The American People Are Often Smarter Than We Think
This past weekend has seen two stories evolve that illustrate to me that the American people may be willful, sometimes bigoted, often prejudiced; they can be narrow minded and sometimes thoughtless, but they are not dumb.
The first story concerns Obama’s “small town” comments of last week. I was offended by the reflection of Karl Marx and the denigration of religion inherent in the comments. As the outrage has evolved through the weekend, it is more about the insult offered small town America than it is intellectual vapidity, but outrage has emerged nonetheless. America gets it when they are being played for dumb, and they do not like it.
The other story that reflects the general intelligence of the American public is the raiding of the Warren Jeff’s polygamous compound in Texas of several days ago and the ensuing coverage. That story is better than 10 days old now and this post from a very small blog is the first one I have seen that even attempted to make any Mitt Romney related political comment out of it. Of course it is in the negative, and wrongly so.
The press coverage of the Texas events has been uneven in terms of its identification of the compound as “Mormon,” “breakaway,” or simply labeling it “polygamous sect,” but it seems clear to me that most Americans have gotten the message that this bust has little to do with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and certainly that is has nothing to do with Mitt Romney.
Interestingly, anti-Mormon sentiment was an undeniable factor in the primary campaign. I have always thought the root of that sentiment was ignorance about what the modern CJCLDS looks like. There does appear to be more at play than that.
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Posted in Candidate Qualifications, Doctrinal Obedience, Electability, Reading List, Religious Bigotry, Understanding Religion | 1 Comment » | 
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One Response to “The American People Are Often Smarter Than We Think”
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CarlH on 14 Apr 2008 at 3:20 pm #
On Hardball Friday, Chris Matthews made a Romney-related political comment out of the FLDS situation in Texas, even while referring to the FLDS as “a rogue Mormon compound.” Here’s a link to the transcript. Not that anyone should take Chris Matthews any more seriously than the very small blog!
Unfortunately his point is, IMO, well-taken. In fact, I suspect that Mitt Romney himself is quietly thankful that he is not in the race right now precisely because of the current FLDS situation. If being a Mormon was an albatross, this would be more akin to a millstone.