In a now-closed tread, RfM poster “anonski21” asks:
"Does Mormonism stifle the artisti-c or musically-gifted person? This is something I have thought about often, and it popped up in my brain again when reading someone's thread talking about their TBM-aunt's view of art.
“Maybe Tal Bachmann can comment on this.
“I would imagine that it would have to. Mormonism is the textbook, cookie-cutter, fall-in-line, homogenous belief system. The LDS-produced art that I have seen has mostly been of the type that you would see in any LDS chapel that you would walk into.
“LDS authors? Lund is the best of the lot, in my opinon, and his characters are basically cardboard cutouts of the type of people that are in every LDS ward. Very one-dimensional and predictable.
“I've known some extremely musically-gifted Mormons (mostly women) but, without exception, the only outlet for that talent has been the ward choir. I have to believe that a lot of talent has gone to waste, living out 'their divine role.' I suppose this should be expected of an organization that demands that people consecrate their talents to the Church.”
(“Does Mormonism Stifle The Artistic or Musically Gifted Person?.” by “anonski21.” on “Recovery from, Mormonism” discussion board, 7 April 2015, at:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1555282,1555282#msg-1555282)
I'll let Tal and other artistic types here speak for themselves, but I can certainly say for myself that an editorial cartoonist (if they really want to do their job effectively) cannot serve both Elohim and satire.
To be blunt, Mormonism is hell for humor.
Allow me to describe how so from my own experience (and from that of my once-upon-a-time dutiful Mormon ink-lobbing cartoon colleagues).
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--The Mark Hofmann Bombing Scandal: Grandpa/Then-President of the Quorum of the Twelve Ezra Taft Benson (and Eventual Mormon Church President) Orders Me to Toe the Line
When I drew a cartoon, published in the “Arizona Republic,” about the Mark Hofmann scandal, I got a telephone call directly from ETB in SLC. He had seen the 'toon (reportedly thanks to fellow Twelver traveler, Boyd K. Packer, who apparently first brought it to his attention). The dastardly doodle showed a stereotypically-plump Mormon PR man, sporting a flat-top buzz cut and conservative business suit, frantically on the phone to his secretary, screaming, "Mad bombers, white salamanders, forgeries, con men! Golly darn, Sister Jones, that does it! Get me a cup of coffee!"
(To view that offensive and odious cartoon, go to “Ezra Taft Benson: A Grandson's Remembrance: An interview with Steve Benson,” by Steve Benson and Elbert Peck, editor, "Sunstone" magazine, December 1994, p. 33, at
https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/pdf/097-29-37.pdf)
Here's what my grandfather then wrote me on official Church stationery regarding the same drawing, reiterating the point he had first made in an earlier phone call to me at my workplace:
"Dear Stephen:
"I still love you and encourage you to keep up the good work by pointing out by the cartoon method the evils of the day. I would just like to suggest that you go easy on the Church.
"The Lord bless you, my devoted grandson. I am proud of you. Love and blessings to all."
(Ezra Taft Benson, "Grandpa," to Stephen Benson, 7 November 1985)
Interestingly enough, my grandfather's Hofmann cartoon letter was the last personal piece of correspondence I received from my him. He died nine years later, after becoming Mormon Church president and then descending into eventual mental and physical incapacitation. A few days after he sent it to me, he found himself the acting President of the Mormon Church, following the sudden death of Spencer W. Kimball. Once under control of LDS Inc.'s seasoned backroom handlers at the top of the Church chain, I received no other personal letters from him.
But back to the "White Salamander" cartoon. After I had come up with it in November 1985, I picked up the phone one day from behind my drawing board at the "Arizona Republic" to find my grandfather on the other end of the line. He somberly informed me that he had a cartoon in front of him which he wished to read aloud to me.
Uh-oh.
After repeating the punch line, he paused and asked, "Why?" (I was tempted to respond with, "Why not?," but didn't want to be cut out of the will). So, I tried to explain to him that one of the best defenses in the face of criticism is an ability to laugh at oneself. Without a hint of humor, he replied, "I still love you. Just go easy on us." He followed up a few days later with the above-quoted letter (the last one he ever wrote to me), delivering me the same cease-and-desist order.
My grandfather should have counted his blessings. He was actually damn lucky that--thanks to my non-Mormon editor--I hadn't gotten away with publishing the cartoon I really wanted to do. That one showed a smiling salamander atop the Hill Cumorah, decked out with a halo and heavenly robes, popping his head out of the open stone box. Looking down at him was an anxious Joseph Smith, holding the three-ringed gold plates and saying to the angelic amphibian, “No one's going to believe me. Can't I just say an angel gave them to me?” My unbaptized boss refused to publish it, saying it could be seen as offensive to Mormons. I thought, “So?” I drew up a rough sketch of it anyway, which ended up making the rounds of the Anti-Mormon Cartoon Underground (Who ended up linking it, I don't know).
