Today’s Reading List – June 5, 2007
Our list is short today.
Rudy, Romney, Mormon Folklore and The Question
Chapter 1: I understand the news media's need to write stories, but they should avoid silly stuff like this Salt Lake Tribune article. It's based on Mormon folklore, known as "The White Horse Prophecy," that no one really pays much attention to. The article itself seems to conclude that there's nothing to the folklore and no serious person really believes it. Which raises the question: Is this really relevant information, or is the writer just trying to fill space? Or, could he be trying to stir the pot and call attention to Mormon folklore? We commented on the folklore, by the way, in some depth here and here. K-Lo, obviously with tongue in cheek, calls this a "positive spin for Romney to use with anti-Mormon conservatives. . . ."
Chapter 2: Looks like the Tribune story did succeed in stirring the pot: The Giuliani campaign has picked the story up. The New York Sun reprints an e-mail from Katie Harbath, the "Deputy eCampaign Director" of the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee, directing a blogger to the story. (HT: NRO's The Corner.)
Chapter 3: The Giuliani campaign apologizes to Romney. No word on whether the Giuliani staffer gets to keep her job. K-Lo opines:
If There Is Going to be a Mormon Whisper Campaign . . . I suspect it won't be Romney, but the camp that is doing the whispering, who will be hurt.
Chapter 4: The rest of the news media, apparently quite lazy and in need of content, picks up the non-story. Examples here and here.
Prediction: We'll see lots more of this kind of sub-rosa "stoking" of The Question, but the perpetrators will be much more careful.
Elsewhere Around The Web
Here's a writer (not a Mormon, apparently) who thinks Romney is a "Constitution-blessed Candidate."
A group of Jewish Democrats don't think The Question should be a question at all.
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