Milking the right-wing politics with Ezra Taft Benson

Ezra Taft Benson was the 13th President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also called Mormons or LDS), from 1985-1994. He was old when he died, 94 years of age. (I just read that the average age of LDS leadership is now 80.)

This incredible picture of Benson was taken in the 1950s when Benson’s job was Secretary of Agriculture for the Eisenhower administration. Born on a farm in Idaho, Benson had the qualifications for the job. He was very influential in government policies that are still being practiced today.

Although gone now for twenty years, Benson represents for me the power of church leadership in determining the faithful’s secular activities. Like politics. He was a Republican, and not just a Republican, but a right-wing Republican, even in a period when Republicans were much more moderate than they are now. Benson was affiliated with the right-wing group, the John Birch Society. He promoted that group’s political agenda, even while serving as a member of the church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Sometimes members of the LDS church listen to highly placed church authorities as if they were speaking for God. By the time men like Benson become members of the Quorum of the Twelve they are obviously well-versed in church beliefs and doctrine, but also policies. Officially, they are not allowed to tell church members for whom to vote, and it is made clear to them. No stumping for candidates from the pulpit, in other words. I believe Benson stepped over the line of official church political neutrality when asked for his opinion on Democrats. And because of his status as an apostle, church members’ ears perked up. 

“In February 1974 Apostle Ezra Taft Benson was asked during an interview if a good Mormon could also be a liberal Democrat. Benson pessimistically replied: ‘I think it would be very hard if he was living the gospel and understood it.’” — John Heinerman and Anson Shule, The Mormon Corporate Empire, p. 142

Since that quote was widely distributed in the 1970s the normally moderate Utah Republican Party has been taken over by the radical right, and while it would not be politically wise to quote apostle-before-he-became-church-president-Benson during debates on public policy in the legislature, what Benson said over 40 years ago is understood, and is deep in the bosom of the true believers. Its philosophy rules today’s Utah Republican party.

A recent poll conducted by one of the local television news organizations asked Utahns, broken down into categories, Mormon, non-Mormon, Republicans, Democrats, whether they thought the LDS leadership has too much influence on Utah’s legislators. The results were what I would expect. Most Mormons said no, non-Mormons and Democrats said yes, they have too much influence. I am firmly in that latter camp.

A few months ago some over-eager Mormon bishop opined that Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader from Nevada, a Democrat and also a Mormon, should be hauled up before church authorities and, based on his political actions and beliefs, charged with various offenses against the faith. That bishop was slapped down quickly because he violated church policy, but if he said it, then a lot of people just like him were already thinking it; they just would not speak it out loud. Because of those opinions that Democrats are somehow not living their religion, it must make Mormons who are also Democrats a very lonely group.

John Keel's self-induced inner cosmology

I am a UFO skeptic. I know the popular versions of the UFO mythology, and I’m not a believer. I still read a lot about flying saucers, but I am more interested in the people who write about flying saucers than I am in reports of sightings. John A. Keel is a case in point. (Keel, who was born Alva John Kiehle in 1930, died in 2009. He is probably most famous for his book, The Mothman Prophecies, made into a film with Richard Gere.)

I am fascinated by Keel’s books because I am fascinated by Keel. When it comes to believing, Keel veers from the standard set of UFO beliefs (“flying saucers from outer space”) and goes into what I would call an “everything that fits” belief system: paranormal, religious, technological, conspiracy theories, all part of his explanations of the UFO phenomenon.

Why UFOs  is a 1976 Manor House paperback reprinting of Keel’s 1970 book, Operation Trojan Horse. In it Keel states:

“. . . ‘illusion-prone spirits’ are responsible for nearly all of the UFO appearances and manipulations. The flying saucers do not come from some Buck Rogers-type civilization on some distant planet. They are our next-door neighbors, part of another space-time continuum where life, matter, and energy are radically different from ours.” [Page 273. Note, all page numbers are from the Manor House edition of the book.]

In the chapter, “Do Flying Saucers Really Exist?” he writes about the wide variety of types and shapes of UFOs reported:

“With very few exceptions, no two UFO photographs are alike. I have received hundreds in the mail and have been shown hundreds more in my travels. I have yet to personally handle two exactly similar photos taken in two different areas . . . I have rarely heard two independent witnesses describe separate seemingly solid ‘hard’ objects in the same terms . . . There seem to be as many different kinds of objects as there are witnesses. Yet I have managed to reassure myself again and again that the witnesses were reliable and were describing the objects to the best of their abilities.” [Emphasis mine. The “abilities” of witnesses has been a subject for study for decades, and witnessing is a highly subjective thing.]