_____
--Non-Evolving Mormons: Made in God's Image; Created Without a Humor Gene
I had learned quickly in my editorial cartooning career that Mormons don't take kindly to criticism, no matter how well-deserved. They seem to think that because they habitate the Celestialized Corner on Truth, they can put cartoonists who dare make fun of them in the corner.
I can't help it. Darwin made me do it.
I doodled a series of cartoons on Mormon Arizona legislator, Jim Cooper, who eventually became "education" adviser for Arizona's first and only impeached governor, fellow Mormon Evan Mecham (more Awful Ev him later). As anti-science silly boy/divinely-designated dunce for the Mormon Lord, Brother Cooper solemnly testified before a state legislative committee that "If a student wants to say the world is flat, the teacher doesn't have the right to prove otherwise.”
Brother "One-Flew-Over-the Cuckoo's-Coop" Cooper only made things worse for himself with his barrel-of- monkeys bad habit of introducing anti-evolution bills at the expense of the taxpayers and empirical reality. So, I decided that given his amped-up anti-ape antics, I would doodle him him, in one terrible 'toon as a monkey swooping through the legislative chambers on a tire and, in another, as a chimp attempting to type up a bill that actually made sense. Ever-faithful Trooper Cooper wrote me an holier-than-thou missive, huffing that it was my family, not his, that had descended from apes. His family, he declared, was made in the image of God.
Maybe so, but I hated to think God busied himself around the universe dressed up like Bozo the Clown.
A local right-wing Mormon activist from Mormon-manacled Mesa, Arizona--Sister Shirley Whitlock (more later on this Relief Society cracked pot)--shot off her own letter of protest to my grandfather, complaining that my pro-evolution cartoons were standing as an unrighteous roadblock to God's plan for returning constitutional control of the schools to His chosen Mormon people. Unable to bring me to my senses, she implored my grandfather to invoke his special cartoon-clobbering powers and shut me up.
So, Grandpa gave me a call, asking me to explain to him my pro-monkey, anti-Mormon-monkey-business cartoons. I explained to him that so-called "scientific creationism" was nothing more than religion masquerading as science and that if Mormons (or anyone else, for that matter) wanted to teach it in the public schools, they should confine it to a course on comparative religions because it didn't belong in real-science public ed labs.
Since we're on the subject, I also told my grandfather that the official Mormon Church position on organic evolution had historically been one of neutrality--and gave him the relevant referenced=s to First Presidency statements on the subject. He called me back later and asked me to provide him with proof of that in writing (with the verifying citations), saying he would consider not only sending a reply to witless Sister Whitlock, but also would think about making it available to inquiring Church members in the form of an official LDS Church public declaration. I did as he requested, but never heard back from him. Months later, I asked him, in another phone conversation, about the status on his promising project. He told me that no such First Presidency statement would be forthcoming because the subject was too controversial. He later told me to give up my studies on the Mormon Church's official position on organic evolution because it wasn't “necessary for your salvation.” Never mind that it necessary for my education--a concept that is foreign to TBMs).
___
--To Arms! To Arms!: White-and-Delightsome Mormons Wage Their Anti-Cartooning Crusades Against Black People and Their Apostate Crayola-Packing Comrades
The above-mentioned Sister Whitlock, in cahoots with other like-minded Mormons, eventually injected her LDS-sainted stupidity into a noisy local effort to kill a holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Mesa (a city founded by Mormons that remains essentially under their political control). Quoting the anti-King sermons of my John Birch-lovin' grandfather, Sister Flintlock Whitlock & Co. swarmed city council meetings, denouncing the civil rights leader as a moral reprobate and a tool of the Communist conspiracy to overthrow America. Grandpa would have been proud.
Im response, I drew a cartoon showing these Goofs for God sitting on the porch of a country store labeled “M.L.K.” ("Mormons Lynch King"), selling ax handles, Lester Maddox-style. I was subsequently grilled by a local LDS Church leader who called demanding an explanation. (I think it was Brother Craig Cardon of Cartdon Oil fame, but I could be wrong. After awhile, all those priesthood cardboard cut-outs tend to look alike. More about him just around the corner, where he always seemed to be lurking for the Lord). Anyway, I gave whoever it was my explanation and--lo and behold--found myself unzapped by the Great Day of His Food-Storage Flour Power.
