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By Gregory Taggart, April 19, 2011 10:59 am

Brigham Young University’s Cougarettes surprised the competition and walked off with the National Hip Hop Championship. The Hip Hop Championship!

Who knows. Maybe the Jazz belong in Utah after all.

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By Gregory Taggart, April 2, 2011 12:28 pm

It must be a good day for a (good) story about the South Park boys’ play The Book of Mormon. Historian Kathleen Flake hits all the right notes. And the story comes with the first photo I’ve seen from the play:

Here’s what an actual Book of Mormon looks like, by the way.

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By Gregory Taggart, March 27, 2011 12:50 pm

So asks Sally Quinn in The Washington Post’s “On Faith” section. The short answer is, of course, no. The longer, much more enlightening answer is here.

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By Gregory Taggart, March 26, 2011 12:15 pm

Jason Mitchell has an interesting story in Institutional Investor about the role of private equity in Brazil’s resurgence. It caught my eye because I served a two-year mission for my church in Brazil many years ago and fell in love with the country. My wife and I returned for a visit in February 2008 and hope to return again soon. In fact, my mission president has invited us to serve with him and his wife in the Campinas Temple.

Whether we’ll be able depends on a lot of things happening. We’ll see.

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By Gregory Taggart, March 3, 2011 9:09 am

Dick Harmon has never met a metaphor or simile he didn’t like, and he uses them like most people eat potato chips or popcorn–by the hand full. His indiscriminate use of these and similar figures of speech is on full display in his story today in the Deseret News about BYU’s loss to New Mexico, a loss occasioned by the suspension of star center Brandon Davies for violation of BYU’s Honor Code.

I’ll give you the first few lines of the story to illustrate what I mean. It’s not pretty. In fact, it kind of like sucks.

PROVO —

All it took to humble BYU as a No. 3 ranked team was New Mexico.

The Lobos came to the Marriott Center Wednesday and slapped around BYU good 82-64.

It was a painful end to a very emotional 24 hours for Dave Rose’s Cougars, a shadow of their previous selves.

The Cougars came out against the Lobos in a daze as if in a fog. They pressed on shots like they were all life and death and cost a million bucks.

Gone was the confidence witnessed last Saturday in the win over then No. 4 San Diego State. It was like somebody turned on a faucet since that day and all BYU synergy leaked out of the tank.

And New Mexico turned into the Celtics.

The atmosphere in the Marriott Center, one of magic for 12 straight home games, turned weird, like somebody cast a spell on the guys in white jerseys. (helpful bolding mine)

Had enough?

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By Gregory Taggart, March 1, 2011 9:23 pm

This story about Professor Clayton Christensen in Forbes magazine is impressive in no small part because the world-renown professor so effortlessly, so guilelessly shares the story of his battles with diabetes, a heart attack, cancer, and a stroke, aided by a great family and the strong conviction that God has and has had a plan for him.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 23, 2011 10:01 am

In times like these,

the church I belong to shines even more brightly. God bless the people of New Zealand.

(AP Photo/TV3 via Associated Press Television News)

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By Gregory Taggart, February 12, 2011 12:48 pm

Last August, Stephen Prothero, a religion professor at Boston University and a blogger on CNN, wrote two different posts about the Mormon reaction to a Muslim group’s efforts to build a mosque at Ground Zero. The first lamented the fact that some prominent Mormons–Mitt Romney and Harry Reid–had both spoken against the mosque. So had Glenn Beck. Prothero was particularly disturbed that Romney had done so (through a spokesperson) because he had been so impressed by Romney’s religion speech during the most recent presidential campaign and because of Romney’s experience with the opposition to the Boston Temple. (Prothero, by the way, seems to have a good grasp on Latter-day Saint history.) He writes,

As I wrote in my 2007 piece on this speech, for Romney, the moral of this history lesson was clear:

Americans today should rise above religious bigotry, not least by evaluating presidential candidates on the basis of their credentials instead of their religious tradition. After all, Romney said, “Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.”

These were the words that came to me when Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin and other Republican leaders started to double down on the anti-Islamic rhetoric.

