mitt romney

Election 2012, Politics/Law

Making Fun of Mormonism

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Planets! Tablets! Underwear! When some of America’s most celebrated pundits and public intellectuals talk about Mormons, these are the images that are summoned. Ironically in this “Mormon Moment”—signaled by a hit Broadway musical, polygamous housewives on TLC, and of course two Mormon presidential candidates—Mormons, long considered quintessential “outsiders” to mainstream American culture, today find themselves at the center of the American zeitgeist. Yet it is the Mormons’ supposed theological weirdness that is the centripetal attraction.

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Election 2012, Politics/Law

Mitt Romney and the Ghost of Anti-Mormonism

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“I think today’s anxiety about Mormonism can’t be compared to that of the past. The anti-Mormonism that was nearly universal during Smoot’s era is now a tradition maintained by a very small slice of the American population. The Republican primaries gave that small slice a megaphone: the artificial loudness of their voice makes people overestimate their number.” 

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