Today sure is dead compared to last Saturday.

Like most of you, I spent most of the day flipping channels on the TV and visiting different Live Earth venues on the
MSN site. What a day. Today is totally dead. Even Garrison Keillor is on vacation, so we're stuck with old Prairie Home shows.

Garrison Keillor and the art of lying

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/features/deskofgk/2005/old_scout/

<snip>

When you tell a lie, it's important not to say too much too soon. Let them pull the details out of you. And always lie with utter sincerity. "It's how we do it in the Midwest," I said. "This is the German/Scandinavian/Irish chunk of America and those people despised princes and potentates. So we have this scapegoat guy in an ermine-trimmed robe with a plastic scepter and we jeer and throw hot dog buns and Sno-Cones at him."

"I've never heard of that," she said, "and I lived in California for three years."

"California is different," I said. "It's movieland and people worship hierarchy. But here in St. Paul — and this might interest you, being Australian — this year, instead of a fake monarch, we'll have a man dressed up like Rupert Murdoch."

"Why him?" she said.

"Well, he's sort of despised here because of Fox News, which was the big cheerleader for the war and a mouthpiece for Cheney, who is his own branch of government. Murdoch is a schlockmeister. It's like Mencken said, 'Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.' We don't admire that here."