“You shouldn’t be friends with a female colleague – that’s dangerous”

Neither his resignation in 2016 from A companion for the Prairie Home A scandal the following year, in which Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) terminated its collaboration with the radio host due to allegations of sexual misconduct, has slowed Garrison Keillor down. Shortly before his 80th birthday, the humorist is back in the spotlight thanks to two new books (Serenity at 70, happiness at 80: Why you should continue to grow older and the novel Boom Town: a Lake Wobegon), a series of tour dates and an interview with CBS Sunday Morning News in which he reflects on how he was called out during the #MeToo movement.

“#MeToo was a very noble endeavor to fight bullies,” Keillor, 79, told CBS correspondent Anthony Mason. “There are bullies and I’m all for fighting them – I’m not one myself.”

In November 2017, Keillor was fired from MPR, the A companion for the Prairie Home And Almanac of a writer, after the married author and radio host was accused of sexually inappropriate behavior by a colleague. In email exchanges between him and the woman, a researcher who Keillor described as a “mentor and employer” who “had power over me,” he mentions sexual dreams about her. In his interview, Keillor insists that he and the woman had a “mutual flirtation” and a “friendship” that was only seen as problematic because “the culture has changed.” He now considers it “dangerous” to be friends with women in the workplace.

“There were no kisses, no hugs – it was a kind of flirtation that thousands have practiced before me, and I hope they take my case as a warning not to do that,” says Keillor, who previously attributed his dismissal to touching a woman’s bare back while trying to comfort her. “You shouldn’t be friends with a female colleague – that’s dangerous. You should never lay a hand on a female colleague, never – that’s dangerous.”

Keillor says he would have been “grateful” if he had been confronted personally with the “effects” of his sexual innuendo and unwanted touching. When Mason asked him if he had “crossed the line,” he said he hadn’t done anything that others hadn’t done.

“I crossed the line so much that if you fired everyone else who crossed the line, there would be no staff left,” he says. “And there would be no management at all. The culture has changed.”

He called the signing of a confidentiality agreement as part of the settlement a “terrible, terrible mistake” and noted that “you should never give up the right to tell your side of the story.”

While he acknowledges that it was easier for him because he was already retired before the allegations came to light, he is upset that his business relationship with MPR was terminated. MPR then conducted an investigation that found a “year-long pattern of behavior that left several women who worked for Keillor feeling abused, sexualized or degraded,” according to MPR News.

“I worked for the company for 40 years and was fired with one phone call,” says the Minnesota native. “The phone call lasted about a minute and a half. There was no ‘thank you.'”

Keillor now says he doesn’t care what people think of him, adding, “I’m not taking a poll about my reputation, my public image or anything else. … I have friends and family, and there’s a certain number of people who still like to come in and hear about Lake Wobegon. And that’s enough. What more could you want?”

He also refuses to use the word “victim,” telling Mason, “I’ve met too many people who are truly victims, and I’m not one.”