    “. . . we must assume that UFOs come in myriad sizes and shapes. Or no real shapes at all . . . if the phenomenon has built-in discrepancies, then no one will take it seriously.”

[This is the time when I slip in my own UFO “sighting,” from almost 60 years ago. I still don’t know what I saw, but I know what it looked like. See: "Flying Saucer Boy".]

Back to Keel:

“In other words, we have thousands upon thousands of UFO sightings which force two unacceptable answers upon us:

“1. All the witnesses were mistaken or lying.

“2. Some tremendous unknown civilization is exerting an all-out effort to manufacture thousands of different types of UFOs and is sending all of them to our planet.

“I think that some ‘hard’ objects definitely exist as Temporary Transmogrifications. They are disk-shaped and cigar-shaped. They leave indentations in the ground when they land. Witnesses have touched them and have even been inside of them. These hard objects are decoys, just as the dirigibles and ghost planes of yesteryear may have been decoys to cover the activities of the multitudinous soft objects. They hold one of the keys to the mystery.

“There are countless sightings of objects which changed size and shape in front of the viewers or split into different smaller objects, each going off in a different direction . . . Over and over again witnesses have told me in hushed tones, ‘You know, I don’t think that thing I saw was mechanical at all. I got the distinct impression it was alive.’.”

Perhaps whoever wrote this imaginative script for a 1978 issue of the comic book, UFO and Outer Space #14, had read Keel’s book.

The dirigibles and ghost planes Keel mentioned are covered in another section of the book. There was an airship mystery going on in the later part of the 1890s. Some witnesses claimed that man-made airships, looking like what we came to know as dirigibles, were floating over cities and farms in America. Some of the “witnesses” claimed to have spoken to the pilots or crew. The most remarkable thing is that these supposed sightings were made a few years before the Wright Brothers made their first successful flights in heavier-than-air craft. Unlike hot air balloons, the airships were supposedly powered by motors. The ghost planes were described as looking like airplanes, yet when examined on the ground they had configurations not seen in known aircraft.

A very fanciful version of the airship was published as a dime novel. The Wikipedia entry, Mystery Airship, covers a lot of the same ground as Keel. Keel admitted some of the airship stories could have been hoaxes, whereas the Wikipedia article presumes most, if not all, were part of a larger series of hoaxes of the time.

In Keel’s hypothesis, they were controlled by these beings from another dimension, time and space. They made them to look like objects we would be familiar with. Keel describes these entities as “ultraterrestrials,” creating objects that would be familiar to people of the era. In Biblical days they would be seen as flying chariots, for instance.

Yet he ends the chapter from which I have quoted by saying, “It’s a mixed bag. You can take your choice. Every belief can be supported to some degree, but in the final analysis, when you review all of the evidence, none of them can be completely proven beyond a reasonable doubt.” [Pages 130-132.]

While Keel isn’t willing to admit the stories are probably fakes, or at least misinterpretations of evidence, he does say they would be impossible to prove.

Many things that fit into Keel’s own criteria for the entities fooling humans are part and parcel of the larger UFO picture. Even spiritualism is worked in. Although he believes many mediums are fakes, Keel didn’t equivocate when telling of certain spiritualists or mediums he believes are not. He then goes on to tell us stories of “little people” (including some bat people — holy Weekly World News!), and even a famous case studied by none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Cottingley Fairies. In a paragraph which begins with a rhetorical question, Keel asks why these entities have not been photographed, he answers himself with, “They have. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle performed a lengthy investigation into one set of photos of fairies taken in England by a couple of children. Apparently they were authentic.” [Page 215.]

Actually, the photos weren’t. They were taken in 1917. To the modern eye they are obvious fakes, and one of the perpetrators finally admitted in the early 1980s to the hoax. Apparently, perhaps swayed by the reputation of the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Keel showed a startling gullibility. Since Keel’s book was published over 10 years before the hoax was finally admitted to, one wonders about Keel’s reaction to the news of the belated confession.

Besides that gullibility, Keel teases us with stories that set up a tantalizing premise, but go nowhere:

“. . . after I had launched my full-time UFO investigating effort in 1966, the phenomenon had zeroed in on me . . . My telephone ran amok first, with mysterious strangers calling day and night to deliver bizarre messages ‘from the space people.’ Then I was catapulted into the dreamlike fantasy world of demonology. I kept rendezvous with black Cadillacs on Long Island, and when I tried to pursue them, they would disappear impossibly on dead-end roads. Throughout 1967 I was called out in the middle of the night to go on silly wild-goose chases and try to affect ‘rescues’ of troubled contactees.”

