Garrison Keillor on Republicans and air quality in Catholic churches

My cousin Lynn points out this extract from a recent Salon.com column by Garrison Keillor.

Having been called names, one looks back at one's own angry outbursts over the years, and I recall having once referred to Republicans as 'hairy-backed swamp developers, fundamentalist bullies, freelance racists, hobby cops, sweatshop tycoons, line jumpers, marsupial moms and aluminum-siding salesmen, misanthropic frat boys, ninja dittoheads, shrieking midgets, tax cheats, cheese merchants, cat stranglers, pill pushers, nihilists in golf pants, backed-up Baptists, the grand pooh-bahs of Percodan, mouth breathers, testosterone junkies and brownshirts in pinstripes.' I look at those words now, and 'cat stranglers' seems excessive to me. The number of cat stranglers in the ranks of the Republican Party is surely low, and that reference was hurtful to Republicans and to cat owners. I feel sheepish about it.

The column itself is about air quality in Catholic churches. He writes:

I am a low-church Episcopalian, and all you can smell in our midst is a medley of deodorants and some hairspray and a faint aroma of baking croissants for the fellowship hour.

In the Catholic Church, as often as not, you have the priest whipping around a censer on a long chain, emitting clouds of repellent smoke like burning tires that all are required to inhale, a censer that could easily come loose and fly willy-nilly into the congregation and brain somebody and perhaps come apart and spew red-hot coals among small children, scarring them forever and requiring years of therapy. If this isn't a public safety issue, then I am Catherine of Aragon.