McCain Mocks Mormon History
Jonathan Chait has a nice post at The New Republic about McCain's shallow, twittering mockery of various bits of budgetary pork, and about Maureen Dowd's witless applause of McCain. As Chait points out, McCain's "method" is to pick anything that can be made to sound silly. Dowd, of course, applauds this method as the height of wisdom.
In the list of "silly" projects McCain scorns is this:
In the list of "silly" projects McCain scorns is this:
$1 million for Mormon cricket control in
Utah. "Is that the species of cricket or a game played by the brits?"
McCain tweeted. ...
Get it? McCain can pun! And he can make fun of Brits who play silly sports while wearing sweaters (like Churchill)! Who ever heard of a Mormon cricket anyway?
Pretty much everyone in Utah, I would think. Since an infestation of Mormon crickets nearly wiped out Brigham Young and the rest of the Mormon settlers of Salt Lake during their first year, those crickets are pretty much stuck in the locals' historical memory. There's a monument in Temple Square to a pair of seagulls, because if seagulls hadn't eventually eaten many of those crickets the Mormons in Salt Lake would have starved to death.
So that's all it is. A local pest species that once almost killed off the original founders of the state. No big deal. After all, why spend a whole million to prevent local agriculture from swarms of ravenous locusts? And anyway who would know such a thing? Apparently not a Republican Senator from a neighboring state. Good thing there are no Republicans in Utah.
Get it? McCain can pun! And he can make fun of Brits who play silly sports while wearing sweaters (like Churchill)! Who ever heard of a Mormon cricket anyway?
Pretty much everyone in Utah, I would think. Since an infestation of Mormon crickets nearly wiped out Brigham Young and the rest of the Mormon settlers of Salt Lake during their first year, those crickets are pretty much stuck in the locals' historical memory. There's a monument in Temple Square to a pair of seagulls, because if seagulls hadn't eventually eaten many of those crickets the Mormons in Salt Lake would have starved to death.
So that's all it is. A local pest species that once almost killed off the original founders of the state. No big deal. After all, why spend a whole million to prevent local agriculture from swarms of ravenous locusts? And anyway who would know such a thing? Apparently not a Republican Senator from a neighboring state. Good thing there are no Republicans in Utah.
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That's the problem with whining about pork. Every earmark is not a bridge to nowhere.
March 4, 2009 5:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is a myth the Mormon Crickets almost killed the Mormon pioneers. Frost and drought already ruined a significant amount of the crops.
The invasion of the Mormon crickets did seem like the last straw until the seagulls arrived and ate the crickets. But what was saved was a very small amount, and not near enough to feed everyone. Many people still starved.
Additionally, the invasion was not noticed by many people, as there are only a few contemporary accounts of it in people's journals, and they did not write of it as a "miracle."
It wasn't until years later it became the faith-promoting "Miracle of the Gulls" the Mormon Church still talks about to this day.
But very few LDS realize the revisionist history involved in the telling of the miracle.
Jaynee
March 5, 2009 8:47 PM | Reply | Permalink