My Response to MPR
By Garrison Keillor, Star Tribune
27 January 18
The MPR committee's letter to listeners was in response to a blizzard of
listener anger, all of it richly deserved, after MPR expunged shows that
people loved. And listeners smelled a rat. Listeners know me far better than
MPR management does and they know I'm not abusive. Management, when it heard
a complaint back in October, did not have the good manners to call me, an
employee of fifty years, and sit down with me face to face and talk about
what had happened. If they had done the simple courteous thing, this all
would've been avoided.
How to respond to so many untruths in a short space? The woman who
complained was a friend, had been hired as a freelance researcher, an
employee of mine, not MPR's, working a job that she did from home by email.
I hardly ever saw her in the office. Our friendship continued in frequent
emails about our kids and travel and family things that continued to my last
show and beyond. She signed her emails "I love you" and she asked if her
daughter could be hired to work here, and so forth. She attended the last
show in L.A. She still features "A Prairie Home Companion" prominently on
her Facebook page.
Her complaint was drawn up by her attorney, a highly selective and
imaginative piece of work. MPR depended on the complaint, it never spoke to
me or to the complainant.
If I am guilty of harassment, then every employee who stole a pencil is
guilty of embezzlement. I'm an honest fiction writer and I will tell this
story in a novel.
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