What can you profit on?
And what minority are you okay with picking on? Because I would love it if we could just pick on all of them.
I’m pulling together a few thoughts here and am probably going to seem bitter. Let me say up front that I’m not bitter. I am angry, but not in the emotional way, I’m angry in the “this is stupid, how can you not see your double standard” way.
I don’t know if you saw this, but Walmart got in trouble for releasing a Juneteenth ice cream flavor. Internet “activists” went to town on the “capitalist pigs” for profiting off of something that should be above profits. Walmart apologized and took the flavor off shelves, because in order to appeal to the masses, you have to pander to the morons on twitter.
Flash forward and I’m walking through New York last week and walk past the theater where The Book of Mormon is playing. And I got pissed. That may seem petty or overly sensitive, but let me give you some background. I’m an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I whole-heartedly believe the doctrines of my church, I love the actual Book of Mormon - like the book that the play is named after - and I try my darndest to be a good Latter-day Saint.
That being said, I also am a really good sport and fundamentally believe that nothing is off limits. Plug for Ricky Gervais’ Humanity1.
But let me paint you a picture of why I’m a little bit pissed off. In the past two years there have been two series that have come out about people connected to my church who have killed people where my church plays a major roll in the telling of the story. The first was called Murder Among the Mormons and the second, which is currently airing, is called Under the Banner of Heaven. Now I watched Murder Among the Mormons and thought it was fascinating. The dude is potentially the best forger of all time, just got out ahead of his skis and so he started killing people to get out of it. I’m not watching Under the Banner of Heaven because it depicts things I hold to be very sacred. That being said, I don’t discourage anyone from watching it, it sounds like an interesting story. There’s a really good show on Apple TV+ called Physical, one of the antagonists/potential future main characters in it is a Latter-day Saint and not only does he start masturbating in a mall in the last episode, but they portray a talk between the couple and their Bishop and the Bishop gives some sexist advice. That didn’t have to be included! And today, I learned there’s another show lined up to depict members of a polygamist break off sect of my church called Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey. Again, not offended. Season 2 of Physical recently dropped and I’m excited to watch it, it’s a great show.
However, I have a question: why is it that my religion is the only one that it’s fine to constantly deride? And why don’t any liberals with their white guilt ever come to our rescue? Why is it that I am not positively represented anywhere in media? Can you think of one show, movie, play, book, etc. where a main character is a Latter-day Saint? I truly don’t think they exist. So we get none of the good representation and all of the negative. Can you imagine if their was a broadway show called Quran or Torah or whatever the sacred texts of Hinduism or Sikhism are called that made fun of those religions? There would be twitter mobs.
I have to be in very specific company to make jokes that are sexist or based on tropes or stereotypes. I walk on eggshells around some of my oldest friends and basically have to temper myself for like a year or two whenever I meet new people. But I can make jokes about how men are idiots, or jokes based on every white stereotype you’ve ever heard, or polygamy jokes, or what have you all day long and the moment I meet someone new and it’s no big deal.
And don’t tell me that it’s because my people haven’t been oppressed, because while I will not compare my ancestors’ plight to those of other minorities, we were killed, tarred and feathered, forcibly removed multiple times, persecuted, and forced to walk from Illinois to Mexico2 (which later became Utah); just for believing some things people considered weird3.
If we weren’t white, or we’d been driven to the United States instead of from them, or our beliefs weren’t Christian, you can imagine the occasional op-ed being written, protests being organized, or at least some liberals with some white guilt coming to our defense for at least one of the many negative portrayals we’ve received over the years. But instead, we’re really good sports. We buy funny ads in the playbills, we put out press releases talking about what we disagree with in how we’re depicted in the shows, and we joke about it ourselves. But even this is a learned behavior; it was hard for us to be accepted in the United States. Even after Utah became a state, we weren’t accepted, and we spent the next 50 years or so trying to assimilate, blend in, gain acceptance. And we’re still doing it to this day.
Don’t get me wrong, we’re fine with that. Most of us really are good sports who truly understand how ridiculous some of our beliefs and history are. And we love to laugh at ourselves. But stop talking to me about about diversity or respect for minorities, because I just don’t see it in practice. I see people who care about elevating their status in the eyes of their peers by appearing to care about racial and gender diversity, but not diversity of beliefs and opinions4. They care about policing speech and dictating what’s appropriate to say about minorities, as long as those minorities have ancestors who were oppressed - oh wait - I guess as long as they have ancestors who were oppressed and you can tell by the way they look.
This is one of the many reasons that a lot of this speech policing and virtue signaling feels a little white saviory to me. It feels as though if you can easily be identified as an oppressed minority, we’ll pity you enough to stop others from making fun of you, because you probably can’t take a joke and you probably can’t defend yourselves. So don’t worry about it, person I look at as in need of my power, I’ll save you. So society doesn’t stop making fun of people, it just has to choose its targets in such a way as to get past the mob. Latter-day Saints are on the “wrong” side of most culture wars, so we’re easy targets and targets that many culture warriors want to take swings at anyway. But that doesn’t mean that the swings aren’t still being taken at a tiny minority of the population.
So again, I’m not offended by the swings themselves, just at the double standard. So for anyone out there who was upset about Walmart selling ice cream that literally celebrates diversity and isn’t at least somewhat bothered by this pattern I’ve pointed out of people producing content and making millions with the implicit or explicit intent of making my people look bad, then maybe reexamine your biases. Because I’m sick of people telling me they care about diversity and then constantly being derided or made fun of (occasionally to my face or within my earshot) by those very same people. I’m sick of “representation” being touted in the entertainment industry and literally never having been fairly represented once. And before you say, “Well there just aren’t that many of you,” let me point out some minorities that I’ve seen represented in media that have a similar or smaller population to us, assuming there are around 6-7 million Latter-day Saints5 in the US: Jews (7.5M), Muslims (3.45M), Hindus (2.5), Transgender (5.25ishM), and Jehovah’s Witnesses (1.3M)6.
I understand that not everyone believes in God and to those people, belief may seem ridiculous, irrational, insane. But should my beliefs be any less important than the physical appearance of someone? Should my beliefs be treated with less respect than someone else’s simply because my people weren’t systematically exterminated? Why can Walmart not profit off of selling an ice cream that celebrates diversity, but the film industry seems to have a Latter-day Saint fetish and it doesn’t seem to be a problem? Where is my twitter mob7?
On Netflix
We were actually driven from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois to Utah, but who’s keeping track?
That and we converted so many people that we gained quite a bit of political power in the short time we settled outside of Utah.
This is obviously an exaggeration, I do know lots of great liberals who are true believers and show me and my religious beliefs respect. I do however also personally know liberals who seem bewildered by the fact that a white millennial could even have closely held religious beliefs. This type of liberal also seems to be the only type represented in the media and is part of the reason I can barely pick up the Times these days.
There are about 16M members worldwide, assume somewhere around 40% of that is in the US. I could be wrong but it’s definitely above 6M.
All of these numbers are from Google, I’m happy to be wrong. Also the only Jehovah’s witness I know of is Troy from Community, so it’s not like they’re represented often, but more than us.
I also find it hilarious that people got so upset about Juneteenth ice cream and yet every company on earth basically prints money by putting a rainbow on everything during the month of June.