Sarah Palin spoke at Tea Party Nation on Saturday night. I thought is was a pretty good speech. You can watch it  here The left side of the opinion media reacted in its usual multi-mood manner. Bob Shrum represented the “Evil Sarah” crowd, with his comment that she’s a “merchant of hate.” Too many pundits represented the “Dumb Palin” crowd. Here’s an example from The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen: “I realize right-wing activists adore the former governor, but her conspicuous unintelligence should be obvious to anyone above the age of 4. There hasn’t been a more ridiculous figure to hold American political prominence in a very long time.”

My favorite is the Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan, who represents the “Sarah to be feared crowd.” He writes on his blog: “… she is capable of generating a personality cult – much, much more so than Obama, because she can harness Christianism to her divine destiny. The power of this kind of appeal – of a charismatic, beautiful woman, an icon of the pro-life cause, persecuted by the evil elites, demonized by libruls, and commanding the biggest military on earth – should not in my view be under-estimated. Know fear.”

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I recall reading in one of the Mark Hofmann murder/forgery books, where Steve Christensen, one of Hofmann’s victims, while bishop of his ward, would admit to members that he didn’t always receive revelation for their positions and solicited their advice on where to be placed. I think of that because I was recently assured by an area LDS  leader that the Lord had personally called me to a new position. I’m not saying I’m doubting that, but it wouldn’t have mattered a bit to me if I’d been told that the area leader had decided on his own it was time to move me.

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I was at a local theater last night to see a rebroadcast of Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck’s traveling pundits show. We caught a Florida show from last Friday. It wasn’t cheap at $20 each but there was a healthy attendance for a Tuesday re-run. All were fans and most had at least 10 years on me. I don’t see much of Beck’s Fox News show but I have read most of his hyperactive books. He was the big star to the Florida crowd. O’Reilly, although he wouldn’t be pleased to hear this, played Alan Colmes to Beck’s Sean Hannity; sort of a conservative against an ultra-conservative.

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I like that Florida’s star quarterback Tim Tebow is outspoken about his Christian faith. And I’m happy that his mother, facing a health risk, ignored a doctor’s advice  to have an abortion and brought her son into the world. I consider myself pro-life, but I find myself agreeing with some feminist groups that an ad, produced by Focus on the Family, that celebrates Pam Tebow’s decision to bear Tim, is inappropriate for the Super Bowl. CBS has every right to accept the ad, but I wish the network had passed.

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I was indulging in one of my passions, which is leafing through the bookcases of elderly Latter-day Saints. A lot of treasures can be found — books by B.H. Roberts, old mission journals, the Improvement Era, “Papa Married a Mormon,” the works of Cleon Skousen, pamphlets from the 1920s offering advice for a new missionary. …

I came across the 1960 Course of Study for the Melchizedek Priesthood Quorum. It’s titled “Apostasy to Restoration,” by T. Edgar Lyon. I borrowed the book, eager to compare today’s vanilla-brand manuals with one a half-century old. I also wondered if it would reflect the arch-conservatism that defined the LDS leadership 50 years ago.

I haven’t finished “Apostasy to Restoration” yet, but I intend to. The book, manual, lesson, whatever, is a fascinating history of the centuries between Christ’s birth and the emergence of the LDS Church. Whether one disagrees with its conclusions, the scholarship must be appreciated. Look, I have no objections to trudging through priesthood manuals that have, for the past few years, been collections of quotes and reminiscing about various prophets — it’s useful stuff. But, apologies to Cal Grondahl, reading “Apostasy to Restoration” is like unearthing ancient scripture. Did we actually have lessons like this 50 years ago, that discussed “the Absence of Mysticism in the Apostolic Christianity,” or “the Fragments of Papias,” or “Irenaues’ Concept of the Ultimate Potential of Man,” or “Christian Gnosticism,” or “The Diocletian Persecution,” or “Ambrose the Christian Statesman,” or “the Contributions of Monasticism,” or “Pope Leo the Great (440-464 A.D.), or “Reformation Trends in Switzerland” …?

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The results are in, courtesy of the Democratic polling firm Public Policy Polling: Fox News is the most trusted TV news organization in the nation. Read

Before some of you start gagging, I don’t think this means that Fox is the most “fair and balanced” news operation out there. I enjoy Fox News, watch it far more than CNN, MSNBC or the antique news shows from ABC, NBC or CBS. But I’m a conservative, and Fox’s center-right slant appeals to me. The fact is, cable news is a boutique. No more than several million Americans watch it, the competition is fierce. Years ago Fox capitalized off a perceived left-wing-bias-in-the-rest-of-the-media feeling from conservatives. It covered news stories of interest to conservatives, stories that otherwise would rarely get beyond The Washington Times or the Wall Street Journal editorial pages. Fox also was the first network to devote its late afternoon/evening programming to political debate.

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The results are in, courtesy of Gallup, and President Obama is the president who has most polarized the major parties in his first year of office since Gallup starting tracking the data in the Eisenhower administration. There is a 65 percent gap between how Democrats and Republicans see the president. Eighty-eight percent of Democrats on average approved of the president’s performance; only 23 percent of Republicans approved of Obama’s performance on average. Read

The 65 percent margin easily eclipses the first-year divide in approval between President Bill Clinton (55 percent) and Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush (both 45 percent). The lowest partisan divide for a president’s first year in office was 19 percent for Lyndon Baines Johnson. “The outcome is that Americans evaluate their presidents and other political leaders through increasingly thick partisan lenses,” writes Gallup researchers.

Reasons cited for the consistent partisan divide the past decade — President George W. Bush had a record level divide of 83 percent in the 2004 campaign — include the increased popularity of media tailored to appeal to political beliefs, including the Internet, cable news and talk radio. I’ll be watching President Obama’s State of the Union speech on Wednesday to see if any initiatives are proposed that might crack this ideological block somewhat. Health care reform already appears to be a casualty.

I recently watched, for maybe the 10th time, the 2002 Halestorm film “The Singles Ward.” I love this film. It’s by far the best insider Mormon in-joke movie. It’s actually funny; most Mormon comedies aren’t.

If you are an active Latter-day Saint who has spent time in a singles ward, you’ll likely laugh a lot. If you are not LDS, it will likely bore you.

I’ll just spend a moment with the plot. It involves a divorced, semi-active LDS single Jonathan Jordan (Will Swenson), who works as a stand up comedian. In “plot device 45653” he meets a devout, gorgeous LDS coed Cammie Giles (Connie Young), who likes to speak her mind. They argue a lot, and eventually hit it off. They are surrounded by a horde of stereotypical LDS young adults who are funny because, like a grifter, there’s a little bit of truth to their stereotypes. There’s the computer geek, the rustic mechanic, the pretentious LDS coed who eventually marries the rustic mechanic, the delusional nerd, who of course ends up with a sexy wife, the naive, hickish missionary-to-be … and you get the picture.

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