After setting us up with that laundry list of odd occurrences he slaps us with this:

“More than once I woke up in the middle of the night to find myself unable to move, with a huge, dark apparition standing over me.” (Page 255.)

What!? A “huge, dark apparition”? And what did said apparition do? We aren’t told. Keel just drops it there, with no explanation, not even telling us what he thought it might represent. Since he survived to write of it, obviously it did nothing. Perhaps the fact that he woke up to find the apparition looming over him might indicate it was a nightmare? After all, someone with all of that adventure in his life must have a mind whirling like a centrifuge, even in sleep.

Boo!

Another of those tantalizing tales that go nowhere is this one:

“When a UFO would land on an isolated farm and the ufonaut would visit a contactee, he or she would call me immediately and I would actually converse with the entity by telephone, sometimes for hours. It all sounds ridiculous now, but it happened.” [Page 256.]

I would like to know if Keel recorded any of those reputed conversations (the cassette recorder was in use in those days; I know, because in 1967 I had one), or if not, if he kept notes, and if he did what might have been said. We are given a situation with no further explanation. Do we just accept Keel’s unsubstantiated word? He must have expected we would, having read that far into his book.

Finally, on another personal note, I find Keel’s view of religion and stories that come from religions interesting. He tells of the “visions” of Fatima and Lourdes as if they really happened, and the story of Joseph Smith and his “first vision” as being a real occurrence. In Keel’s versions, though, the visions were not holy beings descended from heaven, but ultraterrestrials out to trick humans. To what end? We don’t know, and at least Keel admits that.

My impressions from reading Keel’s books (not only this, but his others), is that wherever there are out-of-this-world things happening, they happened to, or because of, Keel. These books are all about Keel. What was it about him that made him a magnet for these ultraterrestrials, with their looming dark apparitions or mysterious phone calls from entities in the middle of the night?

My suspicion is that Keel, if not making it up, was at least hallucinating parts of it, and in the ways of all humans from birth, was connecting the dots of otherwise unrelated subjects. His brain came up with a complex cosmology of his own devising.

Does anyone else accept these stories at face value? Did cults spring up around Keel like they did around Joseph Smith and the original Mormon Church, or flying saucer contactees like George Adamski? In reading various versions of Keel’s life I don’t see that. So we might say that Keel was that proverbial prophet crying out in the wilderness. He told us what he thought, and what he “witnessed,” but it wasn’t enough to build a large, self-serving organization of devotees and true believers.

 In The Encyclopedia of Alien Encounters by Alan Baker, published in 2000 when Keel was still living, the entry “John Alva Keel” in part says:

“In spite of his eccentricities, Keel has contributed an enormous amount to the study of anomalous phenomena, and while he still belongs firmly at the outlandish fringes of ufology, his bizarre speculations have at least opened the minds of some to the possibility that UFOs and associated phenomena may represent a more complex reality than is generally supposed. As Jerome Clark states:

“Even his admirers were sometimes willing to acknowledge . . . that his conclusions outdistanced his evidence by some considerable margin, that his historical, psychological, and social analysis was amateurish, that the extreme kinds of experiential claims on which he was fixated were hardly characteristic of the UFO phenomenon as a whole, and that his speculations were laced with paranoia. Yet no one denied that as a teller of scary stories he could be wonderfully entertaining.”

Scary stories, maybe. Outlandish, yes. Entertaining, definitely yes.

John A. Keel, 1992.

Vampira and the image of the forbidden

Bondage and discipline, sadism and masochism and their accoutrements, costuming and lifestyles, are much more out in the open than they were in the repressive days of the early 1950s. At one time such an underground was kept quiet, lest it invite the law’s intervention. No more. You want to go into someone’s dungeon dressed in only a collar and leash and be someone’s dog, it is your business. Likewise, you want to dress up in leathers and thigh-high boots and crack the whip over said dog, also your own business. Just make sure you don’t involve the kids, or let your religious neighbors know about it.

In his 2014 book, Vampira, Dark Goddess of Horror, author W. Scott Poole devotes much of the book to an analysis of the postwar era of the 1940s into the ’50s. Vampira, the actress Maila Nurmi, stood out because she seemed to be the antithesis of what was considered wholesome. She was over the top in a more repressive era. To appear on television, even during a late night broadcast hosting old horror movies, was something different for 1954 America. 

Nurmi had been influenced by Bizarre magazine, which showed bondage and women as dominatrices. According to Poole’s book, Nurmi patterned her character after such images. Vampira probably owed something to Chas Addams, too. The mom in his cartoons looked much like a vampire. (Later, on television she would go by the name of “Morticia Addams,” and her image forever set by the beauty of actress Carolyn Jones. There was more than a little Vampira in Morticia.)

