Some commonsense from the press…

The Salt Lake Tribune (no friend to the LDS church, mind you) chimes in with some smart thinking on the issue of a JFK Speech:

On the trail, news reporters seem to be the ones mainly bringing up Romney's religion…

 

The question, says Romney spokesman Kevin Madden, is what's the goal of such a speech and is that outweighed by any potential downsides. Romney doesn't want to give a speech that introduces him to potential voters as a Mormon instead of showcasing his strengths "across a spectrum of all the issues," Madden says.

 

[…]

 

"There's a reason why people see this stuff as a risk," Gerstein says. "There is always a danger that by elevating it and making it a big deal, you call more attention to it."

 

More often, he adds, the default strategy, and the safest, is to ignore the below-the-surface concerns.

 

[…]

 

"Today, I may be the victim," Kennedy said, "but tomorrow it may be you - until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril."

By jove, I think they have been reading this blog!

Sometimes I hate cable TV…

Much debate about whether the characters in HBO's "Big Love" are Mormon or not.  Are the Orthodox "Catholics"?  Are Catholics "Christians"?  And so it goes.  This is a sectarian debate that has little or nothing to do with anything political - why so much coverage?

Well, the very silly people that run the TV show could not leave well enough alone.

Please note, all this commentary comes from the left.  You know, people that think TV matters and that think all religious people are nut cases, but that maybe Mormons are a little nuttier than the rest of us.

Adn while we are discussing visual media…

More on that movie.  I guess if you are on the left, it is OK to compare Mormonism and Islam.  This is probably more Lowell's to comment on than mine, but that said there is no comparison.  Even if you grant the Mountain Meadows Massacre as a terrorist act, and even if you grant it was ordered by Brigham Young (I simply have not researched enough to know, I am granting these for the sake of discussion only) the MMM was a one time event and it was not a result of a highly developed worldview out of Mormonism.  All religions have crossed the line from time-to-time.  But there is a branch of Islam dedicated to death, destruction, and mayhem  That is a unique development for a monotheistic religion.

Lowell:  Comparing Mormonism to Islam is one of those smears that are very difficult to address without dignifying the smear.  I think anyone who knows much about either faith knows that they are worlds apart.  For one thing, free will lies at the very foundation of Mormonism.  I am sure the same cannot be said of the extreme form of Islam that the smear employs.

A Clarification

Yesterday, I commented that a post from a Blog called the Virginian Federalist was correct, but perhaps too narrowly focused.  Turns out the post I responded to was itself responsive to criticism over a more general post.  I think they've got it!

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