_____
--Equal Rights for Mormon Women?: Then-Stake President Craig Cardon (and Eventual Member of the Quorum of the Seventy) Weighs in Against Cartoon Sin
By way of background, Brother Cardon proved to be my last stake president (Thank gawd. He was quite the priestcrafting pontificator). Before that, he was my brother Mike's mission president in Rome, Italy, where Mike served as one of his mission assistants). Prior to me resigning my Moonmaa Mormon membership in 1993, the Mormon- Christly Cardon was warning me that I was under the influence of Satan and, unless I repented, would eventually be abandoned to gloom and doom like that Book of Mormon bad guy, Korihor. Before he could witness me being crushed to death undeefoot Korihor-style, Brother Cardon heeded the call of Elohim to spread the love, He was tapped out to be a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, then assigned to to Africa to convince its people that Mormon racists are people, too. (Here's the announcement of Brothe Cardon's hierarchical appointment:
http://www.lds.org/church/leader/craig-a-cardon?lang=eng)
From Africa, Cardon, the Church's Conqueror for Kolob, emailed and then phoned me, expressing his desire that we get together over the holidays and enjoy a friendly refresher chat, just like the good ol' daze. He suggested that we gather in the office of his home in Mesa, (across the way from where I lived) when he was stateside, for a closed-door visit. When I told him I didn't want to meet in his home office, undeterred, he proposed that he come over to my home, instead. Geezus, Craigster, give it a break. I strained to be polite but found the whole invitation just totally weird and utterly invasive..
When Brother Cardon was my stake president his predictable pattern and practice of patriarchal abuse was designed to both "recover" and rein me in for the Lord. To accomplish that gold-star-on-the forehead goal, he appeared willing to stop at, well, nothing. During my path out of Mormonism, I had privately expressed to him that I was having increasing personal difficulties in accepting the supposed truthfulness of its dubious, distasteful and poppycock doctrines. He had invited me to his home (that being the first time he wanted to get me on to his turf in order to turn me back to Mo'ism). I agreed to come over. During the course of our one-on-one conversation in his personal office space (a time period that covered several hours over two separate visits), I informed him that I had lost my faith in Mormonism. I still, however, was "active" in the Church, attending my meetings with due diligence, hoping against hope that my testimony could somehow be revived--despite the mounting evidence THAT I was personally accumulating through my own persistent research and study--all of which was showing the Mormon Church to be factually fraudulent and morally bankrupt.
As my confidence in Mormonism continued to crumble, I had become more openly and publicly critical in my editorial cartoons of the LDS Church's denial of the priesthood to women. Brother Cardon had seen my cartoon commentary in that regard and wrote me telling me to desist from such criticism in the future. He wrapped up his warning by combining it with a veiled threat to "out" me as a non-believer--reminding me that while I had privately confided to him that I had lost my testimony, I was still describing myself as being "active" (which was true; I was actively going through the motions but my faith was in shambles, a situation not uncommon among those who are in the personal and private throes of dealing with the dissolution of their religious belief).
I was beginning to get a better idea of Bully-Boy Cardon's heavy-handed and clumsy pressure tactics. My suspicions of him maneuvering in for a Korihor kill shot were heightened one evening when I attended a local stake priesthood meeting. I entered the building, where I was confronted with fliers that were being passed out prior to the opening of the meeting identifying me by name as being in opposition to the Mormon Church and citing, as proof, scriptural truths from the D&C to back up the charge. I later asked Brother Cardon if he was aware of these fliers being distributed and if he had approved of them. He indignantly denied any personal knowledge or support of that activity and was quite offended by the suggestion that he had been involved in any way. Cardon the Clueless. Meanwhile, I increasingly becoming convinced that I needed to up my guard against him.
Scroll forward several years, when Brother Cardon contacted me from Nigeria. He may have subconsciously felt guilty about wasting his life in Mormonism and therefore wanted to "bring me around" so that he could feel better about himself, as well as score needed Brownie Points with the Brethren. If it wasn't that, he may simply have been suffering from the boilerplate believer delusion that Mormonism is "true" and, therefore, that I needed to re-embrace it for my own mortal happiness and eternal joy. Who better to deliver such tidings of great baloney than Brother Cardon? (Sorry, Craig. I'll stick to cartooning; you stick to culting).
After our exchanges by both email and phone, the contacting effort ceased--given that I apparently didn't give him any hope for "closing the sale." I do recall, though, how he said how he enjoyed the tribal costumes and the culture of Africans. Like I said, it all bordered on the bizarre. I saw Brother Cardon awhile ago at a family event in Utah to which he had been invited. During our brief exchange, he was smiling and pleasant--at least as far as a Ken doll goes (you know, stiff and plastic with no real light of Christ sparlke in the eyes).