The Vampira show on television was likely a victim of its own success...it called attention to that dark side of human nature and sexuality, and would have been alarming to moral crusaders and parents,* whose kids would be sneaking a look at the TV to see sexy Vampira with her hourglass figure and 17” waist.

Little of Vampira’s television program survives. Apparently it wasn’t kinescoped. It lasted a year and was abruptly cancelled. Nurmi ended up in scandal magazines, linked, rightly or wrongly, with actor James Dean, by then deceased. In her sixties Nurmi sued actress Cassandra Petersen over the character, Elvira, but lost. What remains of Nurmi on film is Plan 9 From Outer Space, in an unspeaking part.

Life did a short article on Vampira during the heyday of her television show. It appeared in the June 14, 1954 issue.

Copyright © 1954 Time-Life

*The same people who were after horror comic books, and were successful in their efforts.

The Jew's Bargain

I have been going through the Internet Archive, which is a wonderful resource: books, movies, old radio programs. I have been going through sections of children’s books, most from the nineteenth century.

A Picture-Book of Merry Tales is a volume I looked at. Chapter Ten, “How Owlglass sells his Horse to a Jew, and on what Terms,” is blatantly anti-semitic; a cruel joke with a punchline, no less. The 1860 book, from a British publisher, reminds those of us with modern sensibilities how open racism and hatred was. I am sure that the attitudes in this story were repeated many times and in many publications over the decades. I am also sure that it is the callousness of intolerance represented by this story that had its flashpoint when the Nazi regime sent millions of Jews to their deaths.

I am not blaming the Internet Archive. It is important to preserve this sort of thing to understand the ultimate consequences of bigotry.

Roy’s revenge — best served cold

A couple of weeks ago a bouncer at a Salt Lake City bar interceded when he saw two intoxicated young men harassing a young woman. He told the men to stop, and leave the bar. The men attacked him, and two of their buddies joined in. The bouncer was bounced, beaten and taken to a hospital. The next day security footage from outside the bar showed the four young men leaving, and television news reporters asked anyone who knew the guys to call the police.

I never heard if anyone turned them in. I also wonder about the bouncer, and how he is faring. If the bouncer is like my old friend, Roy B., perhaps he will wait until he feels better and go looking for those who gave him the beating. I don't like it when people gang up on a victim. Three or four is a wolfpack, and if drunk, that many usually lose control. Frankly, the bouncer is lucky to be alive.

This is an edited 2007 posting about my friend Roy. He handled a beating and ultimately handled the ones who beat him.

I spent my time as a draftee in an artillery unit stationed near Nürnberg, Germany, in 1967-68.

Roy B. was one of the guys in Charlie Battery. Roy, along with three other guys and I had been in the Army together since day one, when we entered Basic Training at Fort Lewis, Washington, on December 1, 1966. Roy was a tall, lanky guy with a baby face and shock of black hair. I wondered if he had Native American ancestors. He sat down across from me in the mess hall for our first breakfast as trainees. For a slim guy he ate a lot.

Flashing forward to our time in Germany and Charlie Battery. Roy was one of those guys who just didn't seem to fit in. We didn't use the word “hippie” much to describe people in our unit, but Roy probably qualified. He had a very laid back, “Hey, man,” kind of demeanor. Distracted. Peaceful even. Usually.

When Roy and I were new to the ammo section of the battery we were putting boxes of rifle ammunition into a bunker in the battalion ammo dump. Roy came walking up with a box of ammo in his arms and a lit cigarette in his mouth. Our sergeant had the cigarette out of Roy’s mouth and crushed into the dirt in less time than it takes to tell the tale. He also blistered Roy with profanity.

A few months later Roy was powder man during a training exercise. All six of our 155mm self-propelled howitzers were in the field, preparing to fire. The gunpowder was in bags, sewed together in a line of several bags. Depending on the distance of a target a specific charge was called for. If it was a “charge seven,” then excess bags were cut off the string and the first seven bags were inserted into the gun for firing. The powder man, in this case Roy B., would run the excess powder bags back about 100 meters, then drop them into a hole he’d dug for that purpose. At the end of the exercise the excess powder was set on fire and burned up. During this particular exercise a charge seven was called for, and Roy did his job, running the powder back to the hole. There were six powder men, one per gun. But there was only one safety officer, a second lieutenant, who ran from gun to gun, setting down a level set to the proper quadrant and deflection on the breech block of each weapon. During this incident the safety officer screwed up, as did the gunner. The gunner reversed the coordinates, and the safety officer didn't check that breech block with his level. Roy told me later the tube of the gun was pointed in a different direction from the other guns. When the fire order was given, gun number 6, Roy's gun, had its shell explode near an ammo dump several miles away. A German family was outside the fence surrounding the site, enjoying a picnic in the woods. The shell burst near them, but luckily no one was killed, nor did it hit the ammo dump, averting a real major catastrophe.

