Week of 10/17/2011

Mormons Versus Morons
– by David Matthews 2

There’s an old saying that “You can’t fix stupid.” And boy do we seem to have a lot of it.

And it probably should be no surprise that “stupid” seems to appear when the subject turns to religion or politics, or usually both. Remember former Governor Jesse Ventura’s line about religion being a crutch for the weak-minded? That gets re-validated every time “stupid” makes an appearance.

So here we are waist-deep in yet another presidential sludge-fest and the name that pops up again is former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, aka “Voice of Reason for the Unreasonable”. Amongst the things that certain GOP fanatics hate about Romney is the fact that the state that delivered the first Roman Catholic President in the form of John Kennedy, the state that was first colonized by Puritans, somehow managed to elect Romney as governor even though he is… brace yourself now.. a Mormon!

Yes, we are back to this again.

Reverend Robert Jeffress, a prominent Dallas minister and diehard supporter of Texas Governor Rick Perry, has been making a name for himself in the media going around telling anyone willing to listen to him or stick his face in front of a TV camera that Mormonism is “a cult”, and that Romney is “not a Christian”.

Bear in mind that Jeffress doesn’t just single out Mormons. He apparently had some choice words about Roman Catholics last year, accusing the religion from which all western Christian derivations come from (including, I should point out, his own) as being, in his own words, “the bridge between Satan and man.” Yes, he also thinks Roman Catholics are a “cult”. Remember, ALL religious sects of Christianity, including the Baptists, came from a split from the Roman Catholic Church. So what does that say about your faith, Reverend, since yours also came from that “Babylonian cult”? Have you ever known of good fruit to sprout from a bad tree?

But he’s not the only one with that criticism. He’s just the latest in a long line of self-important people that take it upon themselves to serve as judge, jury, and chief condemner of all faiths not their own. Bryan Fisher of the American Family Association pompously declares that the First Amendment was “never intended” to apply to what he deems to be “non-Christians”, and therefore does not apply to Mormons.

No, I am not making this up. You can hear their diatribes online if you don’t believe me. The sheer ignorance, arrogance, and out-and-out stupidity of these self-important people is only eclipsed by the fact that there are others that do follow them and base their opinions on those pontifications.

Of course in the ultimate scheme of things, these self-righteous self-serving self-important braggarts are really doing themselves a disservice. The problem is that this realization often comes after the damage is already done.

But a funny thing happened in the meanwhile… while the talking heads started to jabber on and on about whether or not Rick Perry should disavow his loyal soothsayer, some new commercials began appearing between news segments. They are simple, disarming, commercials featuring ordinary people talking about how they have boring, ordinary lives, and then at the end you find out that these people of many races and ethnicities are also Mormons. Yes, the Mormon Church paid a pretty penny for these commercials, and they work, because they seem to counter the sting of the venom being sprayed by vipers like Jeffress and Fisher quite nicely.

Now… should Governor Perry “disown” Jeffress, like then-candidate Barack Obama was pressured to do with his bombastic minister, Jeremiah Wright, four years ago? Idiots that play the “gotcha game” certainly would demand it, but this commentator thinks that it would be too little and too late. It didn’t matter if Obama “disowned” Wright or fought to defend him… the conservatives and neo-conservatives still considered the connection to be fair game and they attacked Obama mercilessly because of it. So why should Perry do the same when there is absolutely nothing to gain from doing it?

Let’s get brutally honest here… Jeffress and his ilk may be political douchebags, but they also represent a very vocal segment that make up the base of the GOP. They were the ones that convinced Perry that he should run for the White House in the first place; it would be sheer stupidity to then “disown” that group just because their ignorance is showing like a senile grandfather without his pants.

In fact, rather than trying to push these political senile grandfathers without pants away, we need to recognize that these people not only exist, but they happen to vote. And they vote more frequently than the bulk of the voting populace! While most of you are coming up with excuses why you’re not going to vote, they’re already at the ballot box, picking candidates that both reflect their beliefs and would force all of us to adhere to them. If you’re wondering why there’s such a great disconnect between the politicians and the people they claim to represent, you may want to look at who’s been doing the voting on a regular basis. In all likelihood, it’s the people who listen to Jeffress and Fisher.

No, you can’t fix stupid. But you can prove that the rest of us aren’t the same way.