_____
--Defending Mormonism's Impeached/Convicted Arizona Governor Evan Mecham: LDS Appeals to My Grandfather from Mecham's Fanatical LDS Supporters to Discipline Me
This time, the pressure came from yet another stake president of mine from a Mormon state legislator; from the maniacal Mormon Flan Cluu=b of ETB; from a local Mormon Church spokesman; and my next-door Mormon hometeacher. The unholy heat as on.
I really began feeling the warped Mormon warmth when, in a fluke split of an election won with less than 50% of the vote in a three-way race, fellow Mormon and used car salesman, Evan Mecham became Arizona's hollow-headed head of state. He lasted barely a year before being thrown out of office. No wonder. This buffooning blunderbust was a small-minded, loose-lipped, vicious little man, with a thinly disguised racist streak under an ill-fitting toupee.
Brother Mecham's first official act as governor was to cancel the state's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, declaring that Blacks didn't need holidays, they needed jobs. He defended the use of the term "pickaninny" as "a term of endearment," saying he saw nothing wrong with it and couldn't understand why Blacks would be offended. He dumbly assured dumb-founded Arizonans that he hired Blacks at his car dealership not because they were Black, but because they were the best for "the cotton-pickin' job."
(for some of the cartoons I did on this Moron Mormon, see “Razing Arizona: The Clash in the Church Over Evan Mecham: An Arizona Saint Reviews the Mormon Response to Evan Mecham,” by Eduardo Pagan, “Sunstone” magazine, March 1988,
https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/pdf/064-15-21.pdf)
In this rolling disaster that Brother Mecham had intentionally inflicted on the state, I drew an angel atop the Salt Lake City temple spires blowing his horn, from which fluttered the banner, "Resign, Ev." My newspaper was hit with letters of protest from Mecham's mighty Mormon minions,. One of them was Brother Crismon Lewis (then-editor of a local Mormon tabloid, the “Latter-day Sentinel") who complained to the secular media, ”I think Steve Benson speaks for a very small minority of Mormons. We expected more from Steve, knowing that his grandfather went through the same thing with the press." What small-minority-Mormon-in-the-bigger-scheme-of-things Brother Lewis didn't bother telling the mainstream media was how he (meaning Brother Lewis) was testifying (in code, of course) to his faithful Mormon readership that Mormons who were in tune with the Holy Ghost knew that God had chosen Brother Mecham to be Arizona's Moses. He wrote, "I'm sure if you were to visit with him [Mecham] personally, he would share with you his story of why he decided to run. To the world, it looked like vain ambition. To the many who try to follow promptings in their lives, they knew there was another dimension to the decision. When he was elected, the world called it luck. But thousands knelt in thanks."
(“Prepare for the Prayerful Mormons Set to Invoke Elohim in What They See as [Another] Divinely-Anointed Candidacy . . . ,” by Steve Benson, “Recovery from Mormonism” discussion board, 4 January 2012,
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,384331,384331#msg-384331; “Shared Faith Doesn't Shield Mecham From Cartoonist,” by Paul Nussbaum, “Philadelphia Inquirer,” 14 March 1988,
http://articles.philly.com/1988-03-14/news/26277371_1_evan-mecham-ezra-taft-benson-mormons; and
“Cartoonist's Attacks Mecham Divide Mormon Church,” by “Associated Press,” 5 March 1988,
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.google.com%2Fnewspapers%3Fnid%3D1310%26dat%3D19880305%26id%3DdvJVAAAAIBAJ%26sjid%3D0uEDAAAAIBAJ%26pg%3D4496%2C919676&ei=IBElVZ2aN8_yoAS7xIGYAw&usg=AFQjCNHtTnQHRqaRegaC-1JJyTFrBzqbIg&bvm=bv.90237346,d.cGU; see also Pagan)
I tell ya, those Mormons are a belly of latter-day laughs. My Mecham-idolizing former sister-in-law withdrew her Thanksgiving dinner invitation to our family because of my devil-directed dagger drawings pointed at Evan the Horrible (Her husband had complained that he couldn't think of anything worse than having to sit across the table from me on Turkey Day. That story made the "New York Times," although the reporter mistakenly reported that it was my parents who had banned me from Thanksgiving dinner. Anyway, my sister-in-law, her huffy hubby and their brood later moved to a small farming town in Utah where--no kidding--they named a black pet lamb of theirs “Pickaninny.”)
