How Many Mormons Does It Take to Screw in a Lightbulb?

Really should have been a whole section on J Golden Kimball, but there just wasn’t room.

That’s garments.

Not sure I agree with the premise, which as I understand it is that Mormons don’t have as good a sense of humor (at least about themselves) as other people. I don’t find the average non-Latter-day Saint to be any funnier than the typical Mormon; if anything, I find the opposite. And in general, I find Mormons more willing to laugh at themselves and about their culture than many or most other groups.

As for LDS comedians, other than the occasional Brian Regan, comedians tend to engage in a type of vulgar humor that most Latter-day Saints find objectionable, so it’s no surprise that active and believing Latter-day Saints would form only a small minority of such performers. How many committed Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, Mennonites, or Muslims do you see tearing up the popular comedy circuit? At DNC functions, do the comic performers spend most of their routine pointing out and mocking the absurdities and hypocrisies of the Democratic Party?

I think Mormons laugh at themselves about as well as other groups, perhaps better than many. But that doesn’t mean they like being made fun of, or especially that they like seeing their sacred beliefs put on display for mockery.

#6 D.H.: I remember it had some funny parts. I also remember one particular comedian (looked sort of like Steve Carrell — Jeff Birk, maybe?) whose comedy routine consisted largely of doing stereotyped, racist, and (most damning of all) completely unfunny impressions of east Asians. I gaped in bemusement, but not amusement, at the spectacle. Honestly, I was too disgusted and embarrassed for him to be very offended.

Humor is often based on hyperbole and exaggeration – and it’s often difficult to conceive of jokes which go beyond what is often the reality in the LDS church.

Maybe it’s just my ward, but . . . .

A quote by J G.Kimbal

this made me laugh out loud..

“I won’t go to hell for swearing because I repent, to dam fast.”

And

“boys, don’t put guns in your pockets because you might blow your brains out.”

And people say I don’t have a sense of humor.

I agree that mormons generally aren’t funny. I loved conan o’briens funny christmas song, but me wife was offended. I like kirby heyborne and johnny biscuit.

#13 mh: Are you talking about the “Mormon Tappernacle Choir” skit done in response to Senator Hatch’s attempt at writing a Channukah song? I watched it prepared to laugh. I did not find it offensive so much as stupid and completely unfunny. I was disappointed, since I was hoping for something clever — but then, I’ve never really found O’Brien very funny anyway. Stupid I can handle; some of the funniest moments I remember have been stupid. Unfunny is bad, but understandable; everyone whiffs a few. But stupid and unfunny is too much.

I tried to find a link so you could judge for yourself, but to no avail. To be fair to Conan, I think the point was to make fun of media portrayal of Mormons and the lack of reliable information in the general media (bringing up Witness and Children of the Corn (?!) as examples of Mormons). But unfortunately, it still wasn’t funny, just dumb.

I think the Conan skit bringing up Witness & Children of the Corn goes to the heart of why most Mormon jokes aren’t funny to non-Mormons; because most non-Mormons don’t know enough about Mormons to get the jokes. Usually when Hollywood makes a joke about Mormons it’s about our okely-dokely goshdarn naivete such as when Frasier hired an agent who was a Mormon, and he showed up to a salary negotiation in a scout uniform. Honestly, growing up in PA, most of my friends didn’t even know where Utah was or that there were Mormons there, and they didn’t know what Mormons were until the Godmakers was shown by the local churches. At my 20 year high school reunion, people still thought it was funny to ask how many husbands I had (I’m actually not sure when that was funny).

“LDS people tend to take themselves far too seriously and have a formal taboo on mocking their leaders.” I think these statements are true of many Mormons, plus there is a prohibition on ‘loud laughter.’ Still, the biggest reason that Mormons don’t do well in the comedy circuit is because it’s a tough business if you want to keep it clean as well as the already-mentioned problem that outsiders don’t know enough about Mormons or Utah to understand why it’s funny.

Comedy relies on zigging when they thought you were going to zag. You take the audience to a point where they think they know where you are going, and just at the last minute you swerve. So they have to be able to go along with you, they have to think they know where you’re headed, and they have to understand why your swerve was funnier than what they expected you to say. Mormon comedians do well, IMO, at places like Johnny B’s in Provo where everyone is in on the joke. Not so much elsewhere.

