Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Names and faces
■ Minnesota Public Radio has provided additional details of allegations of sexual harassment against humorist Garrison Keillor, saying his alleged conduct went well beyond his account in November of accidentally touching a woman’s bare back. The network said in a statement Tuesday that Keillor was accused by a woman who worked on his A Prairie
Home Companion radio show of dozens of sexually inappropriate incidents over several years, including requests for sexual contact and explicit sexual communications and touching. Minnesota Public Radio said the woman, whom it has not identified, detailed the allegations in a 12-page letter that included excerpts of emails and written messages. The network faced a backlash from angered Keillor fans after firing the best-selling humorist after four decades of his telling folksy stories about his fictional Minnesota hometown of Lake Wobegon. Keillor accused the station of firing him without a full investigation. Until the network’s new statement Tuesday, the only account of his actions was his. He told the Minneapolis Star Tribune on Nov. 29 that he had simply been trying to console a co-worker. “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,” Keillor told the newspaper in an email, adding that the woman told him that she had forgiven him.
■ Hundreds of mourners gathered in Dolores O’Riordan’s Irish hometown for the funeral of the Cranberries singer, who died last week at the age of 46. The funeral Mass at the parish church of St. Ailbe in Ballybricken, southwest Ireland, opened Tuesday with a recording of “Ave Maria,” sung by O’Riordan and Luciano Pavarotti. Items associated with the singer, including a guitar and a platinum disc, were laid at the altar. Canon Liam McNamara said “no words are adequate to describe Dolores or to accurately state the influence for good she has been over the years. Now she is singing in the heavenly choir — hymns of petition for us,” he said. Mourners included O’Riordan’s bandmates, her ex-husband Don Burton and their three children, and the singer’s mother and siblings. O’Riordan was found dead in a London hotel room Jan. 16. A coroner is awaiting test results to determine the cause of death. The Cranberries formed in Limerick, Ireland, at the end of the 1980s and had international hits with songs including “Dream,” “Linger” and “Zombie.”