Saintly supporters of turkey-roasted Mecham held special meetings, encouraging a letter-writing campaign to Salt Lake City in an effort to stop the cartoon carnage being committed by yours truly against the undeserving Brother Mecham. Diehard LDS supporters of their beloved Guv compared him to the likes of Isaiah and Joseph Smith. They complained that, as with God's servants of old, he was being hounded mercilessly by the dogs of Satan. Faith-promoting rumors were reportedly circulating that prayers were being offered for Brother Mecham in the Mesa temple--and that Brother Mecham was personally encouraging such holy-of-holies intervention in his behalf. My parents phoned me from Utah, urging me to lighten up on the guy, reminding me that he was one of our own.
My grandfather also phoned me from Mormon Church HQ, asking, “How's our man doing?” Since he asked, I proceeded to inform him that he wasn't doing well at all--providing Grandpa a list of particulars. He thanked me and the conversation ended. (Later my grandfather admitted that Brother Mecham was “his own worst enemy” who hadn't helped himself by “pouring gasoline on the fire.” I shared those pearls of prophetic wisdom with Brother Mecham when I happened to spot him one Sunday morning out at the Arizona State Fair hawking copies of his self-published book,”Wrongful Impeachment.” When my then-spouse asked him what he was doing at the fair on Sunday when he should be at church, he replied that somebody had to man the table. When I shared with Brother Mecham my grandfather's postmortem assessment on his abbreviated goobernatorial stint, he began yelling at me, pointing his finger and declaring, “That's one of the biggest whoppers you've ever told! Your grandfather told me I was one of the greatest people he ever met!” (He failed to mention that fellow Mormon constitutional kook, Cleon Skousen, also thought he was a cool guy).
Before Brother Mecham lost his job as governor by being forcibly removed by the state legislature, he and I had a personal phone conversation one night. He told his wife Florence to roll over and go to sleep because he was speaking to a poor soul who, he said, had “fallen off the beam” and was thus concerned for my “eternal salvation.” He then let me known that my grandfather had promised him he (Brother Mecham) would survive the attacks being launched against him by his “political enemies.” I informed Brother Mecham that more people had signed recall petitions aimed at getting him out of office than had voted for him in the first place. (Ev apparently wasn't a math major). I later phoned Gary Gillespie--my grandfather's head of office staff--to verify if ETB had ever given Brother Mecham such a blessing. Brother Gillespie replied that, no, he hadn't.
Eventually, Brother Mecham was impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors (perhaps there is a God after all). Quoting Bible scripture at a press conference, he defiantly proclaimed, "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord," and vowed to return. I could hardly wait. True to his word, like a bad rash, he came back, running for reelection. In a cartoon labeled "The Second Coming," I depicted him as a haloed Jesus descending from above, flanked by trumpet-blowing rats dressed in angelic robes, as he held forth a book of scripture entitled, "The Book of Moron, by Ev Mecham," with him intoning, "I warned you sinners."
(“The Holy War Surrounding Evan Mecham,” by Karen Coates, “Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought,” at
http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V22N03_68.pdf)
Letters from livid Latter-day Loonies, threatening to have me hauled into ecclesiastical court, were fired off to Salt Lake City, demanding that my grandfather remove me forthwith from any and all positions of Church service. Phoenix's ecumenical council, under pressure from a madhatter Mecham henchman named Max Hawkins (who later moved to sinful Nevada for refuge), released a statement to the press, denouncing my cartoon as an attack on the Mormons. The local LDS spokesman for the Church, John Lyons, compared the cartoon to the work of evangelical Christians who were exposing Mormonism's secret temple ceremonies to public ridicule on the radio. He didn't convince me otherwise, despite having invited me out to lunch to discuss my sins.
A couple of well-known Mormon political radical (again, Sister Shirley Whitlock, along with her trusty TBM cohort, Brother Earl Taylor) made further efforts to have me banished to Mormon outer darkness where humor goes to die. Sister Whitlock (who despised Martin Luther King, Jr.. as much as she worshipped my ETB) went directly to my grandfather's SLC Church office, seeking relief from the wickedness. My grandfather's officer manager, Brother Gillepsie, was informed that if I was not stripped of my Mormon "callings," Messiah-backed Mormons would move to have me disciplined in a local LDS Court of Love from Above. Brother Gillespie then phoned me and asked what was going on in Arizona, saying that these Mormon fanatics were making the LDS Church look like "fools." Ya think?
