comin', Mama!" I am going to think back on my life and wish I had become a gardener. Nobody was ever indicted for watering plants.

I know people who went to prison for protesting the war in Vietnam and it is nothing to be taken lightly. It can mess with a person's mind and not every mind survives the message. You'd like to imagine that you'd be heroic like Nelson Mandela or Voltaire but I am not looking for opportunities to be heroic. I am 65 years old, thank you very much, and very, very uninterested in spending time in prison. My plan is to moulder gently in my own home and read the books I wrote term papers about as an English major and dandle my grandkids and at some point write a heart-warming memoir about my years in broadcasting.

Edit to add: by

[rodeodance]

1. subject line should read 'by' Garrison Keillor

[rodeodance]

2. He does have a very good message to all: God forgive us our zealous cruelty.

.....
Back when I was a child, thanks to my rigorous upbringing that included stories about Boys From Good Homes Who Fell In With Bad Company, I assumed that I would wind up in a federal penitentiary, and that is why I didn't go into engineering or medicine or law, professions that give you some definite criminal capabilities. Instead I went into the paragraph profession, but now that conspiracy has become such a useful all-purpose tool for prosecutors, I feel rather exposed. What if I had written years ago that the World Trade Center was ugly, which it was, and I wish it didn't exist, and what if that paragraph had been found paper-clipped to the al-Qaida application?

Ever since that dreadful September day, the Current Vice President has been obsessed with the idea that someone somewhere must be prevented from doing the horrible thing they may or may not be about to do and if the Constitution and common law and common sense must be crunched underfoot in order to prevent that, then so be it.

Where there is smoke, there is fire. This, however, is rough on smokers, if the fire department is called out whenever someone exhales. And that's what happened to Mr. Padilla. He lit up a stogie and was nailed for contemplating arson. God forgive us our zealous cruelty.
End

[madokie]

3. yes, he's like a ray of sunshine on a cold rainy foggy morning

[eppur_se_muova]

10. "obsessed with the idea that someone somewhere must be prevented from doing the horrible thing..."

"...may or may not be about to do and if the Constitution and common law and common sense must be crunched underfoot in order to prevent that, then so be it."

Was this from a Cheney press release? Oh, wait, he doesn't give press releases.

[GTurck]

4. I would like to be by your side

Mr. Keillor, I would like to be by your side. As was once said, "We must all hang together or we will surely hand alone." Isn't it sad that in our 60's we must face the prospect of having to justify anything and everything we have ever said or written? My memory is just not good enough.

[madokie]

5. Welcome to DU

[The Vinyl Ripper]

6. "Nobody was ever indicted for watering plants. "

Garrison doesn't get around much, does he?

[NC_Nurse]

7. Yeah, really.

Think again, sir. There are MANY kinds of plants.

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

8. K & R

I love his columns. I've taken to using his phrase The Current Occupant to refer to *.

[nashville_brook]

9. watched "The Lives of Others" last night -- about the Stasi in east germany in 1984

It was the story of a Stasi agent investigating a playwright. The lifeless investigator is changed by the experience of observing the life of this artist -- he's especially moved my the humanity/saddness of the playwright upon learning of the suicide of a friend (a blacklisted director). When the playwright actually commits an act of subversion -- publishing an article in "the west" on how suicide is hidden in the GDR -- the sympathetic agent goes to incredible lengths to hide evidence of the playwright's "subversion."

it occurred to me that "Total Information Awareness" -- what has become known as "wireless wiretapping" -- doesn't offer the opportunity for sympathetic Stasi agents to protect anyone out of a sense of *humanity.* The giant database that AT&T has provided to datamine our purchases, movements, conversations and writing, won't fall victim to "errant humanity."