Shaun’s post on the coming media circus surrounding Mitt Romney’s likely run for president as the first serious Mormon (properly speaking, “LDS”) candidate is generating some upset comments from the LDS faithful who appear to not like the posting of people in the temple underwear. The most extensive response is by LDSer Guy Murray, calling the underwear shot “denigrating.” Others are pointing to Joe’s comment policy as grounds for removal. I weighed in at Guy’s blog but I’ll give my two cents here as TMV’s shadow blogger, known better for fluffy apolitical junk than this.
First, my street cred with LDS believers – they comprised probably a quarter of my high school, and I was friends with a few. I attended their seminary across the street from the school once, and besides the reading in King James English, wasn’t weirded out. As an evangelical in the late 1990s, I believed, as I’d say they did, we had a fair amount of common ground in feeling mocked in pop culture. If they were mocked by the religious or pagans in the rest of the school, it wasn’t overt. Just normal kids who used their free periods to go across the street.
I should also note my near-absolutism on free speech matters. On my own blog, I’ve rebuffed a few people that didn’t like something posted by a commenter, including characterization as a “bitch.” My guess is Joe doesn’t mind me noting there was a lot of debate among the cobloggers at the time before Joe instituted an explicit comment policy. Slurs against Jews by a handful of persistent commenters were popping up irregularly, and Joe among others thought it crossed the line and needed to be excised. I disagreed – more speech curing bad speech, sunlight as disinfectant and such – but that’s just me. Guy and other critics are certainly correct that the underwear shots can be considered “offensive,” a broad term that causes no end of legal headaches and corporate PC seminars and memos to employees.
But I’d remind those that consider the shot offensive that it indeed illustrates (literally) what is coming in 2008 – if Romney keeps hinting he’ll run, a slew of stories for the next 2 years about the LDS church, its history, controversies and role in America and abroad, including its rather secretive leadership structure. (Methodists and Episcopalians like the Bushes are only interesting these days when talking about gay bishops.) How do you grab the attention of my attention-deficit generation? Comedy – look at the Daily Show and YouTube. I’d never even heard of special temple underwear, so that pic indeed piqued my interest in a subject that I’d normally skip past. I happen to like Romney, already the subject of an extensive Weekly Standard profile last year.
Yes, a bit crude – but the underwear shot gets attention, and is something that a lot of folks like myself never even heard of. Let’s also consider the difficulty of describing temple underwear without something visual. If “South Park” can make fun of Latinos selling “Native American” tampons made from their hair to a gullible, progressive audience, and secular and faithful alike can pillory the Christian merchandising trend of the past decade, I don’t see how LDS temple underwear is off limits. LDSers could take a page from certain Middle Easterners that self-identify as Muslims (the efforts I make to be PC!) and start killing people that highlight temple underwear, but they’re too civilized for that. I happen to agree with the commenter in Shaun’s post that implied this was a side issue as long as people were dying over offense.
That said, I found Shaun’s three responses to Ann Althouse’s criticism to be in poor taste, especially patronizing a serious, intelligent blogger as “Annie Pooh.” A public apology from Shaun, many of whose readers at TMV probably didn’t see his responses at Althouse’s blog, wouldn’t be inapt.
Shadow blogger out.
I’m a tech journalist who’s making a TV show about a college newspaper.