Trying to provide my then-stake president (Kent Christensen was his name, a former professor at Arizona State University), a way out, I offered to step down from the local High Council to which he had appointed me, so that he wouldn't have to deal with this MOrmon-manufactured mess. He initially declined my offer, saying that wasn't necessary. But he soon changed his tune. I happened to be over at the local wardhouse one evening where he was doing weeknight interviews (my youngest son was there to get his own baptismal one). He saw me and called me into his office, told me that he would take me up on my offer after all and, right then and there, relieved me of my High Council duties. (Damn. It had been the greatest five months of my life, haha). In lowering the boom, he also told me that I had abused my God-given talents by mocking the sacred emblems of the Church. A Mormon state senator, Jerry Gillespie (no apparent relation to ETB's office manager Gary G.), later admitted to me that he had advised this same stake president to give me the boot because he felt that, given my cartoon, I shouldn't be in any assigned position of serious Mormon Church power. I asked my stake president about the LDS senator's intervention in Brother Mecham's behalf. He insisted that he had not released me under any outside pressure, although he did confess to me that he had received a phone call from then-General Authority H. Burke Peterson asking how things were what going down there with the Mecham cartoon thing. The stake president later told me that his release of me from the stake High Council had resulted in me subsequently producing better cartoons. I wrote him a reply telling him that he was not my editor and that, if given the chance, I would do the same cartoon again.
(See “The Holy War Surrounding Evan Mecham,” by Coates,
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dialoguejournal.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsbi%2Farticles%2FDialogue_V22N03_68.pdf&ei=mW0kVbq1KcuzogSc7oGgDQ&usg=AFQjCNFdNSWAfhdkJSSmA-_SLEy9XA54UA&bvm=bv.90237346,d.cGU); and “Cartoonist Released from LDS Duties After Jab at Mecham,” by “United Press International,” published in “Deseret News,” 21 May 1989, at:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/47585/CARTOONIST-RELEASED-FROM-LDS-DUTIES-AFTER-JAB-AT-MECHAM.html?pg=all)
_____
--A Complaint from an Out-of-State Mormon Editor: Quit Using Your Cartoons to Ridicule the Book of Mormon's Anti--Brown-Skinned Racism
When LDS Inc. tried to get away with a slippery change in the early-Church wording of Book of Mormon scripture prophesying the future of Indians who converted, I drew a cartoon lambasting the Mormon God as the bigot that he was. The traditional scripture read that the dark skin of Lamanites/"cursed" Indians who accepted their fair-skinned Savior of the world would be miraculously altered to "white and delightsome." "White" was then conveniently replaced by "pure." The change was made despite the fact that racist Mormon prophets had, from the founding White Father days of the Church, predicted that a change in the Red Man's heart would result in a change in the Red Man's skin.
The cartoon showed a bonnetted Native American chieftain tossing away a bottle of "Book of Mormon Eye Drops" designated "to get the red out," while muttering, "Nice try, White man." Shortly thereafter, I received a letter from a Mormon editor in another state, accusing me of being "anti-Mormon.”
_____
--Warning from My Arizona Hometeacher: You're Going to be Excommunicated If You Keep Questioning the Historicity of the Pearl of Great Price
My next-door neighbor was a tolerable hometeacher (mainly because he didn't come over that often in that capacity; although later I was assigned as his companion. My leaving the Church made that a short tour of duty).
Though friendly, this Mormon brother was a racist who eventually lost his substitute teaching job in Mesa's public school system after some of the Hispanic students complained about the jokes he was cracking at their expense. He'd come home from a stint of stand-in teaching and repeat to me some of the jokes he was telling his students of color that were getting him in trouble. I warned him that if kept that up, he'd probably be fired. He should have listened.
Curiously enough, he was also a secret reader of “Sunstone” magazine who also liked telling off-color jokes. In short, the guy was quite the interesting combination. And worried about my standing in the Mormon Church if I wasn't more valiant when it came to supporting the racist Pearl of Great Price.
What a hoot.
_____
--Trying to Do My Job as an Editorial Cartoonist While Dealing with the Mormon Church-Owned “Deseret News” and BYU's “Daily Universe”
From my own experience and that of fellow doodlers, I can say that trying to do editorial cartoons for the Mormon-owned "Deseret News" is, well, like trying to get a Mormon to think outside their special boxer shorts.
For example, Calvin Grondahl--a returned LDS missionary (New Zealand) and premiere editorial cartoonist for BYU's '”Daily Universe'”student newspaper in the 1970s--was hired away by the "Deseret News" without graduating from college. (His most famous cartoon done on Provo's seminarian school grounds showed a battered and bruised BYU student under a pile of rocks, muttering to a campus policeman, "All I said was, 'He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone'"). Cal lasted for only a few years at the "Deseret News," where he finally quit in frustration and moved north to work with more artistic freedom at the "Ogden Standard Examiner." Cal bolted the "Deseret News" because its publisher at the time, Wendell Ashton, informed Cal that he had to choose between competing masters: either working for the "Deseret News" or doing cartoons that were being picked up by "Sunstone" magazine. (Many more of Cal's freelance cartoons were also eventually published as "Sunstone" collections by Signature Books).
