Mormonism

Appearing as a guest on Tuesday's Conan show on TBS, HBO comedian Bill Maher absurdly suggested that recent allegations that Mitt Romney engaged in "bullying" in high school are worse than being molested by Michael Jackson, and asserted that he would be willing to trade being beat up in grade school for being "gently masturbated by a pop star."

Maher also again attacked Mormonism and religion generally, using uncensored vulgarity, and seemed to hold Romney responsible for the polygamy of his grandfather.

The Real Time host brought up Michael Jackson to suggest that Romney had behaved worse than a child molester:

Early on Sunday's NBC Today, co-host Jenna Wolfe stirred division between Mitt Romney and  conservatives as she proclaimed: "[He] spoke at Liberty University, an evangelical school that's called his Mormon faith a cult. Can he get religious conservatives excited about his presidential campaign?"

Introducing the later report on the speech, fellow co-host Lester Holt ominously declared: "Mitt Romney, the likely Republican nominee, walked into the lion's den this weekend. He gave the commencement address at Liberty University, an influential conservative Christian school where some have a big problem with his Mormon faith."

HBO's Bill Maher took a lot of heat last week for calling Mormonism a cult that isn't a charity because it doesn't give to poor people.

Defending himself on Friday's Real Time, the host explained why he believes contributions to the Mormon Church and such things as the symphony and the ballet shouldn't be tax deductible but ignored that he supports federal funding of NPR (partial video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Bill Maher on Friday evening once again displayed a level of ignorance and intolerance that should completely disqualify him as a political commentator.

On HBO's Real Time, the vulgar anti-theist said Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney doesn't give to charity. "All his charitable donations are to Mormons. He gives to his cult. That’s not a charity. They're not poor people" (video follows with transcript and commentary, serious vulgarity warning):

Mormon Congressman Raul Labrador (R-Id.) scolded David Gregory on Sunday for his network's horrible treatment of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's faith.

Appearing on NBC's Meet the Press, Labrador specifically named MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell as one of the offenders (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Wednesday's NBC Tonight Show, host Jay Leno asked Meet the Press host David Gregory if Mitt Romney's religion would be fair game in the general election: "...with Obama....you know, 'Oh, he's a Muslim. He's not a Christian.' Do you think that Romney will get the same thing about his faith that Obama got?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

While Gregory acknowledged Romney potentially becoming the Republican nominee would be "a huge moment for religious tolerance in the country," he then argued: "But I think it's an issue, I mean, I think a lot of people have questions about the Mormon faith. There's a lot of ignorance about the Mormon faith. And let's be honest, this is the core of who Mitt Romney is....And yet, he doesn't talk about it."

In an apparent fit of rage against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, liberal New York Times columnist Charles Blow took to Twitter to tell him to "stick that in your magic underwear" for supporting the idea that society ought to concern itself with the large numbers of children born outside of wedlock.

That sentiment apparently set off Blow who tweeted the following at 8:56pm ET on the 22nd: "Let me just tell you this Mitt 'Muddle Mouth': I'm a single parent and my kids are *amazing*! Stick that in your magic underwear." [Be sure to read updates below including Blow's apology for tweet]

Christian evangelist Franklin Graham made some comments about President Obama on MSNBC's Morning Joe Tuesday that have liberals across the fruited plain hopping mad.

So angered is MSNBC's Chris Matthews that on Tuesday's Hardball he said, "I think we should stop inviting this guy to talk about politics...he ain’t his father’s son" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

After warning for years of the dangers posed by the Religious Right in politics, the New York Times is suddenly interested in injecting Mormon (and Catholic) religion into politics, at least when it comes to pet issues like amnesty for illegal immigrants. The top of Friday’s National section featured religion reporter Laurie Goodstein’s “Romney’s Tough Immigration View Is at Odds With His Church.”

There was no “I Wouldn't Buy the Underwear Just Yet” mockery of Mormons this time. And while the paper aimed a harsh front-page spotlight on the Mormon church for its involvement in passing California’s Proposition 8, which preserved the state ban on gay marriage, Goodstein has no criticism of its involvement in the Democratic-friendly cause of amnesty.

Mormon fear at the New York Times. The paper’s online “Room for Debate” section, which “invites knowledgeable outside contributors to discuss news events and other timely issues” on Monday asked “What Is It About Mormons?," inspired by the prospect of Mitt Romney winning the Republican nomination for president. The fact that the Senate has for the last five years been led by a Mormon, Democrat Harry Reid, has failed to trigger similar concerns at the Times. The Times also shows it feels free to shower at least some religions with derision and mockery.

