"Forced to look at this picture for a quaking second or two, one sort of understands why it is that people want to buy time, and to keep the warm and reassuring pack together. This would probably lead to an America where calm Mormon management would seem suddenly “normal.” It remains to be seen whether such a weird outcome would be worth a decline in the real currency of the gaffe."

The above excerpt is from page 2 of this article:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/11/perry_cain_gingrich_bachmann_the_gaffes_of_the_republican_presidential_field_.html

The article discusses the amazing ability of candidates to survive looking like fools repeatedly. Basically, the article closes with the idea that such huge gaffes on the part of the likes of Cain and Perry make Romney look almost normal by comparison.

Hitchens has made enough derogatory comments about mormonism in the past to make his "normal" joke read as a thick application of irony.

Last time the site hit 2,800 posts, and I've got a week there I don't remember much about except I kept recycling RFM wisdom repeatedly and the faithful kept surrounding me...

Make sure I'm back in a day or two; Christmas is coming, and I need to work some extra hours...

Once more into breech, dear friend. Once more.

I'll see if I can round up some troops to support you in your endeavors, SL Cabbie.

Hitchens must have a fairly high profile with mormons if he attracts this much attention.

Hitch is in top form with this one, and I won't have to be 'splainin' the Mormon stuff this time...

The righties will be all over him (latest nickname for those guys is "Koch suckers"), and this time it won't be just the Mormon crowd who will be hollering for him to be removed from life support... But that's not my fight...

BTW, I'm usually not a Hitch fan, but the mugging he did of Russ Douthat was premo... That yayhoo was in the NY Times yesterday, dissin' JFK, and I tried making a citizen's arrest because he'd clearly impersonated a historian... My post was censored...

Not the first time the NY Times has looked a little shoddy... Way back in the last century, Brigham Young channeled some funds to them to get them to tone down the anti-Mormon rhetoric...

SLC
Working like heck to keep this one on-topic

Sometimes it doesn't take much to make one's point. Hitchen's did well with this one.

BTW, I can't believe how much mormon propaganda the New York Times has been swallowing whole. Do they no longer have a fact-checking department?

The judicious use of scare quotes around "normal" when associated with the word mormon, was just the right touch at the end of the Hitchens piece.

You cannot derive normality from mormonism. That would be chemistry not in accordance with the laws of nature.