The Philly crowd also got the rare treat of seeing Terry Gross sing, having been cast as a punk singer-songwriter in one sketch. [Garrison] Keillor had confided in the podcast interview that he was looking forward to putting her on the spot like that. She sounded fine, though, and it’s clear Keillor remains conscious of his outsized responsibility as the host, producer, lead writer and general icon of a show heard weekly by 4 million people.
[…]
As readers of [Keillor’s] book “Homegrown Democrat” know, it’s not as if the man lacks a fire in the belly about the state of things: “The thing that amazes me is that there is no antiwar movement in this country. And that, I think, is of great interest, but it’s nothing I can do anything about with this particular show, it’s not the calling of this show.” It’s all relative, though. In Saturday’s show, an otherwise lackluster sketch about how Terry Gross “gets people to say things they never would have said before” pulls in George W. as a guest, who, via Tim Russell, speaks with uncommon candor: “Terry, it was one lie after the other … we were out to invade Iraq, and we cooked the intelligence to support that. One lie led to another.”
A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION: Live And Direct From The Kimmel Center
DAILY NEWS: Tenty-Five Years In The Making, Garrison Keillor + Terry Gross = Not Quite The Clash Of Civilizations We Had Hoped For But Good Enough For Government Work