Everyone knows the folks at MSNBC nearly faint in outrage whenever the words “Obama” and “Kenya” are used in the same sentence. Barack Hussein Obama Senior had four wives (one at a time), and fathered eight children from 1958 to 1982, but climbing that family tree is no doubt seen as racist by MSNBC.

But on Monday night’s Last Word on MSNBC, host Lawrence O’Donnell not only mocked Mitt Romney’s great-grandfather Miles Park Romney leaving America for Mexico to preserve his polygamy. He claimed their history is “profoundly weirder” than you would think – and didn’t really explain what he meant. [MP3 audio here. See video below.]

In 1998, we learned that Al and Tipper Gore made $353 in deductible charitable contributions against income of $198,000 the previous year. In the decade from 1998-2007, Joe and Jill Biden averaged $369 per year in such reported contributions. Bill and Hillary Clinton were infamous for taking charitable contributions for used underwear.

The aforementioned facts are generally not known by people who don't closely follow the news, because not much was made of them. But from the point of view of ABC News, particularly the hatchet men disguised as investigative reporters Matthew Mosk and Brian Ross, Mitt and Ann Romney have a much bigger problem than the Gores, Bidens, and Clintons: They, and particularly Mitt through Bain Capital (dubious, as we'll see), have given too much money to a particular charity. Because the reporters apparently want readers and viewers to see this as something underhanded, they describe charity as "sending" instead of "giving":

In a report on Monday's Rock Center on NBC, correspondent Mike Taibbi described how Mitt Romney's ancestors settled in Mexico during the late 1800's: "Mitt has said and written almost nothing about them over the years. One of his rare quotes, that they left the U.S. to escape persecution for their religious beliefs."  

Taibbi then noted: "In fact, Mitt's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, led that first expedition to escape not persecution but prosecution for polygamy, what Mormons called 'plural marriage.'" Later, Taibbi cited one of Romney's Mexican cousins on the issue: "Mike, a church school administrator here, says Mitt should just tell the whole story, even about the family's polygamist past that died with the great-grandfather Miles."

With the 2012 elections less than a year away, the liberal media are attacking President Obama's potential opponents on a number of fronts, but especially on religion. ABC, CBS and NBC have used religion in two ways, either painting the field of GOP primary challengers as a God Squad of religious zealots or playing up differences in their faith. Whether they're letting viewers know that "Rick Perry's gonna have to answer some questions about the people" he prays with, fretting that God "told Michele Bachmann," to enter politics, or devoting no less than 40 segments to the question of whether Mormonism is "a cult" or if "Mitt Romney is a Christian," the networks have repeatedly used faith against the GOP field.

Media preoccupation with the GOP candidates' faith is the exact opposite of how they covered (or didn't) candidate Obama's 20-year attendance at the church of a racist, anti-American pastor who subscribed to "black liberation theology," or Obama's half-Muslim heritage. The MRC's Culture and Media Institute studied network news reporting on the GOP candidates and religion from Jan. 1-Oct. 31, 2011, and compared it to coverage of the Democratic presidential primary candidates over the same period in 2007. The discrepancy, in both the amount and tone of the coverage, was striking. Network reporters, so disinterested in the beliefs of Obama and his rivals for the 2008 nomination, took every opportunity to inject religion into their coverage of the GOP field. (CMI's key findings after the jump)

While morning and evening newscasts from all three broadcast networks in the last few days have focused on anti-Mormon sentiment within the Republican Party that may hinder Mitt Romney's bid for the presidency, FNC's Special Report with Bret Baier on Monday noted that self-identified Republican voters are substantially more willing to accept a Mormon President compared to Democrats.

FNC correspondent Carl Cameron observed that Democrats are "least tolerant" compared to Republicans and independents as he recounted the findings of a Quinnipiac poll:

Politico's "Daily Digest" is an email the blog blasts out in the morning, touting the day's top stories.  As a subscriber, this NewsBuster was struck by the left-friendly lean of five out this morning's six featured stories.

To be sure, "Post-recession income falls" is not good for President Obama, reporting as it does that Americans' incomes have fallen faster during his presidency than they did even in the depths of the recession.  But every other story would surely be welcome at the White House.  Here are the stories, in the order they appear in the email:
 

Live from the Iowa State Fair, CNN's Don Lemon asked Republican presidential nominee Herman Cain if he could win the Iowa vote for the Republican nomination and for president, given that Cain belongs to a "mostly-white party" and is campaigning in a "mostly-white state."

Lemon had said the two had a "passionate conversation" prior to going on air, where he asked Cain "do you think in a party – in a mostly-white party in a mostly-white state, did you really stand a chance, not only of a nomination, of becoming President?"

[Video below the break.]

