The Romney campaign has a blog — and it’s a continuing example of one of the things that even my Democrat and Baptist friends think Romney’s really quite good at (i.e. the internet.) Even Slashdot readers seem to like his site (even when they don’t like him or his politics.) [Warning: Slashdot is not a family-friendly environment. Actually, it’s not particularly friendly to anyone.]
But that’s not why I like the blog, which is named Five Brothers (after Romney’s five sons, who are the primary contributors.) I don’t even like it because I’m vaguely leaning towards supporting his campaign (it’s still a year till my state’s primary election!) No… I like it because it makes Mormons (even, remarkably, famous Mormons) look like ordinary people — which, I think, we have, as a people, a hard time doing.
We like to be perfect-looking. We like to talk about the funny minor gospel issues on our blogs. And we don’t, I think, often come across (especially online) as being ordinary. I think we try to look “peculiar,” forgetting in our enthusiasm that in the particular verse in question, “peculiar” means “chosen, set apart,” and not “bizarre.” We seem to try and occupy the same cultural space as the chess club and the Dungeons & Dragons players in high school (or maybe the marching band? We’ve got one of the biggest choirs!!) When we’re really successful, we come across more like the untouchable football captains and head cheerleaders and Summa cum Laude graduates. [note: my Ohio “only kid in the school district who’s LDS”/”I was THE Laurel!!” perspective may tilt this somewhat, as too will my tendency to stick to the really major, and openly, LDS blogs.]
Overall, I tend to like that obviously “peculiar” vibe we often produce. I like doing weird things: the very last worry I have is making myself stand out on my law school applications. I stand in line for six weeks on Hollywood Blvd., I worked at Disneyland, I was once a Unitarian Universalist, and by the way, I’m a Mormon. But this look-at-us, we’re-very-special tendency is sometimes rather off-putting: like the Amish, or Scientologists, we end out coming off as Different, even in things where we’re pretty average. We’re more about not drinking coffee than about liking pizza just like everyone else, at least out in public. And so, at least outside of the West, we often end out being Sarah The Mormon, rather than Sarah, who amongst other things is a Latter-day Saint. When you act like that all the time, I think you stop being seen as altogether human: see also the tendency some people have to forget that Presidents and Kings and Popes (and so forth) have to take showers and sometimes belch. We end out in a kind of rhetorical space in which intelligent college-educated people can say, with a straight (and very concerned) face, “do your people worship Satan?”
Anyway, the Five Brothers blog is pretty much open about all five participants being LDS (there’s a question about halfway down the page about church attendance when you’re on the campaign trail,) and there’s no question that it’s a campaign/political site (though at least one of the brothers is openly uninterested in politics.) I’m not sure why they come across as normal when others amongst us don’t do so well (maybe they’ve got an editor?) But while I don’t get the “gee, I bet he’s a nice guy to drink a beer with” vibe that I get from other famous, political, and clearly not LDS blogs, I also don’t get the “gee, I bet I can only talk to him in a way that shows that both of us are Mormon” vibe that I usually get from the Bloggernacle. And I’m glad.
So, yay for a blog that makes clearly identified, unashamed Mormons come off at least as normal as I think we do in regular life. Let’s all talk a little more about decorating RVs and how cute our dogs are, okay?