Posted by:
OnceMore
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Date: June 14, 2011 01:16PM
Part of the mormon ad campaign is to have mormons (alone, or in partnership with other writers) gin up articles for newspapers and magazines. The recent "Mormons Rock!" article in Newsweek is good example.
Then we have the article in the Washington Post by mouthpiece Michael Otterson (closed thread on this:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,216554 )
My thoughts on Michael Otterson's article (with repeat of link from previous thread):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/why-i-wont-be-seeing-the-book-of-mormon-musical/2011/04/14/AFiEn1fD_blog.htmlWhy would the Washington Post print a review by a guy who thinks it's a virtue to refuse to see the broadway production he is reviewing? Even for the "On Faith" section of the newspaper, that's a breach of their standards.
Otterson writes:
"...According to the reviews, the play sketches the journey of two Mormon missionaries from their sheltered life in Salt Lake City to Uganda, where their training and life experience proves wholly inadequate to the realities of a continent plagued by poverty, AIDS, genital mutilation and other horrors. While extolling the musical for its originality, most reviewers also make reference to the play’s over-the-top blasphemous and offensive language."
Yes, Michael, other reviewers mention the language because it's funny, and because it's a continuation of the South Park style, and not because they think it's blasphemous.
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"Dealing with parody and satire is always a tricky thing for churches."
Because they have no sense of humor when it comes to their religion.
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"We can easily appear thin-skinned or defensive, and churches sometimes are. A few members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who have seen this musical and blogged about it seem to have gone out of their way to show how they can take it. That’s their choice. There’s always room for different perspectives, and we can all decide what to do with our free time."
Damn! Way to passive-aggressively condemn your fellow mormons who chose to see the musical comedy! This my friends, is typical mormon-speak and typical church pressure to conform.
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"But I’m not buying what I’m reading in the reviews. Specifically, I’m not willing to spend $200 for a ticket to be sold the idea that religion moves along oblivious to real-world problems in a kind of blissful naiveté."
Maybe he hasn't had a lot of interaction lately with mormon missionaries? Holy crap, you don't suppose he's thin-skinned and defensive?
Michael Otterson then goes on to list all the good things mormons have done in the past seven years (same time period during which the writers and producers of "Book of Mormon" were wasting their time writing a parody -- see what he did there?).
Of course, he will tell you that about 4 million people in Africa have been helped over the past 7 years by mormons, etc. What he doesn't tell you is that the Church has leveraged a relatively small amount of good works into a huge PR campaign while simultaneously spending billions (yes, billions) building a mall in Salt Lake City.
Good going, mormons, for doing good works ... but your good works are itty-bitty compared to your real estate, ranching, water rights, insurance, and other commercial enterprises. And, anyway, why would you conclude that because you did that stuff for 7 years the gay! ex-mormon writing the "Book of Mormon" would be better off working for the church in Africa? Why can't both good works and Broadway plays go on simultaneously?
A careful reader will also note that many of the good works Michael Otterson lists as pluses on the mormon side are, by his own admission, in "partnership" with others. Anyone skimming the article will come away with the impression the mormons did it all, but health care professionals in Africa did most of the work. You can't claim 126,000 restorations or improvements of sight without quantifying your degree of "partnership" and be taken seriously. Unless you are the mouthpiece of the master dissemblers in the LDS Church.
Otterson also states that 52,000 Africans have been trained in neonatal resuscitation, which is true. And then he goes on to conclude: "Training in neonatal resuscitation has also been a big project for Mormons in Africa." See what he did there? He phrased that in such a way that gullible readers will allow mormons to take credit for all 52,000 of the trained persons. Michael Otterson does not reveal how much of that training can be credited to the mormons. What's a "big project" for the LDS Church? We don't know. Could be one guy, one time, could be hundreds of people helping over 7 years. Could be funds given once to the people doing the training. We don't know, and that's Otterson's intention.
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"The danger is not when people laugh but when they take it seriously – if they leave a theater believing that Mormons really do live in some kind of a surreal world of self-deception and illusion."
Perish the thought.