Joanna Brooks turns out to be sillier than I thought

[Pelado]

So these religion questions drive their ratings but no one cares. Gotcha.

I wonder who's watching.

Joanna's premise was that voters want to know how Mormonism has informed Mitt. My position is that people will care what his positions are, but won't much care how he got there.

The media would love for Mitt to talk more about Mormonism, as it would give them more license to ask him about Mormon oddities, and have more salacious (though largely irrelevant) headlines. Which of these headlines do you think would get more eyes:

Mitt: Sluggish Economy Obama's Fault
Romney Willing to Take Plural Wives in Heaven?

[LA Ute]

Then how did Newt Freakin' Gingrich and Rick Santorum give him such a run for the primary?

Reasonable intelligent people think Mormons are weird. We're barely more trusted than Muslims. There are plenty of people who see us as akin to Scientologists or Christian Scientists and are awfully suspicious about our cultishness. Dissenting (if you could even call it that) articulate voices like Joanna Brooks are one of the best defenses against this perception that Mitt could ask for.

I'm just talking about now. We are past the point where Evangelicals have much to say about Romney's chances of becoming president.

EDIT: I also think Joanna Brooks helps by showing that Mormon culture is not monollithic. I don't think she's quite the oracle that some see her as, but she's a credible and positive voice, IMO.

[oxcoug]

Ok...now THIS is an answer.

2) I have no idea if she knows what the true meaning of neo-conservatism. I don't. I'm probably a lightweight too, but as others suggest, plenty of smart people don't know. I'd argue that's a failure of the neocons to get their message across. Guess what? Your average smart person doesn't consider neocons super tight friends to the Islamic world. If that's wrong, fix the conception. Or bang your head against the wall, repeatedly. Again.

It's one thing to not grasp a thing - it's another to not grasp but then write about it in a national newspaper as if you do. You and JoBro are not accountable to the same standard.

But so you know - there is no "failure of neocons" to do anything because neocons aren't an entity, a party or an organization - neo-conservatism is really a set of attitudes and dispositions born from a set of liberal, secular intellectual refugees from the Dem party in the 1960s and 1970s. There is no neo-conservative lobby or organized group. So it's a non sequitur to argue that they haven't "got their message across" - they don't have a message.

Yes, the average "smart person" doesn't think neocons are tight with the Islamic world. That's because neocons are mostly of the opinion that participatory democracy is both practically and morally superior to Islamic autocracies and theocracies.

4) But to suggest that she's somehow altering her approach (see how it feels to have your motives unfairly read?) is unfair at best.

No, I don't really see how that feels -)) - and how do you know that I've read her motives unfairly? She's giving Romney bad advice and making an argument that doesn't stand up - I'm proposing one pretty rational explanation for why she'd do that. The more Romney talks Mormonism the more people will want JoBro to break it down for them. I said straight up that on this I'm straying into conjecture - I don't even believe that it's necessarily what's motivating her. But it's plausible.

[myboynoah]

No, I don't really see how that feels -)) - and how do you know that I've read her motives unfairly? She's giving Romney bad advice and making an argument that doesn't stand up - I'm proposing one pretty rational explanation for why she'd do that. The more Romney talks Mormonism the more people will want JoBro to break it down for them. I said straight up that on this I'm straying into conjecture - I don't even believe that it's necessarily what's motivating her. But it's plausible.

Horrible advice, indeed. One must wonder about her motives. Perhaps it's as simple as she supports Obama.

[HauteCoug]

I'm doing my part, assuring everyone I talk to about the election that Mitt doesn't believe any of that stuff anyway.

I feel like I recently saw a photo on facebook with your extended family at some sort of Romney event. I take it you don't share the same affinity?

[oxcoug]

Then how did Newt Freakin' Gingrich and Rick Santorum give him such a run for the primary?

I don't see how that question follows from what he claimed. They did that primarily by pandering to the far right of the R party and because many conservatives (both of the thoughtful and the reactionary varieties) - including many Mormons, including some members of my own family, were suspicious of Romney's convictions and of his political will - religion was one factor, but less of one than Mitt's checkered conservative bonafides. Many of the same people on the far right who fought Mitt Romney would hump Mike Lee's leg if they ever got the chance.

Reasonable intelligent people think Mormons are weird. We're barely more trusted than Muslims. There are plenty of people who see us as akin to Scientologists or Christian Scientists and are awfully suspicious about our cultishness.

