I guess it must have been late summer when “sources” within the White House started talking about the weirdness of Mitt Romney. This talking point was duly reported, and then the pundits decided to discuss the propriety of making such an accusation. What is a shot at Mormons? What it too personal? And what did they really mean when they said the Mitt Romney was weird?
Now, I am very uncomfortable about picking on Mitt Romney’s religious beliefs. I don’t want to say that Romney is weird because his religion is weird. That’s a slippery slope, and I think it’s dirty politics. Nonetheless, Romney’s faith has led him to have some weird experiences. He recently talked about his time in France as a Mormon missionary during an appearance on the Morning Joe show.
Romney recalled five months he spent in one French city, where he said near-constant brush-offs built his resilience:
“We knocked on doors from morning until quite late in the evening,” he said. “We didn’t convert one person in five months. So, you understand the rejection, you know that’s a pretty high level of rejection and you get used to it. You say, ‘okay, what do I believe, what’s important to me,’ and you don’t measure yourself and your success by how other people react, but instead by how you’re doing and how you feel about the things you care about.”
Imagine going to live in a foreign country and knocking on strangers’ doors for twelve hours a day for five straight months without ever getting one positive response. You can talk about his resilience and his commitment and his strong faith. You can take some positives out of that experience. But, it’s just weird. It’s hard not feel sorry for him. It’s a thankless enough job trying to get the French to embrace Christianity. This is a country that briefly dumped the Gregorian calendar because it was tied to the birth of Christ. So, it doesn’t surprise me that Mitt Romney could go five straight months without convincing anyone to take the Book of Mormon seriously.
I don’t think it’s fair to vote against somebody just because they did missionary work, but that doesn’t mean that people can’t sense something a little different about Romney. If Obama has an untypical background with untypical experiences, the same can surely be said about Mitt Romney. And, of course, how many of us were the sons or daughters of the governor?
You have some copy/paste quirkiness with your link in the first paragraph.
Better way to put it:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/405156/january-04-2012/indecision-2012—iowa
-caucus—mitt-romney-s-victory-speech—rick-santorum-s-coup
It’s also weird that the French rejected Mitt: isn’t he from Remulak?
Maybe the French are tired of being a false alibi.
Imagine going to live in a foreign country and knocking on strangers’ doors for twelve hours a day for five straight months….
It’s kind of like being a community organizer … for the Angel Moroni.
Which, among other things, is a humorous way to make what I think is an important point for us lefties to keep in mind. Calling Mitt Romney weird because he knocked on doors in France and didn’t create change is probably not the best line of attack when our candidate knocked on doors (more or less) in Illinois for a couple of years and then left because he wasn’t creating enough change.
Fortunately, Romney’s “weirdness” comes out in other ways that are more relevant for most voters and better suited to attack from the left.
That’s not the weird part of Mormonism. Jehovah Witnesses do it it, among others. Try examining what Mittens believes as part of being a Mormon. That’s the weird stuff.
I see it as the opposite. People all over the world grow believing whatever their parents believe. That’s normal. What’s unusual is doing missionary work in a foreign country among people who have zero tolerance for your message.
Yeah, I see your point. On the other hand, how many Catholics (of a certain age) do you know who don’t have an aunt or uncle who joined a religious order and went “off to the missions”? Most Catholics (and many Protestants I imagine) have had the experience of going to church on Sunday and the guest preacher is someone who is “back from the missions” to talk about the work they’ve been doing, and then there’s a special collection taken up to support that work.
Again, Romney’s got enough weird traits that he’s exhibited in his public life over the past 20 years that we can just focus on those.
And now the Pope is running a mission to borg the bigot/homophobe branch of Episcopalians, even letting their priests be married. A pox on the whole bunch.
How do you think the Catholic Church extends their reach now that Europe is turning away? Heck, how do you think there first came to be Catholics?
I think it would be hard to go five months w/o converting a single frenchman to Catholicism. More seriously, it would be hard to go five months in the Congo without making a single convert.
