Can you spot the clues?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-was-taking-pictures-of-my-daughters-but-a-stranger-thought-i-was-exploiting-them/2014/08/29/34831bb8-2c6c-11e4-994d-202962a9150c_story.html?tid=trending_strip_2

The intruder is the second counselor in the bishopric, but knows the SP blew it by not making him the bishop.

I've only ever heard it in church, usually in a testimony.

Agreed. I've only ever heard this used by Mormons. So weird.

My immediate thought too.

Also, Mormons tend to be pushy and not as subtle or tactful as others would be with strangers. They are also very prone to deflecting when asked honest questions and not saying sorry when they're proven wrong.

How was he pushy? He asked one question, was corrected, and then was apologetic. Personally, I'm glad there are people who hone in on suspicious behavior and come forward. Imagine if it had been a situation like the man thought. If the man had done nothing, we'd be saying, "that dumbass Mormon who wasn't doing his job let a guy exploit two women."
The father sounds like a thoughtful man, asking his daughters to see it from the Mormon man's perspective. It's an interesting expirament, to project suspicions on others, and see what one can come up with.

Bullshit. He had no goddam business asking the man's daughters if they were OK. And if anyone claims to be working for the government, demand to see identification.

It is pushy to directly talk to minor children when a parent is standing there.

If he was worried, he should have said something to the father to start a conversation and allow him to explain.

Later when the father tried to work out the problem, the Mormon only wanted to deflect the question and justify his actions. He in no way said anything close to "sorry" or "I apologize."

The writer of the article clearly states that the man apologized.

Bottom of the 4th paragraph.

Not a heartfelt "I'm sorry," but a justification for his intrusive behavior.


Let's hope you don't go up to young teens and directly undermine their parent. Sounds like you think this is fine and I have to disagree.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/31/2014 10:26AM by Cheryl.

Yep, I probably do it everyday, huh!
Had I been on the boat, I would have thought it odd that the photographer took photos for 15 minutes while the girls hugged. BUT--I would have passed it off as a model shoot or something. I'm not the confrontational type.

Apologized. Criticized. Apologized again.

Your basic non-apology.

Cheryl, I agree the guy should have asked the father rather than the girls. But maybe this guy really is a homeland security officer and thats what hes trained to do. Maybe thats protocol or not. But his actions dont automatically mean he is mormon. Maybe if we were on a government recovery site, we would say hes an awful government worker.

He should have better training which should include showing ID before questioning anyone.

Even so, none of this means he is definitely mormon. Maybe not security either. For all we know, he could just really be worried about exploitation. It Does happen, so maybe he felt he was doing the right thing. I am sure we have all done things like this.

This is supposition. Of course he thought he was doing the right thing. But he wasn't. Good intentions pave the road to hell as the old saying goes.

If you have done this, I suggest you think twice about it next time.

No one said that, yet he is being called the mormon in most of these comments.

The wholepoint of the thread was to discuss his potential mormonhood based off of very little information. Who is doing the supposition here?

Its ironic that you all are doing the EXACT thing he warns us not to do at the end of the article... rather than racial profiling, you seem to be mormon-profiling. Interesting.

Mormons deserve to be profiled. They profile all other churches so fuck them if they don't like it back.

The shit for brains claimed to work for homeland security as if that gave him some kind of government excuse to intrude into another man's family. That in itself is enough to discount that son of a bitch who questioned a father photographing his own daughters. As soon as someone claims to be working for the government, demand to see identification. Its that simple. Had the author of the story done that, he could have filed a complaint against the asshole through the government agency.

My guess is that the dumbass is probably a high priest. If he isn't LDS, he is a golden contact for any missionary looking to recruit new assholes.

Seriously? There is no real reason anyone could say this guy is mosy likely mormon. Apparantly only mormons are jackasses or dumbasses.

Racial profiling is an entirely different beast than "Mormon profiling".

Many of us have experienced more than our share of dumbasses in Mormonism. If we want to discuss the possibility that this clueless piece of work interfering in someone else's family might be Mormon, we will. If you want to try to defend the Mormon church it will not go well for you here at RFM. Maybe take your apologetics over to FAIR or somewhere where people give a shit about protecting the "good name" of the LDS church.

I am not defending mormons or being apologetic. I'm simply saying its jumping to conclusions without any evidence. I think ass-holery is just as common in the regular world as it is in the mormon world. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt before jumping to conclusions.

Not to the person upsetting them and acting like a predator.

I do not condone what this man did. I certainly would keep my worries to myself. I find this article fascinatibg based off of a "what would I do" aspect. I probably would stand back and watch more of the interactions with the man and the girls for warning signs. Maybe the man realizes his error now. Who knows?

I don't see any connection to the Mormon's I know... The guy just seems like a creeper, and I would have told him to get the fuck away from my family.

Who are you guys that only hear Mormons saying "I'd be remiss?"