The incident was serious enough that the general in charge of our division was flown in by helicopter, and our battery commander, first sergeant, chief of firing battery, gunner, safety officer, and Roy, stood in a line at attention while they were questioned. When the general got to Roy to ask why if he saw his gun pointed in the wrong direction he didn't call cease fire Roy’s answer was, “Hey, sir, I didn't think I could snitch out no officers.”

There were punishments handed down, and having this incident in their files might have stopped the forward progress of the officers and non-coms involved. Roy, being the low man on the totem pole, was fined a sum and confined to barracks for two weeks, after which he was transferred to another battery.

A few months later Roy was in downtown Nürnberg and was jumped by three G.I.s out to rob somebody. They beat him with a two-by-four and stole his wallet. Roy ended up in the hospital, and when he was sufficiently recovered, reported back to duty with a turban of bandages on his head. His shock of thick black hair stuck out in various places through the turban so he was dubbed Porkypine. Roy was no help to the Criminal Investigation Division (CID), investigating the incident. He said he didn’t remember who mugged him, or their faces.

Ah, but he did. When he was better he went downtown, and found his attackers. He was armed with a bicycle chain and he put a couple of the muggers in the hospital. The guys he beat apparently never told the CID who attacked them, although it was common knowledge to us. I asked Roy what happened and all he said was, “Hey, man. Just some payback.”

I last saw Roy when we were all called to that summer camp in California in 1970. I asked Roy what he was doing as a civilian and he said, “Oh, I'm living around, in the park, crashing on peoples' couches. You know.” No, I didn't know, but hey, man, that was just Roy, and as I knew by then, he could take care of himself.

Good cop, bad cop

I wrote this posting in 2009. It is about a cop who committed sexual offenses under the color of his authority, then in a bizarre twist of fate, became something of a hero when a mall shooting broke out. The publicity he got from the hero status made him recognizable to his victims, and then he became a criminal in a cop suit.

In the past few months we have seen lots of stories about police officers, most of them negative. Those stories remind us that police officers are human, just like the rest of the society they are supposed to be protecting and serving. But we have to hold them to a higher standard. There is no other way to deal with people who have that power and that authority built into their jobs and uniforms. They cannot use the uniform and the authority to be thieves, bullies, murderers...or sex criminals.

I have tried following up on Hammond’s story, but it seems to stop around the time he went to jail for his sex crimes. He had already resigned from the police force when he was convicted.

 Ken Hammond, hero, 2007

Former police officer Kenneth Hammond has seen the highest highs: being honored as a hero for helping prevent further killings as a killer stalked Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City, Utah, killing five people and injuring four. Hammond was off-duty, having dinner with his wife, when he heard shots. When the Salt Lake Police swat team arrived Hammond shouted at them he was an off-duty officer. Even though the shooter was killed by a sergeant of the Salt Lake Police, Hammond, a member of the nearby Ogden Police Department, was touted as a hero, paraded before the media, given honors.

Hammond also knows the lows. Because of the publicity a woman came forward and said that when she was 17 she had performed oral sex on him. According to a story in the June 1, 2009 Salt Lake Tribune, he had met her two years before the Trolley Square shootings while he investigated a noise complaint. He had asked for her phone number, called her and returned later that night. She was with an 18-year-old woman, and while he fondled the 18-year-old the 17-year-old performed oral sex. According to the report he had also stopped the younger woman a couple of times on the road, once while she was drinking, but he let her go. When she saw him on the news she made her complaint.

Good cops, bad cops. At the time Hammond committed the alleged offense of having sex with an underage person he was 32, and had taken an oath to protect the public, not take advantage. Across the country some police have used their power and status for sexual purposes. Sometimes like Hammond they're caught and discharged, sometimes they're never caught.

What must've run through Hammond's mind when he succumbed to temptation? I'm guessing he never thought he'd be paying for it by going to jail for 90 days, losing his job, and having the media remind the public that this once-hero is now just another horny guy taking advantage of a situation so he could get sex.

Ken Hammond, prisoner, 2009
What a sad story all the way around. Young married father loses job because of his own behavior. His wife, who works as a dispatcher for the same police department, must be going through hell. And what to tell their kid when he's old enough, that his dad threw away his career in law enforcement for a blow job?

