Monday, December 10, 2007

Courting Those All Important "Values Voters"

Caught a couple minutes of the Stephanie Miller show today on Air America. Not usually part of my morning routine, but my dial was locked on 950 after listening to Saturday night's Gopher hockey game. Miller and her male sidekicks were mocking the theological beliefs of Mormonism and playing some goofy background music--just in case you didn't catch their tone. Of course, this wasn't really about Mormonism per se, it was an attack on Mitt Romney.

Now I'll be the first guy to admit that some of the tenets of the Mormon faith provide fertile ground for ridicule (see South Park's hilarious episode on it for example). But there's still something unseemly about using it as an avenue to attack a candidate for president. I don't have a problem with people who are troubled by Romney's religion and want to take that into consideration when deciding whether he should be the next president. But openly ridiculing his faith (and that of his fellow Mormons) as part of politics seems a bit beyond the pale.

I also think it reveals what Miller and many of her ideological bent really believe about religion in general. At the end of the segment--after laughing off the Mormon views of heaven--they summarized their take on Mormonism as "not all that more wacky than Catholicism." Nice outreach to the religious voters there.

A couple of other points to consider:

- Is Miller aware that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is a Mormon? Or maybe she doesn't believe that he's a "real" Mormon sorta like how John Kerry isn't a "real" Catholic.

- How many segments has Miller spent mocking the precepts of Islam on her show? Don't answer Atomizer. That's one of them rhetorical type questions

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