I thought that Romney, as a Mormon, might speak out passionately for the First Amendment. I thought he might remember how the founder of his religion, Joseph Smith Jr., was murdered by an anti-Mormon mob. I thought he might recall how the U.S. government brought down much of its coercive power against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the last decades of the nineteenth century.

Apparently not. According to a statement released on August 10 by his spokesperson Eric Fehrnstrom, “Governor Romney opposes the construction of the mosque at Ground Zero. The wishes of the families of the deceased and the potential for extremists to use the mosque for global recruiting and propaganda compel rejection of this site.”

The second discussed Senator Hatch’s position, which was captured by Salt Lake City’s Fox News 13:

Prothero’s reaction to Romney’s and Hatch’s statements prompted me to think about what my stance on the proposed mosque was back then. I realized that I disagreed with Romney. My stance was then and is now similar to Hatch’s: it would be a nice gesture if the mosque’s proponents chose to build elsewhere out of respect for what happened on 9/11; however, I recognize and support their 1st Amendment rights to build where they are planning to build.

I have a long memory, a memory that extends back to the persecution of my Church in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a memory of recent times when people in Boston, Billings, Denver, and places north and south, east and west, opposed the building of a Mormon temple–always for allegedly non-religious reasons. That opposition was a predictable as the rising sun was an irony that always escaped the protestors.

I suspect that religious bigotry imbues most of the opposition to the mosque as well. I don’t think Romney is bigoted. I do think he is in a rush to the Right, however, in his pursuit of the presidency. I have defended him in the past from the flip criticism that he flip flops a lot. I’ll take a flip from anybody if it demonstrates that they’ve learned something. However, too much pandering is not a good thing. I’ll be watching him closely, as I will Hatch, now that he’s pursuing the Tea Party vote.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 11, 2011 10:18 am

An interesting piece by Peter Wood in The Chronicle of Higher Education on the Academia v. Beck v. Piven controversy conversation. He writes,

This controversy might in principle have remained in the popular press, but it has in fact rather quickly become a topic of academic debate too. The Chronicle reported this week that Cary Nelson, president of the AAUP, issued a statement saying that Piven is the victim of “what nearly amounts to an American Fatwa,” from Beck’s “virulent attacks.” Nelson says, “Amid these relentless tirades, Professor Piven has herself begun to receive threats of violence.” And he concludes by calling for—what else?—civility: “We join others in strongly urging those who are critical of Professor Piven’s writings to advance their positions in ways that foster responsible criticism and debate.”

“Responsible criticism and debate.” These are the cynosures of academic discourse. Who would be opposed?

Actually, it would seem, quite a few, perhaps beginning with Cary Nelson himself, who, by invoking the idea of “an American Fatwa,” indulged in the kind of rhetoric that can hardly be called responsible or conducive to debate. If you imply that someone is seeking to kill his opponents, you have pretty much ruled out the grounds for a respectful airing of differences of opinion.

For the record, I have been unable to locate any instance in which Beck called for Piven’s death or incited violence against her. As many others have pointed out, however, Piven herself has long extolled the value of civil unrest up to and including riots, which would seem to put her own academic discourse in a place other than “responsible criticism and debate.”

Beck is no PhD, but he apparently has a DDS, and he has struck a nerve that has been exposed for a long time to anyone who has paid attention.

Hat Tip: Althouse

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By Gregory Taggart, February 10, 2011 8:58 am

Is the time ripe for a Mormon to be President, or will religion get in Mitt Romney’s or Jon Huntsman Jr.’s way? Sally Quinn asks the question in On Belief, her religious bailiwick at The Washington Post. Eight panelists, including the likes of Barry Lynn who writes,

There really is only one question that needs to be answered: can you faithfully execute the laws of the United States or is there some religious view you hold that you believe transcends that duty?

Which begs the question: Would he, or anyone else, accept the answer, “Yes, I can,” and move on? Or would that question actually be an open door through which the inquisitor would parade his even deeper-held beliefs that “there ain’t no way a Mormon President won’t do the bidding of his (or her) hierarchical superiors in Salt Lake!”

I’ll be back for further comment on this subject.