Good cop, bad cop=same cop.

Granny got her garters on

Garters are a thing of the past, except as accoutrements of sexy lingerie. Years ago, when women’s underthings were called “unmentionables,” pictures of women showing stockings and garters were confined to pin-ups, men’s magazines, and even photos passed around in locker rooms. Nowadays anyone can see the real thing by just walking past the Victoria’s Secret window at the local shopping mall. I grew up when those “unmentionables” were still part of everyday attire. I am older, more jaded, but there is still something of the forbidden thrill that came with catching a glimpse of them in everyday use: a women stepping out of a car; an errant breeze riffling the hem of a skirt, showing nylon tops. Those moments were rare but memorable for me.

I collected these vintage photos from various sites around the Internet. They seem quaint now, but at one time they quickened the pulses of our grandfathers.

“Baby hungry,” and other Utahspeak

 I wrote parts of this is in 2009.  I am re-posting it with some editing and updating.

This cartoon was posted on Facebook recently with a question, “Is the term ‘baby hungry’ specific to Utah?” According to people from other areas of the country who had never heard it, apparently so.  I remember when I first heard “baby hungry” several years ago. Even then I knew it means that a woman is longing to have another baby, but I found the phrase as ghoulish as this drawing.

Some linguists can trace a regional dialect to within 50 miles, and I assume that means they can also track down words and phrases peculiar to a particular area or local population. Utah definitely has some peculiarities specific to local speech.

At age five I was singing, “Hell, hell, the gang's all here,” when my mother corrected me. She told me that I had turned a long “a” sound into a short “e”. She corrected me often in my speech and set me off on the correct path, but she couldn't ever change my dad. Both Dad and Mom came from a rural area in the center of Utah and Mom did not want to talk like the “hicks,” as she called them.

Utahns often pronounce a word like “hail” as “hell”; they also pronounce “meal” as “mill”. My brother and I did jokes about going to a restaurant and having a “rill mill.” It was a lot to do with our father. Dad had a pronounced Utah dialect, where he turned long vowels into short. He also had a strange Utah way of turning an “or” sound into an “ar,” examples being harse, sharts, and the one that tickled me, fartunate. I’ve heard some people with that speech habit do a reverse, and also turn the “ar” into “or” as in “I drove my cor.” And speaking of cors, my dad also called a Chevrolet a Shiverlay.

Watching some local television commercials recently I heard a furniture store manager use the short e sound in referring to his “knowledgable sellspeople,” and a car dealer loudly exhorting us to “test drive a Shiverlay.”

Many of my fellow Utahns communicate through Utahspeak, with expressions understood by locals but puzzling to outsiders. We in Utah know the exclamations, “Oh, my heck!” and “good hell.” “Good hell” comes from the Mormons. They use it rather than “good heavens” because decades ago some church leader apparently said it’s disrespectful to use heaven — a holy place — in an oath. Local folks who use these terms often don't realize they are indigenous to Utah.

Jeff Foxworthy made a living out of Southern dialects that sound funny to non-Southerners, but only in Utah can you hear someone who mangles the word “ignorant” to sound like “ignernt” and means rude rather than “without knowledge.” Other examples of Utahspeak are “sluffing” to mean playing hookey, or “baby tending” when babysitting. It’s too regionalized, unfartunately.

I realized at some point that Dad couldn't be corrected because he couldn't hear what he said. It sounded correct to his ear. He asked me once, “How do you pronounce s-h-o-r-t-s?”

I said, “shorts,” pronouncing it with the short “o” sound.

He said, “I was talking to this guy from New York and he was making fun of the way I say that word! But I say it just like you, sharts!”

Only in Utah: The Red State Blues

With the Utah Legislature in session it seems that every day our daily newspaper, The Salt Lake Tribune, has more of the nefarious, silly and downright comical acts of our legislators.

For one, choosing a Commemorative Gun for 2015. This tradition has been going on without apology for several years. This year’s honor goes to the AR-15. They even got a special deal. The weapon cost them only $650! There was no mention as to whether those were taxpayer dollars.

As one commenter to this picture of Rep. Keven Stratton holding the gun noted wryly: “He looks like he has just given birth.”

Only in Utah.

