Minnesota Public Radio's news department released the results of their investigation of the reason for MPR's break with Garrison Keillor. That's every bit as strange as it sounds. And the story only reinforces that.
In an email to MPR News on Monday, Keillor said he could not comment for this story in part because he was in negotiations with Minnesota Public Radio over their business relationships. "But beyond that," he wrote, "I don't think MPR News can report fairly on MPR management's chaotic and disastrous actions."
For weeks, Minnesota Public Radio refused MPR News' repeated requests to comment on the company's separation from Keillor. But as negotiations with Keillor's company stalled and pressure from news organizations mounted, Jon McTaggart, president and CEO of MPR and American Public Media Group, broke his silence.
In an interview with MPR News Tuesday afternoon, he said the company's separation of business interests from Keillor came after it received allegations of "dozens" of sexually inappropriate incidents involving Keillor and a woman who worked for him on A Prairie Home Companion. He said the allegations included requests for sexual contact and descriptions of unwanted sexual touching.
I'm glad that MPR was finally willing to open up to MPR.But whatever MPR knew, the results of the MPR news story are underwhelming.
In 2009, a subordinate who was romantically involved with Keillor received a check for $16,000 from his production company and was asked to sign a confidentiality agreement which, among other things, barred her from ever divulging personal or confidential details about him or his companies. She declined to sign the agreement, and never cashed the check.
• In 2012, Keillor wrote and publicly posted in his bookstore an off-color limerick about a young woman who worked there and the effect she had on his state of arousal.
• A producer fired from The Writer's Almanac in 1998 sued MPR, alleging age and sex discrimination, saying Keillor habitually bullied and humiliated her and ultimately replaced her with a younger woman.
• A 21-year-old college student received an email in 2001 in which Keillor, then her writing instructor at the University of Minnesota, revealed his "intense attraction" to her.
When MPR gets into the details, the first story turns out a bit more damning than it sounds. The fourth turns out to be oversold. The third initially seems to be the most damning, but the actual details just suggest that Keillor was a bad boss. Which progressives tend to be. There's a legion of much worse anecdotes from Michael Moore and Ralph Nader. It doesn't appear to be especially sexist though.
Some of the behavior is hard to distinguish from bad jokes. And that raises the same old questions.