The Boston Globe's Paranoia
I'm sure all of you have at some point either done or seen a connect the dots puzzle. You go in numeric order drawing lines between the dots until you have a picture of something. Imagine the chaos that would ensue if you tried to connect the dots from two different pages to try and force the picture to be something other than it really is. This is exactly what the Boston Globe has managed to do with its sloppy reporting concerning Mitt Romney's meeting with LDS church leaders.
The insinuation is that the LDS church is directly involving itself in Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. To a casual observer, this might appear true. Romney has met with Elder Holland, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, to discuss making contacts through BYU's alumni organizations. The Globe seems to not be able to separate church-sanctioned activities from personal actions, thus making out every action Elder Holland takes to be in his official capacity as a high-ranking member of the church.
Elder Holland has as much right as any other citizen to provide support to political candidates as anyone else. As long as he does so outside of his official role, there is no story. The Globe is just looking to stir people up, as a lot of the media has done, by convincing them that a marriage of church and state is in the works.
If you want to throw out some wild speculation, you're more than entitled to it. When you peddle it as news or fact, however, you're dragging your credibility through the mud by just making stuff up. Shame on The Boston Globe for showing us what bad journalism is all about.
Jesse
Shauna
How do you attack a clean-cut, straight-shooting, honest candidate with a good record of success and a strong following? Well…
Feel free to correct me here, but I think the mistake was made when the offer was made to use the BYU School of Business Alumni Association (another non-profit associated with the church) as a source for this grass-roots campaign. I believe emails were sent from that email server domain, and as such, were construed to be that the organization itself was in support.
Emails should not have been sent out from that domain in support of this, or any other political endeavor. Who knows who agreed with what, or who supported what… never to know.
That said, I think the line between church and state is WAY TOO NARROW these days, and not just here in Utah, either. Perhaps even more so in other parts of the country.
Beyond that, yes, the Globe saw an opportunity to jump on a potential candidate with “Cultish” ties, and took full advantage.