Cal was, in fact, found guilty of having made available to a humor-starved Mormon public some hilariously irreverent cartoon anthologies--such as "Freeway to Perfection" and "Faith Promoting Rumors"--cartoons (as I personally witnessed) that at least one General Authority actually secretly enjoyed. Eventual Mormon General Authority Jack Goaslind (a personal Benson family friend) had visited my home in Arizona some years ago during a stake-stumping regional rep tour. After conference, I invited him over for lunch, where he sat on the living room couch and nearly laughed his head off, crowing hysterically as he eagerly read through Cal's books. Apparently, this appreciation for the goofy and inherently spoofy side of Mormonism was not shared by the "Deseret News's" publisher. Cal recounted to me how he saw the writing on the wall, knew he couldn't last and took his doodling pad to greener pastures. According to my sources inside the cartooning profession, another cartoonist who followed Cal at the "Deseret News" reportedly got himself in hot water with the Mormon Church for a satirical birthday card cartoon he drew of Thomas S. Monson that included Jesus in it. The cartoon, mind you, was never published in the LDS Church-owned paper; rather, it was said to have been privately given to an unappreciative Monson, who was said to have been infuriated by it. The offending cartoonist eventually vanished from the pages of Elohim's snoozepaper.
My grandfather initially encouraged me to try for the job at the "Deseret News" and even, he said, put in a good word for me there. However, by then I had already begun doodling cartoons down in Phoenix for the "Arizona Republic" (where my grandfather had no personal pull with the administrative no-Mos when it came to getting the job; rather, I was contacted by the "Arizona Republic" editorial page editor about filling the post of their retiring cartoonist of some 50 years, after a research librarian at the Phoenix-based newspaper had passed on to the editor some cartoons I had done while working as a 26-year-old staffer for a Capitol Hill Senate committee in Washington D.C.).
On the other hand, my grandfather also derided the "Deseret News," telling me it was too liberal, if you can believe that.
In the meantime, then- "Deseret News" editor Bill Smart phoned me out of the blue one day at my Phoenix office and asked me if I would like to come to work for the Mormon-owned press in Salt Lake City. I was, shall we say, not inclined to accept the offer. Smart told me that he couldn't give me as much money as I was making in Arizona or as much freedom, but did say that a benefit of moving to Salt Lake and working there would be that I'd be closer to my family's home base of operations (Strike three, I thought). I informed my grandfather that I had turned down the job offer from the "Deseret News," to which he knowingly replied that it was a decision good for both me--and him.
Nonetheless, for several years, my syndicated editorial cartoons were published in the "Deseret News"--for which I would be ungrateful if I did not stand this day and give thanks. :) Alas, my promising-turned-apostatizing drawings eventually disappeared from its pages---which was too bad, I guess, since my dad used to send me clipped-out copies of them.
After I left the Mormon Church, my cartoons were also removed from the pages of the "Daily Universe," which refused to publish any more of my syndicated work to which it had subscribed for several years, as well.
I should have known my day of wretched reckoning was coming. When, along with fellow BYU student--cartoonist and now-lapsed Mormon Pat Bagley (with the "salt Lake Triune")--with whom I was working at the "Universe," I did a 'toon showing a worried student making a phone call from a campus phone set up for that purpose. He was desperately saying into the receiver, "H-HELLO, SECURITY? (WHEEZE) I BARELY GOT AWAY . . . NO, NO--WORSE! YEAH, I SAW ANOTHRE ONE! CAN'T YOU GUYS DO EMOETHING' ABOUT DEMOCRATS ON CAMPUS?"
A student member of the on-campus Republican club informed me in the "Universe" staff offices that the cartoon was an serious attack against the Lord's Church. Another offended student wrote the "Daily Universe"the following: "The Democrat Club president made the comment that 'the Democrats are the party of the common people.' . . . I am not here at BYU to become one of the 'common people.' I am here to excel, to 'step out of the rank and file of common places,' to quote my patriarch. They already have one foot in the door. Are we gong to let them march right over us? Wake up, America! Let's break the cadence of socialism before it breaks us!"
(Ken Salaets, quoted in "I Am Appalled: A Collection of 'Daily Universe' Cartoons by Steve Benson and Pat Bagley, with Selected Letters to the Editor," published by the BYU Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi, 1979, p. 36)
The straw that broke the "Daily Universe's" back for me was a cartoon I did wile working for the "Arizona Republic," which criticized sexual harassment of female military recruits by U.S. Army drill instructors. In explaining its decision to bid me a not-so-fond adieu, a spokesman for the "Daily Universe" said my cartoons were no longer suitable for consumption by the BYU studentbody. I replied that if the "Universe" expected me to put a smiley face on sexual harassment, they had the wrong cartoonist.
