The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, "Daddy, I need to ask you something," he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.

Keillor’s joke turns on a familiar family dynamic: fathers often perform toughness with sons—pushing them toward independence—while becoming conspicuously tender, anxious, and pliable with daughters. Calling the father a “high-class hostage” exaggerates the sense that affection and protectiveness make him vulnerable to persuasion, especially when a daughter asks for something important (often implied to be permission, money, or approval). The animal imagery (“antlers,” “snorts,” “underbrush”) satirizes masculine posturing as instinctive and theatrical, while the “pat of butter” simile punctures it instantly. Beneath the humor is an observation about gendered expectations in parenting and how love can override authority.