"Reasonable intelligent people" sure but not "reasonable, intelligent and informed people."

Dissenting (if you could even call it that) articulate voices like Joanna Brooks are one of the best defenses against this perception that Mitt could ask for.

As I said above - I think JoBro does some real good. I've gone to see her speak in NYC recently and was very impressed with how she handled questions from the non-LDS audience. And I am inclined on a personal level to like her as she is an old friend of a close relative of mine. But her critiques of Mormonism sometimes betray a lack of real understanding that has surprised me.

[ERCougar]

Horrible advice, indeed. One must wonder about her motives. Perhaps it's as simple as she supports Obama.

Yes, it could be. And...?

I don't see how that question follows from what he claimed. They did that primarily by pandering to the far right of the R party and because many conservatives (both of the thoughtful and the reactionary varieties) - including many Mormons, including some members of my own family, were suspicious of Romney's convictions and of his political will - religion was one factor, but less of one than Mitt's checkered conservative bonafides. Many of the same people on the far right who fought Mitt Romney would hump Mike Lee's leg if they ever got the chance.

"Reasonable intelligent people" sure but not "reasonable, intelligent and informed people."

As I said above - I think JoBro does some real good. I've gone to see her speak in NYC recently and was very impressed with how she handled questions from the non-LDS audience. And I am inclined on a personal level to like her as she is an old friend of a close relative of mine. But her critiques of Mormonism sometimes betray a lack of real understanding that has surprised me.

No reason to question Newt Gingrich's bonafides...

Again...we have an information problem. You want everyone to spend all of their time perfecting their understanding of neoconservatism, and now, Mormonism. So...does Mitt pull this off in 30 second ads? A primer that everyone is required to read before entering the voting booth?

Which of her critiques of Mormonism betray a lack of real understanding? I'll give you that she's not a political scientist, but she's really never claimed to be one.

[myboynoah]

Yes, it could be. And...?

And . . . . . her motives are to frame a discussion about Mormonism that would disadvantage Mitt, one in this case which would be superfluous and lacking significant foundation (How would Mitt govern on a number of issues? He has a record, so I suggest we look at that. Also, ask yourself again what an "LDS-informed foreign policy" even means). Even so, I'm sure the LDS connection could be made out to seem pretty scary with very little effort.

Now here's a discussion grounded in factual contrasts that would actually be pretty interesting.

That irony aside, though, it’s worth pondering for a moment what such a collision would say about contemporary American culture. One need not be a fire-breathing social conservative to note that the American family is in some difficulties at the moment: Marriage rates have collapsed among the poor and the lower middle class, half of all children born to woman under 30 are born outside of marriage, and the American birth rate has dropped below replacement level at a time when we need all the younger workers we can get. Overall, the post-sexual revolution landscape is divided between a “blue” culture that depends on high abortion rates to maintain its social equilibrium, and a “red” culture where abortion rates are lower but out-of-wedlock birth rates are correspondingly higher, and divorce rates are higher as well.

There is, however, a notable exception to these patterns. The state of Utah has one of the lowest abortion rates in the country and one of the lowest rates of out-of-wedlock births. It has a high marriage rate, a relatively low divorce rate, and the highest birth rate (despite a low teen pregnancy rate) of any state. An America that looked more like Utah would have more intact families, less child poverty, fewer abortions — and, for that matter, a better fiscal outlook as the Baby Boomers retire.

This is not a case for mass conversions to Mormonism. And theological issues aside, it’s easy for critics to come up with reasons why the Mormon model of family life wouldn’t work for American culture as a whole — it’s too patriarchal, too conformist, too vanilla, too zealous, and so on down the list. But still, the numbers are striking enough that one could imagine an alternative universe in which earnest social reformers, confronted with the obvious crisis in American family life, cited the Utah experience as a model that the nation as a whole could stand to learn something from. In that universe, indeed, one could imagine a columnist like Frum writing about the upside of Mitt Romney’s Mormonism and hailing the contemporary L.D.S. approach to marriage as an example of his thesis, rather than a “worrisome” exception to the rule.

[oxcoug]

Yes, it could be. And...?

No "and." You suggested I had misinterpreted her motives. I said that you don't know that - and.... you don't. I clearly identified my speculation as speculation and only argued that it was plausible explanation.

No reason to question Newt Gingrich's bonafides...

