Jennings on Mormonism

[yendi]

Ken Jennings (taking the gloves off for only the second time that I can recall*) writes a lengthy, forceful, and fascinating post on current anti-Mormon bias.

I'll throw in my own tangental note about Romney: the attacks on him based on his religion bother me even more because they distract from how utterly incompetent and awful he is as a politician. Which at times makes me wonder if he doesn't encourage it. After all, once they've achieved a certain level, any attacks on him on any issue can easily be dismissed as religiously motivated, and anyone who looks at his record can be tarred as a bigot.

Which doesn't undercut any of what Jennings writes.

*The first being his attack on Little Miss Sunshine. Unless you count the famously misunderstood "attack" on Jeopardy, but I'm assuming that anyone who reads my LJ is smarter than a NY Post writer.

Comments

[stevietee.livejournal.com]

And from the "Mitt Romney is teh Bomb!1!!" end of the Famous Mormons With Blogs spectrum... clicky (http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2007-03-18-1.html)

[yendi]

There's little that's as amusing as watching Card still claim to be a democrat. He and Zell are like some alternate-universe version of the party.

[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

They're "mavericks"! *snort*

Mirror Universe Democrats

[stevietee.livejournal.com]

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[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

on current anti-Mormon bias … I'll throw in my own tangental note about Romney

Harry Reid, prominent Democrat, is also a Mormon; yet he doesn't get any of the flak for it that Romney gets. So this is more motivated by politics than by bigotry. (There are plenty of other reasons to attack Romney … and Reid … but when Mormonism is only raised as an issue against one of them, then there's obviously more to it than that.)

I was glad to see Jennings mention JFK; I was also struck by the parallels to the anti-Catholic attacks that he faced when running for president. (JFK was before my time; but I grew up in New England, so you couldn't take history classes without learning all about the Kennedys.) Some people have tried making anti-Muslim attacks against Obama as well; but one reason they haven't stuck is that stories of Obama's religious upbringing are vague and contradictory depending upon who tells them, and when.

Which doesn't undercut any of what Jennings writes.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of places where Jennings undercuts himself. After bringing up South Park and other examples of anti-Mormon writing, he says "There’s only one problem with this caricature: you’re not going to find too many scholars of Mormonism, believing or not, who buy it anymore." The only scholar he cites by name, however, is Richard Bushman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lyman_Bushman), a mormon who used to teach at Brigham Young University – hardly an unbiased source. That would be like citing someone from the Vatican as a "scholar" when discussing Catholicism, without disclosing the connection.

Furthermore, the historic record of anti-mormon discrimination (sad though it may be) says absolutely nothing about the validity of mormon beliefs. He makes some good points, but I doubt he's going to change any minds.

[litch.livejournal.com]

I am not fond of mormons. My parents considered themselves jack mormons at least occasionally when I was growing up. I plaid with mormon kids and we'd even go to some community events but we usually moved too often to get too involved with them.

The problem is that most moromons ate a lot more like Orson Card than ken jennings. The mormon elder's expect and are able to compel a frightening degree of obedience. You can tell them to go to hell and live according to your conscience, but we all know that takes a lot more guts than most people have.

Especially when you realize that defying a mormon elder causes your community to turn their back on you and even your family. So mormons overwhelmingly do what they are told.

And the biggest problem is that the people telling them what to do, the mormon elders are a bunch of rich old white bastards, who are openly racist, homophobic, sexist, and close minded old twats.

(p.s. no one but a mormon apologist claims john smith was anything but a scam artist with delusions of grandeur)

[ewin.livejournal.com]

I like the way he tosses in a low jab at Scientology.

Not that I'm a fan of Scientology or anything (they're nuts, they're all nuts nuts nuts), but I'll feel highly refreshed on the day when someone defends their religion without yielding to the temptation to put the tasty goat of a less-respected religion on the offering plate as a substitute target.