First, I wonder how much of that five months Mittens actually spent looking for converts. I doubt he spent as much time has he said he did. Even so, does anyone know what their conversion rate is? Very small.
If he was like the Mormons here in Taiwan, he’s probably telling the truth. Those dudes are out on their bicycles knocking on doors day and night. You don’t often see them just hanging around, unless they’ve caught the attention of a pedestrian.
I don’t mean to attack him. But it’s weird enough that it will have an impact on the election. Or, more precisely, just as Obama’s experiences were different and alienated a lot of people, the same is true of Romney’s experiences. The difference for me, is that I did the same job as Obama, so I don’t think it’s weird.
I’ve had a great many Mormon friends over the years and they all proudly thought of Mormon as an American religion first so when it came time to do their part to spread the word it was only natural to work the homefront…never sail off to Europe.
My friends also worked probably 3-5 homes a day. They often started mid afternoon and knocked on doors during the dinner hour to catch the whole family so I’m not sure Romney’s whole days were spent in rejection.
If Romney ends up caught as a fraud using the Mormom religion as a shell well now that will be a revelation equal to Mr. Smith’s.
This post of yours seems slightly hypocritical to me. First you say:
“I don’t want to say that Romney is weird because his religion is weird. That’s a slippery slope, and I think it’s dirty politics.”
But then you go on to review an activity that his church asked (demanded even?) for him to do and then you basically call his experience with that weird.
Hmmm.
Hey, for me, Mormonism IS weird and I have no problem saying so. Now, in case a Mormon is reading this I want to say that I have a great deal of respect for some Mormon people and I can see there are some strengths they derive from their faith.
But there is ample weirdness to be found on the fringes of Christianity and many other faiths as well. (And I have a particular definition for “fringes” that I do not want to go into detail here, but I mean something related to the central meaning of the faith.)
You want weirdness? Consider for a moment what we know about the origins of scriptures for Christianity. Biblical scholars and translators have examined ancient documents for centuries. There are actual documents in Hebrew and Greek to work from. The existence of some of these documents is restricted but no one seriously denies their existence.
Now take a look at the origin of two of the texts that Mormonism adds to their “Christian faith”: The Book of Mormon and The Book of Abraham. THAT my friends is weird stuff. Not only that but it is clear to any 5th grader who studied Egyptian hieroglyphics that Smith was making a lot of stuff up with the Book of Abraham.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Abraham
I’m not condemning Mormons. I’m saying that the “scripture” that distinguishes that faith from the heart of Christian scripture doesn’t stand up well to a test of reality.
No, I am an evangelical.
holy shyte, meant to say “I’m NOT an evangelical.” LOL
I am not really sure that Joseph Smith and Saul of Tarsus were all that different from each other. And I don’t much care, especially in a political context. As for your charge of hypocrisy, I am kind of saying ‘I don’t want hit you, but I’m gonna hit you.’ But the thing is, I am not saying he shouldn’t be president because he’s weird. I’m just saying his life experience is a little weird. A lot of people felt that way about Obama.
I should have said “inconsistent” instead of “slightly hypocritical”. Sorry. I get your meaning now better though.
Did he speak French? A few days in Montreal back then would give you a clue about French receptivity toward English-speakers. No religious ideas expressed at my doorstep have converted me. Imagine that.
The Mormon idea of missionary work is a little weird – Conversion is more important than service. I could really go for a five-month mission in France right now.
It’s absolutely fair to consider the president’s religious beliefs, and how they influence his civic behavior. I see no need to be delicate about it.
That is just really well said – every word.
I don’t know about France, but the Mormons here speak excellent Chinese. I’ve heard they have a world-class language program specifically for missionary work; that’s why Jon Huntsman speaks Chinese so well.
Given how much easier it is to learn French than Chinese, I’d have a hard time believing the Mormons would leave it to chance that potential French converts would be willing to hear the pitch in English.