It's common phrasing in a lot of semi-formal and formal business writings. I've heard lots of non-Mormon attorneys use that phrase. I've also heard it dozens of times from my Commonwealth colleagues, particularly the South African and Australian ones.

There's absolutely zero evidence in the article that the inquirer was LDS. Zero, zilch, nada. There are plenty of legitimate problems to lay at the feet of Mormons, but it is, in my opinion, counterproductive to try to claim the interlocutor is LDS in the posted article.

to make fun of Mormons. No one he knows except Mormon use the term. The business men you know are likely Mormons or they've been influenced by Mormons.

No, not likely. They're in countries where Mormonism is a tiny fraction of the population.

Do a Google search for "I would be remiss." You have to wade through about ten pages of formal legal writing and foreign diction before you land on anything even notionally LDS.

Google results of "I would be remiss"yielded 313,000 results. So obviously people are using it. Are they all mormons?

Here are a few examples:

"And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated..."
Barack Obama, on receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize

"Standing before you tonight, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge an issue weighing heavily on our sport and our society..."
Jerry Richardson, owner of the Carolina Panthers

"The 'I would be Remiss Post"
Marc Ambinder
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/03/the-i-would-be-remiss-post/52384/

Not exactly bastions of Mormonism, are they?

^^^^
Also, I personally have never heard a single mormon use the phrase in my life.

Remiss is not a word used in common conversation. It's a word Mormons use frequently to show off their vocabulary. Others who use it, don't use it with children they've never met when their parent is standing there.

A business term? Not in my experience.

A legal term. It might be.

Why would a stranger use a legal term with kids they don't know?

Perhaps they're out of touch with reality and kids' experience levels.

It's predatory-like to talk to minor children directly when they've never been introduced. Saying a word they don't use makes it worse.

Oh my hell. I was super tbm for nineteen years, never missed a sunday. I do not recall this phrase. He did not use the phrase with the girls, but with the father. You still have no solid proof of the guts religion. He could even be athiest, ir an exmormon, or mormon hater.

I left the morg 50 years ago and the memory is still with me and I hear it whenever I'm with Mormon relatives.

I hope fifty years from now, I am not as jaded as you are coming across on the thread.

What a clever predator he is! Using a word too big for teenagers to understand in context, and right in front of a man with a camera!

Your experience doesn't jive with the experience of most others here (I see 3 others posting to the effect, along with myself, that this is not something they hear very often).

Claiming it's a common Mormon phrase is just nebulous. There are exactly two instances of it occurring on lds.org ( see https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=%22I+would+be+remiss%22+site:lds.org )

None of "I'd be remiss"

A single instance of "I feel remiss"

There are a handful of other hits, including lots of journal entries from the entries (as in, remiss in keeping the journal up to date) at lds.org.

Maybe it's just a familial thing for your family? Unless Barack Obama is somehow a closet Mormon, I think you're going to be hard-pressed to claim that it's a phrase somehow endemic to the Mormon population.

In any case, it's not proof he's Mormon. I hear a lot more over-blown attorneys use that phrase than I've ever heard Mormons. It's not evidence he's a blowhard attorney, though.

if he really is homeland security, he should have shown his ID before he even asked the question. He certainly should have talked to the father first and not the children; otherwise, he looks like the one with the problem.

Agree!

I do not have any Mormon-radar, but the Spidey senses I do have tell me that the guy was not Homeland Security, at all! He's a jerk, caught doing something jerky that in his head should have come out all cool and macho (or some such nonsense). He grasped at a stupid excuse that would give him enough authority to stop further questions and allow him to maintain the self-image in his head.

I believe he's the kid who asks for everybody's hall pass, even tho' he's not a hall monitor.

I think what some folks here are saying is that Mormonism encourages that jerky hall monitor wannabe behavior. Which, if true, IS creepy. That idiotic behavior in adults can actually be hurtful, as the bloggers experience shows.

I have used the remiss phrase many times and have never been Mormon.

Not even in a past life. ;-)

Um, nothing? Not all mormons are clods, and not all clods are mormons.

My two cents.

*The phrase "I would be remiss" is not solely Mormon. It is more regional and generational.

*The fact that this man watched the Father and girls is quite creepy.

*If really Homeland Security-show/ask for ID.

*Homeland Security is a joke. I have seen more focus on CHILDREN from H.S. than poor behaved adults.

*I think the Father really made a HUGE deal out of this. Good for him for confronting the man, but he did turn around and make huge assumptions about what he was implying too.

RMM

I could tell you so many stories about Homeland Security, but I won't, because odds are there are at least a couple of guys on the board trying to scratch out a living in that failed program. Actually, Homeland Security includes the Coast Guard and Secret Service, who are both normally really good at their jobs. I think you really mean the TSA, which is a whole other story.

You also have to be careful with people who pull out Homeland Security badges. There are dozens of regional private security firms across the country that try to market themselves by using the name Homeland Security, as part of their company name. Actual Homeland Security badges will have the actual agency name on them.