While on a substantive level this is true and a point I myself made during the Newt boomlet, at the level of public perception it was never hard to understand why the casually involved voters wld not question Newt while they questioned Mitt - Newt is remembered for leading the Republican revolution of the 90s and for forcing President Clinton to the right. That is the lasting image of public Newt that has, understandably, fixed itself in the public mind.

You want everyone to spend all of their time perfecting their understanding of neoconservatism

No, I don't. I want people presuming to take an informing, leading role in the public discourse to understand the terms they are using and not use them in misleading contexts.

Yes, it could be. And...?

Which of her critiques of Mormonism betray a lack of real understanding? I'll give you that she's not a political scientist, but she's really never claimed to be one.

Well, there have been numerous examples and it is not irrelevant that she has never been to the temple. Mormonism is a temple religion and I'm not sure anyone can make a thorough insider's critique of LDS practice without having been inside the temple firsthand.

In one recent article she wrote this:

Progressive Mormon women remember that in 1976, LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball warned members of the church that Americans had become a “warlike people” who “idolized” military and industrial power at the expense of human welfare. Even as we celebrate the historic quality of Mitt Romney’s candidacy, this campaign season, we will be watching to see which candidate offers the best expression of Mormon values of preparedness, compassion, pragmatism, and service to others.

It's another sophomoric attempt to selectively apply her preferred "Mormon values" to a national political event.

JoBro and - I would suspect - other ProgMos don't grasp that you can't project these so-called "Mormon values" as policy or politics onto a nation of 350 million people when only a tiny fraction of those people practice the OTHER Mormon values of honesty, hard work, frugality, accountability and self-reliance. 1.0% of the population cannot dispense limitless compassion and service to 99.0% of the population in any sustainable manner. Mormonism's charitable edifice was built to work primarily inside of local and regional spaces, where accountable actors are on the ground and historically attempts to institutionalize it politically on a grand scale have either failed or been seriously flawed. Which isn't to say we shouldn't strive to spread those principles more widely in American life - that is exactly what Mos do - but that you can't go applying them nationwide if you're isolating them from other Mormon principles.

Beyond that - there are lots of examples in her book (which I bought when I saw her speak in NYC) of highly personalized, idiosyncratic interpretations of and reactions to Mormon experience, which she then takes liberties with extrapolating into other people's LDS experience.

One item that stands out from my 50% complete read of her book - her view on works and self-perfection and our works ultimately taking us to God is profoundly non-doctrinal (I don't have the book in front of me or I'd give you a page number as I marked it) - and basically just wrong. She has a kind of Augustinian / Manichean view of the conflict of the body with the Spirit - which is again not cut from the actual cloth of LDS theology, much more from her idiosyncratic interpretation of it. But I recall distinctly that she does nothing to point out to the reader that her view of LDS doctrine and practice might have been captured through a cracked family/local lens (clearly her family had some weird thinking going on, stuff I never heard inside my own very Mormon family).

The uninitiated reader of her book could easily come away thinking - and I'm sure some have - that she is giving them an unalloyed view of what mainline Mormonism is about.

It doesn't.

[Omaha 680]

JoBro and - I would suspect - other ProgMos don't grasp that you can't project these so-called "Mormon values" as policy or politics onto a nation of 350 million people when only a tiny fraction of those people practice the OTHER Mormon values of honesty, hard work, frugality, accountability and self-reliance. 1.0% of the population cannot dispense limitless compassion and service to 99.0% of the population in any sustainable manner. Mormonism's charitable edifice was built to work primarily inside of local and regional spaces, where accountable actors are on the ground and historically attempts to institutionalize it politically on a grand scale have either failed or been seriously flawed. Which isn't to say we shouldn't strive to spread those principles more widely in American life - that is exactly what Mos do - but that you can't go applying them nationwide if you're isolating them from other Mormon principles.

[UtahDan]

I really believe the news media wonders. I'm pretty doubtful that the all-important independent voters care.

I have no idea of you are right. Mormons and Republicans certainly hope so.

[LA Ute]

I have no idea of you are right. Mormons and Republicans certainly hope so.

I do hope so. I would not be surprised to see polling data that shows I am wrong, however. To employ an over-used phrase: it is what it is.

[DU Ute]

Everyone can see just how silly she is this Thursday on The Daily Show.

[Pheidippides]

Everyone can see just how silly she is this Thursday on The Daily Show.

I thought it was Tuesday.

[DU Ute]

I thought it was Tuesday.

Everything I've seen says Thursday.