Dude, I think anybody who’s seriously got a shot at being President has gotta be a little weird, and Mitt Romney is a lot weird. This is one of the few stories I’ve heard about Romney that makes me think he might actually be a human being.
So yeah, he’s a freak, but his religion has nothing to do with it.
I guess you haven’t encountered any Mormon “missionaries”.
speaking of weird, didja see this? From the NYT:
Well, a marriage is a contract, Santorum, you toolbag idiot. And about relationships with more than one parent, well, I’m not sure our society is really ready for it, but I have nothing against that either.
A marriage is a contract, yes; but a contract is not necessarily a marriage.
I don’t think it is weird to go to a foreign country for five months of rejection… for a Mormon.
Go to Utah. Almost all Mormons have done that. If your neighbors have all done it, then what is weird is to not do it yourself.
I also think this is a very healthy comment, mental health-wise:
“you don’t measure yourself and your success by how other people react, but instead by how you’re doing and how you feel about the things you care about.”
You can’t control how people will react. You can influence it, but not control it. You CAN control what you choose to care about and how you feel about it.
But is Mitt weird? Yes, on so many levels — mostly harmless, but still weird and in ways that frankly are of little help in leading the free world or even getting elected.
Considering that religious beliefs are the engine that’s destroying American politics at the moment and that keep vast swathes of the planet imprisoned in various horrors spawned by “faith”, what’s weird to me is pretending that religious ideology should be somehow immune to the criticism and hostility that every other dogma endures.
Speaking just for myself, I think religion can and should be subjected to the same criticism as any other set of beliefs and practices.
On the other hand, if I were running an election campaign in what is still the most religiously observant electorate in the industrialized world, I wouldn’t start by going after my opponent’s “weird” religious beliefs.
Especially when Romney’s public record over the past 20-30 years provides such a target-rich environment.
And especially when Rev. Wright is, for many people, still an open sore in Obama’s past.
What I think is weird is that Romney missioned in France and speaks French fluent, but when he was in Des Moines and Tweety asked him at the rope line could he say “let them eat cake” in French Romney said no and he people scuddled him away.
I mean u are in a city that has a French name and you are uncomfortable speaking in the French language.
That’s weird!!!
Probably he was unwilling to give a recorded sound bite that could be used against him later. He already has an out-of-touch elitist image problem; saying “let them eat cake” in French in front of a microphone would be a pretty dumb way to combat that image.
I think this is also what happened when Bush flubbed the “fool me once, shame on you” bit: he got halfway through it and someone on the earpiece started shouting at him not to finish. The idea being, they didn’t want Bush recorded saying “Shame on me.” But he was taken by surprise and fumbled into “can’t get fooled again.”
Gosh ~~ my grandfathers did it; and my brothers did it; and my nephews and nieces did it. And now ya tell me it’s weird, lol!
And I guess, really, it is: being willing to put your money where your mouth is. (The church doesn’t pay for missions: the missionaries and their families do — the church pays transportation. One way.) But, as I look around me, I’d guess I’d have to say that perhaps it’s very unusual — closest I ever got was a couple of months of canvassing for MaryPirg, which I finally had to give up because I couldn’t afford it.
Not that the man doesn’t have other problems. He does.
Why does it seem so much more obviously, laughably absurd that Joseph Smith was visited by the angel Moroni and found golden plates in a rain barrel than that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared at various times to numerous witnesses?
Than that the Virgin Mary miraculously appeared, say, at Lourdes?
That Mother Teresa has performed miracles?
Not that these last are not all absurd.
But they just don’t seem quite so funny.
Why is that?
Why more – and far too much – like the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
But it does.
“We knocked on doors from morning until quite late in the evening. . . We didn’t convert one person in five months. So, you understand the rejection, you know that’s a pretty high level of rejection and you get used to it.”
Seems like excellent preparation for him for running in the Republican primaries.