The more I watch Bill Maher, the more I think he's either a complete idiot or just says moronic, inflammatory things to get attention.

His most recent absurdity, said on MSNBC's "The Ed Show" Wednesday, was that Mormonism is closer to Islam than it is to Christianity (video follows with transcript and commentary):

UPDATE AT END OF POST: O'Donnell contacts NB to clarify poll numbers.

CBS's new chief White House correspondent said this weekend that Republicans are more uncomfortable with a Fox News commentator as presidential candidate than they are a Mormon.

She claimed on "The Chris Matthews Show" she found this information in the crosstabs of a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift said on PBS's "McLaughlin Group" Friday that the press really aren't interested in Mitt Romney being a Mormon.

This amazingly transpired roughly 24 hours before her magazine revealed a June 13-20 cover story about Romney entitled "The Mormon Moment: How the Outsider Faith Creates Winners" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Is it appropriate to be focusing on a presidential candidate's religion in 2011?

Newsweek certainly thinks it is, and created a cover for its June 13-20 issue prominently highlighting Mitt Romney being a Mormon in a fashion that is guaranteed to raise a few eyebrows:

Update: Joe denies judging Kyl and DeMint.  See video after the jump.

Call it an episode of Short Self-Attention Span Theater . . .

Mere moments after citing Matthew 7's instruction to "judge not, that ye be not judged," Joe Scarborough judged Jon Kyl and Jim DeMint to be "un-Christlike."

Scarborough's strange self-contradiction came in the course of his diatribe against the two Republican senators for having criticized Harry Reid for threatening to keep the Senate in session through Christmas.

View video after the jump.

Monday night marks the debut of Lawrence O'Donnell's very own show, called The Last Word, on MSNBC and if his guest spots on various programs on that network and the syndicated McLaughlin Group over the last few years are any indication, he's bound to give Keith Olbermann a run for his money for over-the-top loony tirades.

O'Donnell reared his bigoted side on the December 8, 2007 edition of the McLaughlin Group. He not only went after former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, but also his faith, seen in the following rants he made after the former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate delivered a speech defending his "demented, Scientology-like" Mormon faith:

The sexual revolution always seems to have another frontier. Indeed, the very idea of a “revolution” would be negated were there no frontiers to conquer. So deeper, ever deeper, we plumb the depths. Look at television. Every new frontier is just another titillating, initially shocking plot for a fictional or “reality” show, until there's a “new normal” and the novelty and naughtiness wears off.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

The latest example is a brand-new show on the TLC cable network called “Sister Wives,” all about a likeable, long-haired Utah man named Kody Brown and his three wives and 13 children. But this isn't enough drama for a “reality” show, so the plot twist has Brown taking on a fourth wife with three of her own kids from a previous marriage.

We've gone down a very strange path from “The Brady Bunch.”

Secular leftists in the media don't often have use for religion, particularly Christianity, except, it seems, when biblical passages can be isolated out of context to bash religious conservatives over the head as wicked for opposing big government or for standing up for traditional moral values.

Enter Joe Klein, Christian theologian extraordinaire, who suggested in Time.com Swampland blog post yesterday that Jesus would make Fox News host Glenn Beck sweat it out a bit at the pearly gates:

If Jesus were around today, he might say that it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a telecharlatan to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

In a follow-up blog post from today, Klein thanked a commenter for passing along a passage from the gospel according to St. Matthew wherein Jesus taught that "when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men."

"The noisy proclamation of religiosity is usually a sign of the exact opposite," Klein preached regarding the August 28 Beck rally.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that Viacom's Comedy Central is developing an animated show practically designed to offend Christians. But the network's handling of recent controversy over depictions of the Muslim prophet Muhammad illustrates a stark double standard in how the entertainment media deal with issues of religion.

Comedy Central announced it is developing the script for an animated show tentatively titled "JC." According to the network's release, the show is about Jesus Christ "wanting to escape his father's enormous shadow to live life in [New York City] as a regular guy." The announcement described God as "all-powerful yet apathetic" and said the show would be a "playful take on religion and society with a sprinkle of dumb."

The show promises to stand in sharp contrast to the network's treatment of another religious figure: Muhammad. In 2006, Comedy Central censored a segment of "South Park" that depicted Muhammad. In April of this year, the network added audio bleeps to the second of a two-part episode to cover any mention of the prophet, as well as an end-of-show speech about freedom of expression and giving in to intimidation. The first episode of the story arc featured Mohammad hidden inside a moving truck and a bear costume.

This censorship came in response to a threat from a radical Islamic website, based in the United States, which warned that "South Park" creators would face violent retribution for "insulting" Muhammad by featuring (although not showing him) on the episode.