Mormon Bloggers

We spent an hour with Gary Lawrence last night. He was gracious enough to come up to visit our stake in Camarillo from his home in Orange County. Dr. Lawrence is an American opinion pollster who also happens to be a Latter-day Saint. He has been travelling around the church sharing the results of a poll he conducted in the spring of 2007 on American’s perception of Latter-day Saints in the United States. He published a book in 2008 with the findings of his poll, How Americans View Mormonism: Seven Steps to Improve Our Image. Dr. Lawrence received a PhD in communications psychology from Stanford University in 1972. He said that of over twenty doctoral candidates in his group, he was the only LDS, Republican, conservative hawk among them. So he knows a little about being in the minority. Lawrence Research Now if you know anything about recent events in California, you’ll recognize that Gary’s business, Lawrence Research was the opinion polling company that was heavily involved in Proposition... Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, New Hampshire, New Hampshire, always ahead of the curve.  Why else do you suppose we allow a state with less than 0.3% of the population of the Union to vote first during primary season, granting such a small number of voters such an inordinately large voice in choosing the final candidates for our elections?  Clearly such a right could not be the product of mere custom?  Indeed not.  We trust the citizens of the Granite State to exercise judgment that is, by its very nature, inherently superior to the 99.7% of the country residing in the other 49 states of the Union.  And why?  Well clearly, dear readers it is because of the uncanny ability of these sturdy New Englanders to place themselves in the vanguard of national trends.  As a shining example, consider this comment by William O’Brien, Speaker of the New Hampshire State House: Speaking to a local Tea Party group on a proposed bill to eliminate same-day registration for voting, which would also restrict the ability... Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been doing some critical thinking about a couple of recent statements made by J. Michael Bailey. He is the Northwestern psychology professor who has been the subject of so much media attention due to the live sex demonstration in his human sexuality classroom last month. You can Google the story if you want the details. What intrigued me was the challenging nature of the defensive statements he offered when the story became public knowledge. He said that he didn’t expect everyone to agree with his decision to allow the demonstration to take place and that “thoughtful discussion of controversial topics is a cornerstone of learning.” I happen to be enrolled in a critical thinking class right now so this idea caught my attention. While I don’t agree with his decision, I do agree with his statement. So I expected someone to take him up on his challenge, because he offered it as such. Maybe it is too soon but I have yet to see a serious response to his justification. An Argument... Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been meaning to say something about this for some time, and a posting from a friend of mine inadvertently provided the spark for this post.  In the aftermath of the sad announcement of Lara Logan’s sexual assault while covering the revolution in Egypt the Internet once again proved itself the fount of misogynistic/misanthropic apologia that never fails to shock most of us.  Within hours an all-too-familiar chorus of individuals on blogs and message boards raised the putrid and threadbare banner of blaming the victim as the wretched fig leaf to cover an inexcusable crime.  This depravity takes a number of forms, it hides behind partisan politics in the case of Senator Brown (R-MA) revealing his being a victim of childhood sexual abuse.  It wears the equally tiresome visage of anti-Mormonism in the case of Elizabeth Smart, and in the case of Ms. Logan, it comes forth in all its tawdry glory with an old favorite:  An attractive woman in a dangerous place is somehow “asking... Read the rest of this entry »

President Obama delivered a moving eulogy to the fallen in the Tuscon Massacre last night.  It was a worthy speech which sought neither to point fingers nor assign blame, but to celebrate the acts of heroism among the people who faced the shooter, and the decent and honorable lives of the fallen.  It was meant to remind us that despite our differences, we are all brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters and Americans.  We strive together, we work together and we suffer together.  His most moving moment came in his discussion of the youngest victim, 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green.  Noting her enthusiasm for public service, the President said that he wanted to live up to her expectations, and to help make our democracy as good as she imagined it.  May we all do likewise. Read the Full Text here. Filed under: Current Events, Politics  Read More →

