Mitt and Joseph

I’m a very tolerant person when it comes to religions and spiritual practices. If you want to travel on your chosen path of salvation, I’m pretty much OK with it as long as you’re not, you know, impaling geese on an altar in your back yard. Bottom line—I’m a man of the 60s. Do your own thing, dude. Just don’t get any of it on me while you’re doin’ it.

But if you told me that a guy running for POTUS is a follower of a religion founded by a guy who could very easily be described as the Jim Jones of the 19th century, well, that gives me pause. And, conveniently enough, fodder for a column.

Actually, it’s probably more accurate to describe Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon church, as a hybrid of deranged preacher Jim Jones and crafty science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard. A dynamic, vital, interesting fella, seething with creative juices and male hormones? You bet. A divine entity who now, claim some, sits right there with Jesus and God judging the afterlife fates of all expired Earthlings? Um, gee, lemme get back to ya on that!

I’m struck by the description of the way Smith translated the gobbledygook on the golden plates shown to him by the angel Moroni. Joe’s M.O.—he would drop his favorite “seeing rock,” described as “a chocolate colored stone,” into his white stovepipe hat and then, bringing the hat to his face so as to cut off as much light as possible, observe and record the emanations coming off the rock, which were linked mystically to the plates, I guess. So the translations of the engravings were never done directly, with some kind of Rosetta Stone apparatus. They were done indirectly, with Joe “reading” the information as it came off the rock at the bottom of his hat. Seriously. For real.

How well would that act play today? If you saw a story about a guy looking for followers because he just got the Word of God from some buried plates that he found and translated with the help of the magic rock in his stovepipe hat? You know what we used to call guys with that kind of rap back in ‘78? Deadheads! These were not people you followed. Not if you didn’t want a horrific colony of crabs living on your loins. These were people from whom you purchased LSD. (Indeed, the Dead have a wonderful song about this very kind of messianic character—Estimated Prophet).

Let me reiterate. If you want to be a member of Joe’s congregation, be my guest. I have no problem whatsoever with your choice. Well, I do, actually, but that’s not the point. The point here is—what the hell is Mitt thinking? Or is he even thinking at all?