Garrison Keillor: Here's What Happened

Says he accidentally 'put my hand on a woman's bare back'
By Newser Editors,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 29, 2017 1:43 PM CST
Garrison Keillor: Here's What Happened
Garrison Keillor in 2014.   (AP Photo/Ann Heisenfelt, File)

Garrison Keillor is explaining his side of the story after Minnesota Public Radio severed ties with him. In an email to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the former host of A Prairie Home Companion says the incident in question was a case of accidental contact:

  • "I put my hand on a woman's bare back," he writes. "I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was open and my hand went up it about six inches. She recoiled. I apologized. I sent her an email of apology later and she replied that she had forgiven me and not to think about it. We were friends. We continued to be friendly right up until her lawyer called."

Keillor went on to say that he was "the least physically affectionate person in the building" and suggested that he had himself been the recipient of inappropriate behavior over the years. "If I had a dollar for every woman who asked to take a selfie with me and who slipped an arm around me and let it drift down below the beltline, I’d have at least a hundred dollars," he writes, calling the allegations against him "poetic irony of a high order." He added, however, that "I had a good long run and am grateful for it and for everything else.” Meanwhile, a 1994 quote from Keillor is making the rounds, as noted by a post at Hot Air: "A world in which there is no sexual harassment at all is a world in which there will not be any flirtation," he said during a speech. (More Garrison Keillor stories.)

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