So in the end our cold-shower shock into political sanity lasted three days.  I say this because after three days of the majority of Americans stopping to reconsider the effects of a toxic and rancorous political climate of hyperbole on the deranged among us, Sarah Palin decided to open her mouth today. In fairness, I think a disproportionate amount of attention has been focused on the former Alaska Governor following the tragedy in Tuscon.  Yes, Gabriele Giffords was one of the congressional seats that her PAC “targeted” placing cross-hairs on her district (which have been ridiculously referred to as “surveyor’s marks” by her staffers) but the links between Mrs. Palin and Mr. Jared Lee Loughner, the Tuscon shooter, are exceptionally tenuous and hardly the stuff of serious discussion.  Clearly the ex-Governor of Alaska contributed to the atmosphere of paranoia and militancy in the country over the past couple of years, but to lay the lion’s share of... Read the rest of this entry »

For years, some of us have worried about the seemingly constant rise in vitriol, paranoia and rage infecting the political discourse in our nation.  Whether it be the vehemently racist signs held up at political rallies across the country last year, or the rumors of “death panels” in regards to health care reform, or the bizarre rhetoric linking President Obama to the most vicious dictators of the 20th century, the sad decline in civility in our national political discussion had led some of us to wonder what the eventual cost of such flirtation with violence, hatred and paranoia would be. We got our answer last Saturday.  On that now infamous morning Jared Lee Loughner, a disturbed young man whose own diatribes echoed the most paranoid screeds of our tortured political climate opened fire on a town-hall meeting hosted by Rep. Gabriele Giffords (D-AZ) in a shopping center in Tuscon.  When Mr. Loughner was finally wrestled to the ground, putting an end to his work of death... Read the rest of this entry »

The arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, on the heels of his site having released a massive dump of U.S. State Department diplomatic cables has resulted in the predictable explosion of media commentary, both professional and amateur.  As often occurs in such situations, the discussion has largely fallen into pro- and anti-Assange camps, with one side portraying him as a fallen martyr besmirched by the slanders of corrupt authority, while the other claims he is an amalgam of Osama bin Laden and Atilla the Hun, all of which provides us with little more than “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” In the interests of full disclosure I will admit at the outset of this post that I do not consider myself one of Mr. Assange’s fans.  I personally am no idealist and my views slant far less toward the anarchic end of the ideological spectrum than his.  Nor, having read somewhat of Mr. Assange’s character, do I believe that I would like the man personally, but in that... Read the rest of this entry »

This week I finally was able to pick up my Diploma for my Master’s Degree.  I graduated in June, but due to the unknowable vicissitudes of the Registrar’s office, one does not receive one’s diploma immediately, but instead some 5-6 months after the fact.  This is not altogether a problem because, while the diploma is a rather nice-looking piece of paper, it isn’t much more than that.  The real important document is one’s transcript, a far less pretty and sexy piece of paper which is updated within days of graduation.  But I digress… As I finally looked at that sheet of paper that I had paid for in both more money than I am ever going to be comfortable discussing, as well as catastrophic-level sleep deprivation, I had to laugh because in the end the whole thing seems like a rather bad joke, particularly if one reads between the lines.  Allow me to demonstrate: The Regents of the University of California (people who make more money annually than the... Read the rest of this entry »

Some years ago I took a military history class at CSU Fullerton.  In this class we had the great privilege to be addressed by, and ask questions to veterans of Vietnam, and the current conflict in Afghanistan.  However, the most memorable evening of that course was when one of my fellow students brought in his grandfather, a veteran of the Second World War.  When the elderly gentleman entered the room that evening before class the banter and discussion in the room died immediately as we all saw the blue ribbon dangling around the man’s neck, this gentleman was a holder of the Medal of Honor, which he received for his services fighting in the hedgerows of Normandy in 1944.  At that moment, despite our youth, cynicism or ignorance we were ready to listen to this man talk, preach or even read the phone book to us for the next 90 minutes.  It didn’t matter, he deserved our absolute attention and he had more than earned it.  As I look back on this experience, it is perhaps unsurprising... Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Current Events, Humor, Politics, The Economy  Read More →

Filed under: Current Events, Election 2008, Humor, Politics, The Economy  Read More →