Photo by Chris Detrick. Copyright © 2015 The Salt Lake Tribune

At the same time as legislators were getting their jollies with the AR-15 the Trib ran another article, headlined: “The oath: Utah first, feds second,” another legislator proposed a new oath for elected officials. Right now it reads “[I] swear to support, obey and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of this state.” One clueless legislator wants to switch “this state” with “the State of Utah,” putting it ahead of the Constitution of the United States. As another, much smarter legislator put it, “[the U.S. Constitution is] the supreme law of the land.” A state constitution cannot be above the U.S. Constitution. (From a story bylined Robert Gehrke).

Only in Utah.

Paul Rolly is a Tribune columnist who likes to hold Republican feet to the fire. He is critical of most of their shenanigans and points them out as often as possible. He wrote about Rep. Lavar Christensen, who a few years ago drafted the bill that defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. It became law, but then it was challenged and Utah became one of those states where a federal judge declared such a law in violation of the 14th Amendment. Rolly asked, by drafting that law did Christensen in fact become the LGBT community’s best friend? His law paved the way for a federal judge to become involved. (What we mean when we mention the Law of Unintended Consequences.)

 Samuel Johnson said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

Christensen, who is a Latter-day Saint, also used a “the Lord told me to” card against a legislator who had filled his seat when he resigned to run for higher office. When he lost his bid for U.S. Congress, he wanted his legislative seat back. He told his successor he wanted her to give up her seat, according to Rolly, because “the Lord had told him that he needed to be back in the Legislature.” Well, Lavar Christensen is back, so did the Lord arrange for him to get back there? My question would be, why didn’t the Lord just tell Lavar’s successor to quit, rather than have Christensen deliver the news? It certainly sounds self-serving. Christensen denies ever having said such a thing, but he wouldn’t be the first LDS elected official to claim he had God speaking to him.

Only in Utah.

This editorial cartoon by the Tribune’s Pat Bagley, is about Utah’s desire to switch the method of execution at the State Prison. The chemicals to kill someone on death row might become hard to get, or might not even work. Our lawmakers think it would be a swell idea to go back to execution by firing squad. Yep, it worked for our Utah ancestors for over a hundred years, so why not bring it back?

Copyright © 2015 The Salt Lake Tribune

Utah is a state that believes in capital punishment. Many other states do, also, but Utah was somewhat infamous for years (and the answer to a trivia question) by giving the condemned a choice: hanging or firing squad. Some chose hanging, most chose the firing squad. You might remember Gary Gilmore, who was the first prisoner executed in the United States after a hiatus of a few years in the seventies. Gilmore was shot through the heart at the Utah State Penitentiary in January, 1977. Norman Mailer did a book about him called The Executioner’s Song, and his story was even featured as a two-part TV movie with Tommy Lee Jones as Gilmore.

What people in Utah have apparently forgotten is that there was a third choice of execution, and that was beheading. No one ever chose that way to meet his maker. It makes the Bagley cartoon all the more ironic.

An editorial asked if it wasn’t time to put all of this behind us and eliminate the death penalty once and for all. I could practically feel the breeze from the legislature, as representative after representative in unison briskly shook their heads “no.”

Only in Utah.

Finally, Trib editorial writer George Pyle recently wrote about why people in Utah don’t vote. We have the lowest voter turnout in the nation. He surmised, and I believe correctly, that people are turned off by elections because Republicans always win. We live in a state where almost every elected official is a Republican. Osama bin Laden would have won in Utah had he run for office as a Republican.

My natural contrariness to establishment and herd mentality comes in here. I vote in every election, city, county, state and national. Even though my candidates usually lose I win for myself by casting a ballot. My wife is the same way. If our fellow Democrats felt like we did then the red state of Utah might be a little bluer.

We aren’t because our Democrats are intimidated by Republicans. By not voting the defeat of their candidates is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Only in Utah.

Haters love to hate

Barack Obama has been the target of a tremendous amount of bile and rancor, much of it racing around the Internet, posted by disaffected citizens either disturbed by his politics or his color. Or both. Even Kim Jong Un, the portly dictator of North Korea hit below the belt. To insult the President he said Obama “has the shape of a monkey.” This from a fat guy with a bad haircut. But no one has heaped scorn upon Obama like his own countrymen. In the past six years they have left no insult unsaid, no indignity unexpressed.

I wondered how Obama, or any President, handles all of this negative energy, this continual vibe of the malcontents, filling their blogs and newspaper columns and radio programs with invective and malice. Questioning the President's decision making, his programs, or his ability to lead, leaving out any tone of civility or good manners with the continual Obama-bashing.

I discovered something while contemplating. Historians know it, but its truth just took a while to whack me on the noggin. A President knows he will be hated by many of his fellow Americans. What President Obama knows, also, is that everyone who had the job before him had the same problem. The technology is different than it was a few years ago. It is a more high-tech character assassination than it has been in the past. The Internet, 24-hour news programming and Fox News have raised the bar on angry stupidity. But it will be no different for anyone who follows him, no matter what party they represent.