The "Daily Universe's" judgment to jettison my doodles was rendered, coincidentally enough, soon after a BYU student--Joseph Dallin--had written a letter to the editor of the Lord's university student newspaper (which was published), protesting the use of tithing funds to give print space to the cartoons of a known apostate. (Some years later, Dallin--as a former BYUer--wrote me a personal note to apologize and to acknowledge that he, too, was now a former Mormon. He said that his demand that I be removed from the pages of BYU's house organ was a futile attempt on his part to convince himself that he was a stalwart, testimony-holding believer when, in fact, his faith was actually faltering).
The “Salt Lake Tribune” reported the back story to my disappearance from the pages of BYU's student newspaper as follows:
“The student newspaper at Brigham Young University will stop publishing editorial cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner and BYU graduate Steve Benson. Faculty adviser John Gholdston said Benson's work is not suited for readers of the 'Daily Universe' and has become "increasingly harsh" lately.
“Gholdston said a management team of administrators at the Provo school decided last summer to stop using Benson's work, but did not make a move until they received a letter to the editor last week.
"Student Joseph Dallin took issue with the Mormon Church-owned school newspaper paying for Benson's work since the cartoonist has publicly denounced the church. In July 1993, Benson accused the Church hierarchy of lying about the health of his grandfather, church President Ezra Taft Benson, who died 10 months later at age 94. He said Church leaders were hiding the fact that his grandfather could barely speak, wasn't cogent and couldn't recognize some family members.
'Benson asked that his name be removed from membership records of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Church complied.
“Dallin's letter to the editor said using the cartoon was a show of sympathy and support for an apostate.
"'One of the questions asked in a temple recommend interview asks if we are sympathetic to apostate groups or persons. If we are, we are unworthy of a recommend. Putting Steve Benson's name 'in lights' by way of printing his cartoons, is in my opinion showing sympathy,' Dallin wrote.
“Gholdston said Benson's work has become so controversial the paper was rejecting more cartoons than it printed. The cartoons were not phased out as a result of the letter, but he acknowledged it pushed the process forward.
“'Well, it reminded us we had already plowed the ground once and just hadn't followed through with it,' Gholdston said.
“Benson, who graduated cum laude in political science in 1979, works at The 'Arizona Republic' and won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartoons in 1993. . . . His cartoons will be replaced at the 'Universe' by Chicago Tribune cartoonist Jeff MacNelly and work by student cartoonist Aaron Taylor. The Mormon Church also owns the 'Deseret News' in Salt Lake City. Editorial writer Mike Cannon said Wednesday the newspaper subscribes to Benson's cartoons but rarely uses them.
"'We have eight or 10 cartoonists we choose from. He wouldn't run a lot of the time, but we do use him occasionally,' Cannon said.
“Last week, Gholdston rejected a cartoon that showed a large, muscular Army drill sergeant demonstrating a push-up while atop a female soldier. Benson could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
“The 'Associated Press' reported Tuesday, however, that he said, 'if the editors at the “Daily Universe” want me to paint a smiley face on sexual abuse, rape and harassment, they've got the wrong cartoonist -- clearly. BYU has so violated the strictures of academic freedom and intellectual discourse that I consider it an embarrassment to have graduated from there. If I could find my diploma, I would return it.'"
(“BYU Paper Won't Run Benson Cartoons,” in “Salt Lake Tribune,” 28 November 1996,
http://www.lds-mormon.com/byu_ben.shtml)
P.S.: As a matter of full disclosure, the publisher at the "Arizona Republic" also refused to run the same cartoon, even after it had been approved by my editor. It was, however, distributed by my cartoon syndicate and at least I wasn't banned from my paper's pages.
My Lord, my God! there no help for those cartooning bums?
_____
--Conclusion: Drawing on the Mormon Delusion
Being an editorial "harpoonist" behind the Zion Curtain can be a tricky business, as developments at the "Deseret News" and “Daily Universe” have proven. For me, my dissatisfaction with the Mormon Cult grew as I saw its Blue Suits attempt to manipulate the facts and hoodwink the public at the expense of the truth. My cartoons lampooning and criticizing those efforts were met with fierce resistance from Church members and leaders alike, intent in downplaying or hiding the discomfiting realities of Mormonism that true-believers have always denied or sought to perfume with massive sprays of propaganda.
The lesson learned? You can't be an editorial cartoonist in the Mormon Church and eat it, too.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/08/2015 07:34AM by steve benson.