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Date: February 15, 2016 05:33PM
--"Insider" Memories of General Conference
Summing it up, my back-in-the-heyday experiences in the corridors of Mormon perkified "power" could be described in two words:
"GA Gluttony"
It took many forms, and at General Conference time was on full parade.
In the past, some on this board have hammered LDS Inc.'s Blue-Suited Good Ol' Boys Club for pigging out in public on the Sabbath. This is par for their course, of course. On Conference weekend, they've done it high above the "little people" in the Great and Spacious Church Office Building. In that case, however, the GAs were a bit more "humble": They were chowing down atop Salt Lake City's tallest skyscraper where most people couldn't see them and you had to have connections with the GAs to get in.
As we all bask in the baloney (or other appropriate word inserted here) of Conference, I'd like to share, for the benefit of the "newbies" here, a few re-posted recollections on having experienced the charade "from the inside," so to speak (with apologies to those who have heard these before).
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--Special Tickets to See Telepromptings by the Spirit
At General Conference time, members of Ezra Taft Benson's family (along with the relations of other GAs) were provided special, exclusive, non-transferable family passes--identified as such--for admission into the sessions. They were issued to us through ETB's office manager and used to access the Tabernacle at a designated portal. We'd cut in line, flash the ticket, and be escorted to our seats. It wasn't fair or right, but neither concept operates in Mormonism.
One of the more interesting vantage points for viewing Conference was sitting high up in the dome, behind the Tabernacle Choir, next to the white plastered walls and massive organ pipes. To get there, the ushers would lead us through a low-ceiling wood-paneled carpeted area behind the dais, to a back passageway and up a narrow stairwell to the crow's nest. From there, I could look down over the bald spots of the fellows in the men's section, directly on to the pulpit.
While it provided a unique view, it was also as hot as hell. There were big, colored lights up where we sat, used for shining on the smooth, blank walls behind us for special effect. Sitting there in our Sunday best, we did a slow cook--but it wasn't due to any burning in the bosom. During the last few times I sat up there, I would read anti-Mormon literature that I had been handed at the gates of Temple Square a few minutes earlier, since it was often more interesting than the GA sermons.
From high atop the Choir lair, I could see the GAs reading from their teleprompted scripts. The texts would scroll across a screen embedded in the top of the pulpit and then reflect up on panes of glass strategically positioned in front of the speakers.
Not only were the sermons teleprompted, I witnessed the Lord's anointed getting cues on their prepared prayers by artificial means. Everything was tightly timed, with the GAs supposed heartfelt petitions to heaven, as well as their ostensibly Holy Ghost-inspired sermons, precisely orchestrated and slotted into the overall script, so that the camera operators could, on cue, cut to commercial breaks, or to warm and fuzzy Red Square (er, Temple Square) vignettes, or to the chime of the Nauvoo Bell.
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--We Thank Thee, Oh, God, We're Related to the Prophet--and Can be Seen at General Conference in These Latter Days
When Benson family members weren't perched up behind the Tabernacle Choir, we could sit in specially roped-off benches, front and center, on the main floor of the Tabernacle, along with the other family and friends of the "we're-oh-so-special" GA crowd.
My then-spouse and I became increasingly uncomfortable with what we considered to be an arrogant arrangement and so decided that we would remain behind and simply watch Conference on TV at the Salt Lake home of my parents.
My mother became quite upset when we told her of our decision. She said that ETB wanted his family to be with him--in the Tabernacle--during Conference so that he could look down from the dais and see us all there on those hard, fake wood-stained benches as a sign of our love and support.
I told my mother that if this was what my grandfather wanted, then we would sit there in the Tabernacle until ETB got up and left. That meant that because he was now pretty old and frail, his assistants would often escort him out of the Conference session at the hour break--during the rest song, when everyone would stand up, stretch and sing a hymn before dropping back on their faithful posteriors for the second half of indoctrination.
So that's what we did. ETB would be escorted out during the break, waving weakly, and we would likewise exit (without waving, by the way). We would meet up with him in the back area, out of sight behind the dais, where we would join him and his handlers in escorting him through an underground tunnel over to his Eagle Gate condo that was across the street from Temple Square.
Or, if his assistants got ETB out ahead of us, we would simply make our own way out of the Tabernacle and go over to his apartment. By then, ETB's staff had wheel chaired him into his small, private study, where they would place him in a soft, leather reclining chair. They would then either turn on the TV for the second half of Conference or merely play soft music for him to listen to.
I, and other members of the family, would join ETB here for the duration of the Conference session. I would sit by his side, holding his hand and occasionally speaking to him softly. He would smile, squeeze my hand and sometimes say a word or two. But most of the time, he would not say or do much of anything, but just sit there.
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--Inside the Tabernacle, Trying to Talk to Church Security
When we did sit in the Tabernacle's seating area set aside for GA family members and Church-designated dignitaries (like Senator Orrin Hatch), I would often spot a friend of mine, with whom I had grown up and played as a boy in Salt Lake City.
His name was Doyle. Doyle (but by then known as "Duff") had morphed into a buff, jut-jawed dude with a microphone screwed into his ear. Doyle, you see, had landed a job working the Church security Conference detail.
I would sit there on the benches and observe him standing silently down in front of the plush seats for the GAs, intently scanning the audience. Prior to the kick-off of the Conference sessions, as we made our way to our seats, I would say hi to Doyle. He would respond with a tight-lipped smile, nod briefly and not say much more.
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--GA Gluttony
Based upon my own Benson experience with "Brethren Bennies," it used to be a tradition among the "perkified" that between breaks of the General Conference morning and afternoon sessions, GAs and their families were treated to a sumptuous lunch, high atop the
The GAs' relations (as well as friends and dates brought along by, say, their grandchildren) would gather at large tables, where they would be served heaping plates full of hot food, brought to them by young, crisply dressed girls. It was a place to eat, to be seen and to impress.
Meanwhile, during this GA gorge-fest, we could look out the windows of this Great and Spacious Building, down at the lawn directly outside the Tabernacle, where the "great unwashed"--those LDS "little people"--were clustered on blankets brought from home, eating cheap box lunches which they had bought or food they had packed themselves--waiting and hoping to get into the afternoon session.
With our bellies full and burping pleasantly, Benson family members would eventually make their way down to the Tabernacle where we would again flash our passes, cut into line at the last minute ahead of people who had been waiting for hours, and make our way into "our" special seating.
One year, after returning home to Arizona from Conference, a member of our ward mentioned to my then-spouse that she had seen us at Temple Square as we maneuvered our way into the Tabernacle, where she and her family had long been waiting, trying to get in by standing in line. It was an uncomfortable encounter for her--and we both knew the arrangement was not right.
We finally had enough of this kind of undeserved treatment, so decided in the future to wait in line with everyone else. If we couldn't make it in to the Tabernacle because seating ran out, we would go over to the Assembly Hall and listen to Conference being piped in from across the way.
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--Conclusion
With General Conference playing today and the prophets, seers and teleprompted revelators imparting their words of wisdom, I look back on those former days and did what had to be done:
I went and got a flat tire on my truck fixed.