I remember reading a Robert Kirby column from the SL Tribune to my HP group one Sunday and realized that the stony silence and unblinking stares were a clue that they didn’t think he was all that funny. I especially liked his advice on how to get released from the nursery. Break into a bishopric meeting, throw your recommend on the desk and say you worship satan. Anyway, some are offended by him, others see him as close enough to the mark to make them uncomfortable, and some, like me just think he’s funny. I’d recommend today’s effort by the way. It’s about family history.

We used to have a woman on the Australian comedy scene who billed her self as “an ex mormon lesbian commedian” who told jokes about growing up in a strict mormon houshold, where she was abused by her step father and the reactions to her sexuality by church members.

She was successfull for a couple of years but haven’t seen her on TV recently. The members shunned her of course. I feel sad for her. but?

21# Her name is Sue-Ann Post. She was pretty funny actually. A bit anti, but for the most part I enjoyed her style of comedy.

We also have a guy here who tends to push the envelope a bit named John Safran. He did a confrontational comedy piece where he and another guy dressed in suits went door to door in Salt Lake City trying to convert people to atheism. Made me laugh and cringe at the same time.

As for Mormon comedians here, I really don’t know anyone who is on the comdey circuit and a practicing Mormon. It just doesn’t seem to be a vocation many Mormons take to. Shame really.

matt: welcome!! it’s like we used to say in the old student review days: it’s funny because it’s true. are we so plugged into being missionaries that we’re too sensitive to tell the truth about ourselves for fear that people won’t want to join us? could it be that jews and catholics can joke about themselves because they are non proselytizers (by and large)?

I think there’s probably something to the adolescence of the church. That and so many of us are kind of dead inside.

I haven’t found Mormons to be particularly humor-deficient — unless The Home Teachers represents typical Mormon humor, which I vociferously deny. Rather, I have found certain segments of Mormondom overly eager to be perceived as not humor-deficient, with the result that they will laugh at anything and everything that attempts to make fun of Mormonism, even stuff that is blatantly unfunny (e.g. Conan O’Brien’s Mormon Tappernacle Choir skit). These are the people who will sing the praises of the genius of Trey Parker and Matt Stone for producing South Park and scoff at those who point out the essential mean-heartedness of much of what they produce, as if being funny were somehow an excuse for defying the most basic principles of social intercourse.

Not sure which bothers me more: The transparent pretense of those who laugh at manifestly unfunny stuff simply because it targets the Church and its members, marking them as both stupid and disloyal (or bigoted, or all three), or the smugness of those who trumpet intelligent and clever, but ultimately destructive, antiMormonism as somehow exempt from the basic rules of decency and good taste. I suppose the smugness is worse; the stupidity of the first group is apparent for all to see, while the smugness of the second group masks real harm that can be done by clever lies and half-truths.

Humor without irreverence, and righteousness without sanctimony. Tough straddles to pull off, I’ll grant that.

Not so. In striving for righteousness — especially within a culture that rewards righteousness with public praise and social status — there is always a temptation to accept an easy counterfeit of the real thing; to affect what isn’t truly there, or to exaggerate what is.

I know plenty of Mormons who have a hard time telling righteousness and sanctimony apart, myself often included.

Except that righteousness is always a state of becoming, always alloyed to some extent with unrighteousness. “All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags”; “There is none righteous, no, not one…For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Just as the sins of the flesh and the self are the default sins of people who don’t bother with God and righteousness at all, sanctimony is the sin most easily stumbled into by people whose default mode — by reasons of culture, family, or even choice — is to seek righteousness. Sometimes you don’t even notice when you’ve crossed the line.

I doubt there is a religious person anywhere who hasn’t been a sanctimonious prig at least once in his life, except perhaps one certain Icelandic sister.

Now obviously, the world obsesses about religious “sanctimoniousness,” and swallows whole camels’ worth of its own dissoluteness. The wicked are the most smug in judging the sins they think themselves least likely to commit. But the fact that religious sanctimoniousness is probably about #253 on the lists of Sins to Worry About right now, in attending to the matters that are weightier right now, we shouldn’t leave the other duties undone.

Reading about righteousnss and humor made me think of this story.

The Rameumptom
________________________________________

Cast: A father and his daughter.

“What’s a Rameumptom, Daddy?”

“Well, the Book of Mormon says it was a place Where the Zoramites stood to worship and pray.”

“But my Primary teacher said it was a tower that evil people used.”

“I can see how someone could think that. The Book of Mormon says it was ‘place for standing which was high above the head’ and only one person at a time could go up there.”

“Was it like the speaker’s stand in the church?”

