Posted by:
SL Cabbie
(
)
Date: June 07, 2011 07:12PM
Okay, first I need to get this rant off my chest early...
Right near the end, LDS Church Historian, Richard Turley--who is a lawyer and not a trained historian--essentially identified Mark Hofmann as "one of us," i.e. an "anti-Mormon."
Seriously... He even went so far as to claim a loss of faith attributable to Hofmann's actions was at the root of an individual's suicide...
Sorry, counselor, but you don't appear to know much more about psychology than you do history. Whose fault is it if the church isn't true? People commit suicide because the emotional pain becomes unbearable; are you suggesting a life of comfortable delusion is somehow worthwhile and viable? I almost wish that nonsense you put forth about "standing before the 'Bar of Justice' of God" was true; I'd use my "one phone call from Outer Darkness" just to call someone to get a description of how you squirmed when you couldn't hide from that one...
Anyway, the reason I could confirm the show was a mixture of old and new was because I've met many of the individuals featured. Two are close friends, and there was even a shot of a taxi cab that I would put circa 1998... Not mine, incidentally...
Kudos, BTW, to Maxine Hanks who was featured extensively and is a friend of Steve Benson. She gave a strong analysis of the forces operating that motivated church leaders to conceal the extent of their culpability in the forgery acquisitions. I don't buy any suggestions church overlords "conspired to produce the forgeries," but the evidence is abundantly clear they did conspire to help him "acquire" his finds, provided financial backing, and when their worst nightmares were realized, no less than Gordon B. Hinckley publicly lied about his relationship with the forger/bomber.
Brent Metcalf gets equally strong marks from me; he's presented at an Exmormon Conference, and I met him at the first ex-Mormon activity I attended around 2001 where I first heard of his relationship with Hofmann.
My guess from the apparent age of Brent and Maxine is those soundbites were taken somewhere around five to six years (anyone who knows either of them well, feel free to chime in; I'm only guessing).
There's less guessing involved with my good friend Joe Redburn, a local talk show host who also owns "The Trapp," now Salt Lake's oldest continuously operating gay bar... I remember Joe from the original A&E program (we talked about it when he rode in my cab a few days later), and he was decidedly younger; that one was probably from the mid-90's...
My other friend is former Salt Lake Tribune reporter, Mike Carter, who only appears in a photo from 1986 but an article he penned was also featured. Mike was convinced at first "the police have the wrong guy," but he changed his mind in the face of the overwheming evidence.
I would also guess the sequences with Sandra Tanner--another I met an Exmormon Conference; this one was in 2002--were shot at around the same time as the Metcalf/Hanks sequences.
I believe the Turley/Leonard soundbites were added later, and what I found disturbing was their presence--to the best of my knowledge, neither was orginally involved in events--suggested the trend in the "Hofmann spin" is exactly what those of us in the know about LDS history realize has always been the pattern. Enough layers of whitewash are applied until even the blackest events are somehow rendered into LDS vanilla pudding. When they're even talked about at all...
Note above that RFM newcomer "AIC" had not even heard of this story... Suprise, surprise... And now another rant about the inclusion of extensive "handcart footage" from a past Pioneer Day Parade. That nonsense was pure propaganda; the human disaster--the largest in the entire Overland Migration--that overtook the Willie and Martin Handcart Companies in 1856 can be laid squarely on Brigham Young's "prophetic mantle."
Others I've met who were featured included booksellers Curt Bench (Benchmark Books) and Ken Sanders (Ken Sanders Rare Books). Both men provide noteworthy and valuable services to the ex-Mormon community with their businesses.
My overall grade: C+ with a note that cable offerings on the Hofmann episode are displaying a decided downward trend in the objectivity department and a horrible move in the direction of propaganda achieved via selective editing and cherry picking of evidence. High grades to the three I mentioned above, Hanks, Metcalf, and Tanner, who represented the Exmormon Community quite effectively...
Those interested in learning about the entire matter should read "The Mormon Murders" or "Salamander" for starters...
Final thoughts: Mark Hofmann's "business model" had much in common with local Ponzi and MLM schemes, with a predictable outcome...