During his time in office a President is too close to the situation not to create degrees of discontent and partisanship. He is supposed to set the agenda for the country, which causes dissension and controversy. Where he has the advantage is that history will be the ultimate judge of how well he pulled off his agenda. Surviving former Presidents, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are banking on history to save their reputations.

Bill Clinton showed that just finishing up his second term, which was historically one of the worst for a modern President, immediately took him out of the line of fire. As an ex-President he became an “elder statesman.” This is a value of an ex-President, being able to get things done in a diplomatic way. Clinton even went to North Korea to help free some prisoners. It was a huge deal for the North Koreans, who had a man who was once the most powerful man in the world on their doorstep asking for a favor.

The fact that every President goes through this crucible is well documented. Even men who are rated as the most important Presidents in American history have been, during their time in office, hated. The book, The Hater's Handbook by Joseph Rosner, published in 1965, gives some high points of President-hating from George Washington through Lyndon Johnson. The author quotes Harry S. Truman, who was dragged through hot coals many times during his time in office as saying, “A public official, particularly the President, is always abused; if he isn’t, he’s doing nothing, and is of no value as the Chief Executive.”

 “Give 'em hell, Harry,” got his share of hell from his political enemies.

George Washington, who has universal acclaim today for both his skills as a General and President, was the subject of a 60-page letter from Thomas Paine, who accused him in part of “. . . your treachery in private friendship . . . and [you are] a hypocrite in public life, this world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an imposter, whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you had any.”

The grandson of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin A. Bache, published The Aurora, a newspaper in Philadelphia. He said of Washington, “If ever a nation has been debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched by George Washington.”

George Washington: treachery and debauchery? With over 200 years of good press since his presidency it would be hard for Americans now to believe the worst in him.

Our third President, Thomas Jefferson, although highly regarded as the author of the Declaration of Independence and President of the United States, had his own secrets, which over the years have become public. Having a slave as a mistress and fathering children by her is not something smiled upon by people of either the 18th or 21st centuries (or the centuries in between). Whether Thomas Hamilton, who wrote this in 1826, knew of Jefferson’s personal matters is unknown (it was not mentioned in The Hater’s Handbook), but he seems to give a clue in what he said: “The moral character of Thomas Jefferson was repulsive. Continually puling and whining about liberty, equality, and the degrading curse of slavery, he brought his own children to the hammer, and made money of his debaucheries.”

“Puling and whining” sounds like people who point fingers and complain about today’s President.

Two other men who have gone down in history as amongst the greatest Presidents were Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. But that is history’s verdict. In their times they were both excoriated. Lincoln was found in disfavor by both Northern and Southern newspapers (where he was, like Obama, compared to a simian). No one had kind words for Honest Abe until he was killed by John Wilkes Booth. Booth hated Lincoln enough to murder him. He was surprised to read in newspapers, before he was killed by captors, that he wasn’t a hero for assassinating the President. He believed that he would be revered, and Lincoln despised.

Being assassinated is a good way to end attacks by political enemies.

Business leaders were so threatened by Franklin D. Roosevelt that they tried to arrange a coup (known now as the Business Plot), with retired Marine General Smedley Butler at the head of an army of veterans. They were ready to march in and take over the office. Butler, who remained a patriot, strung the plotters along and gave them up to the House Un-American Activities Committee. The whole affair was widely disregarded because some newspapers pooh-poohed the idea of such a plot. The Presidency was kept intact, but for a time, as told by Butler, the businessmen wanted Italian-style fascism. They wanted someone else to be President, and Roosevelt to be like a do-nothing co-President. That would take a major change of the Constitution, which was unlikely. Apparently this gang of Capitalists thought their plan would work.

Attacks on Roosevelt also got down and dirty on a personal level, with his political enemies calling him “half a man,” because of the polio that had rendered his legs useless. What they did not reckon was his legs may have dangled, but his mind was as sharp as ever. Roosevelt’s legacy is safe because history decided he was one of the great Presidents.

 Born rich and privileged, the only thing he had to fear during the early years of his Presidency were his fellow rich and privileged.

Harry Truman, again, has the most succinct comment of all about the Presidency: “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” The most dynamic Presidents, the most do-something Presidents, have the heat on them continually. The great Presidents — the ones who take the greatest heat — are remembered; the others are just names on a list.

(The portraits shown in this post are from the Topps 1956 U.S. Presidents bubblegum card set. I found them online. I do not own these cards.)