“A speaker’s stand? You mean a pulpit? Yes, I suppose it was. In fact, the word ‘Rameumptom’ means ‘the holy stand.’”

“What’s so evil about a holy stand, Daddy?”

“Well, it wasn’t the stand that was evil. It was how it was used. The people gathered there in their
synagogue. . .”

“What’s a synagogue?”

“Just a different word for chapel or church, honey.”

“Oh.”

“They’d gather in their synagogue one day a week.”

“Which day, Daddy?”

“I don’t know, honey. It just says ‘one day,’ and they called it ‘the day of the Lord.’”

“It must have been Sunday.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because Sunday is the Lord’s day.”

“Well, maybe it was. . . Anyway, they’d gather there and whoever wanted to worship would go and stand on the top of the Rameumptom.”

“Could anyone go up there?”

“Well, no, that was part of the problem. Apparently, they had to wear the right clothes. . . ”

“You mean like us when we wear Sunday clothes, Daddy?”

“Well, not exactly, but in a way, yes, I suppose. Some of us might have a hard time accepting certain kinds of clothes or people in sacrament meeting. But we wear our Sunday clothes to help us be reverent, don’t we?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“So anyway, where was I?”

“They went to the top of the Rameumptom. . .”

“Yes, they would go up and worship God by thanking him for making them so special.”

“Were they bearing their testimonies?”

“Well, uh, I guess maybe they were in a way, but they weren’t true testimonies.”

“How come?”

“Because they were too proud.”

“What do you mean ‘proud,’ Daddy?”

“Well, they would talk about how they were ‘a chosen and holy people.’”

“My Primary teacher said Mormons are the chosen people and we’re a special generation.”

“Yes, honey, but that’s different.”

“How?”

“Because we are.”

“Oh.”

“Besides they were very, very proud about how much better they were than everyone else, because they didn’t believe the ‘foolish traditions’ of their neighbors.”

“What does that mean, Daddy?”

“It means that they believed everyone else was wrong and they alone were right.”

“Isn’t that what we believe?”

“But it’s different.”

“How?”

“Because we are right, honey.”

“Oh.”

“Everyone would stand and say the same thing. . .”

“That sounds like testimony meeting to me.”

“Don’t be irreverent.”

“Sorry.”

“Then after it was all over, they would go home and never speak about God until the next day of the Lord when they’d gather at the holy stand again.”

“Isn’t that like us, Daddy?”

“No honey, we have Family Home Evening.”

“Oh.”

#36: “In my experience, those who cry “Sanctimonious hypocrite!” are almost invariably those who reject religion and mock its practitioners.”

Absolutely. In fact, whenever I see someone branded a hypocrite, I immediately presume that the person throwing the charge out there has no real argument against what the alleged hypocrite is preaching.

And of course the secular liberal’s definition of “hypocrisy” distorts its real meaning. A person is not a hypocrite who, having preached a principle (say, the law of chastity) falls spectacularly off the wagon. A person can fall short of even deeply held principles. He is only a hypocrite if he doesn’t truly believe the principle in the first place, and is preaching it just for the social or financial rewards of it.

I’ve spoken in praise of “hypocrisy,” as liberal secularists often define it. Because you can only fall short of your ideals, if you have ideals to fall short of. Those whose God is their belly are never hypocrites, because they have no principles to betray. For some reason, this is supposed to mean they’re better people.

I like a good, bracing shot of schadenfreude as much as the next man, but there’s something unseemly about secular liberals’ glee at religious men’s moral failings. They see a Ted Haggard, a Jimmy Swaggart, or a Jim Bakker and say “See! You Christians are all a bunch of frauds. Nobody can possibly live up to the standards you hypocrites carry on about!” They desperately want that to be true, to excuse them from attempting the impossible. But of course there are plenty of men of faith who manage not to betray their wives, or commit other high-profile sins. They may not be perfect, but it really is possible to make a reasonable run at Christian morality.

All the same, religious sanctimony is a deadly sin. It’s what got the Savior crucified, after all; the Sanhedrin weren’t a bunch of dissolute hippies, but rather the duly constituted — and self-interestedly sanctimonious — ecclesiastical leaders, who killed God lest the Romans “take away their place and nation.”

Just as you can only tell ethnic jokes if you’re a member of the ethnic joke having fun poked at it, maybe critique of religious sanctimony is something that only religious people have any business doing. They’re the ones best able to criticize in good faith, rather than using the criticism as a weapon against faith generally.

Holden…The rameumptom is great!! I was laughing out loud…thanks for putting that up!