Good Review of "The Book of Mormon" Musical

[_Morley]

A link to a pay-to-read review, and a very brief comment about it, isn't information.

It is information. Unless, of course, one is working with an idiosyncratic definition of the word information.

It was an FYI. I pointed out that there is a good review of the play in the May issue of The New Criterion, a fine journal to which I subscribe, and to which at least two of my friends independently subscribe, and to which perhaps somebody here also subscribes, and which can also be accessed on line for a fee, and which is, in any case, very possibly in the collection at your local public or college library.

If you don't want to be alerted to such things, just ignore mention of them.

Got it. Thanks for clarifying. I will certainly ignore.

[_Morley]

Now that Dr. Peterson is back, I can really see where Wade has gotten his posting style from.

Agreed.

[_malaise]

I've been reading Rousseau for decades. (With less and less admiration.) His is an idiosyncratic eighteenth-century French Romantic voice.

I would, genuinely, enjoy seeing examples of such complaints from Babylonia, Egypt, classical Greece, Rome, Byzantium, the medieval West, classical China, pre-modern Japan, and classical Islam.

A Mormon wants to find authorities who can tell him how to think? SHOCKING.

I wasn't trying to say we should just accept whatever Rousseau and other writers from history have to say. I was trying to imply that it is silly to think that the complaint I was making is somehow new. A lot of people have complained about the way that a respect for faith can affect the ability of people to speak to their mind and to express themselves in the way that they want to. Why was David Hume afraid to publish Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion? Why are people in Europe afraid to criticize Islam? Whenever religion acquires a great deal of respect it crushes freedom and expression.

[_Daniel Peterson]

A Mormon wants to find authorities who can tell him how to think? SHOCKING.

Not even slightly, O Independent Thinker.

You say that laments about the constraints imposed on human expression by concepts of reverence and good manners have gone on for "much of human history," and you cite, as your sole evidence, an eighteenth-century French thinker well known (notorious?) for his resistance to concepts of reverence and his disregard for notions of good manners and conventional behavior. I was hoping that you would be able to supply examples from "much of human history."

I wasn't trying to say we should just accept whatever Rousseau and other writers from history have to say.

Nor was I saying that you said that.

I was simply curious as to who some of those "other writers from history" might be. "Much of human history" offers you a pretty wide field of potential candidates from which to choose.

***

LOL. Overlooked this one:

It's because DCP wants to sound smart and cultured while at the same time taking a pot-shot at the musical (which, as you rightly point out, he hasn't seen).

Typical Scratchian mind-reading. As accurate as ever.

I'm sure that he is really sorely wanting to take the musical down a peg or two in light of the critical acclaim it's received, along with all those Tony nominations you mentioned. He's probably really steamed about that.

Actually, I don't much care one way or the other. If anything, as I have said in print, I tend to think the musical might perhaps do us some good.

Nothing angers a Mopologist more than the thought of an "anti" work being successful. (Dr. Peterson really hated Big Love, too.)

Really? I wasn't aware that I really hated Big Love. I've seldom thought about it, and feel no particular emotion toward it, positive or negative.

Have I ever expressed my seething hatred of it publicly? If anybody is going to have such a comment on file for ready access, you will. Do share. I honestly can't recall ever having said anything much about it, let alone voicing deep hatred for it.

The funny thing is that a good deal of the criticism in the linked review could easily and aptly be applied to stuff that's appeared in the FARMS Review.

Have you actually, through some mighty miracle, managed to read the allegedly inaccessible review?

If so, please do be specific about the many parallels between the FARMS Review and The Book of Mormon, as these can be derived from The New Criterion.

[_malaise]

Not even slightly, O Independent Thinker.

You say that laments about the constraints imposed on human expression by concepts of reverence and good manners have gone on for "much of human history," and you cite, as your sole evidence, an eighteenth-century French thinker well known (notorious?) for his resistance to concepts of reverence and his disregard for notions of good manners and conventional behavior. I was hoping that you would be able to supply examples from "much of human history."

I see I was giving you too much credit. Whether or not people throughout human history have believed that is ultimately not very important since the validity of the argument has nothing to do with them. I'm not interested in having a meaningless debate with you about an intentionally hyperbolic statement that I made.

[_Daniel Peterson]

I see I was giving you too much credit.

A common error, although most critics soon recover from it.

Whether or not people throughout human history have believed that is ultimately not very important since the validity of the argument has nothing to do with them. I'm not interested in having a meaningless debate with you about an intentionally hyperbolic statement that I made.

I'm happy to see you pulling back from your historically provincial assertion, am happy to concede that my resistance to your false claim played utterly no role in your doing so, and readily acknowledge that what certainly seems to people of my limited intellect and learning a patently simplistic bit of overblown secularist propaganda is, in fact, an unassailable truth in no need of nuance or qualification, whatever the actual "historical evidence" may pretend to demonstrate.

[_Doctor Scratch]

The funny thing is that a good deal of the criticism in the linked review could easily and aptly be applied to stuff that's appeared in the FARMS Review.

Have you actually, through some mighty miracle, managed to read the allegedly inaccessible review?

If so, please do be specific about the many parallels between the FARMS Review and The Book of Mormon, as these can be derived from The New Criterion.

Oh, sure, Dan. I'll "be specific" just as soon as you decide to "be specific" about your reasons for liking the review in the first place.

I mean, I just added that observation about the FARMS Review as an FYI. Nothing more. Nothing less.

[_cinepro]

Well, I actually paid the $3 to read the review. I haven't seen the musical, but I've listened to the soundtrack several times and really enjoyed it.

Having read it, I have to admit that it is a very good review, and the reviewer is spot-on in many of his criticisms (from what I can tell based on the soundtrack). He's also very funny; I probably laughed more in reading the review than I did in listening to the soundtrack to the musical.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Well, I actually paid the $3 to read the review. I haven't seen the musical, but I've listened to the soundtrack several times and really enjoyed it.

Having read it, I have to admit that it is a very good review, and the reviewer is spot-on in many of his criticisms (from what I can tell based on the soundtrack). He's also very funny; I probably laughed more in reading the review than I did in listening to the soundtrack to the musical.

QFT.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Well, I actually paid the $3 to read the review. I haven't seen the musical, but I've listened to the soundtrack several times and really enjoyed it.

Having read it, I have to admit that it is a very good review, and the reviewer is spot-on in many of his criticisms (from what I can tell based on the soundtrack). He's also very funny; I probably laughed more in reading the review than I did in listening to the soundtrack to the musical.

QFT.

So says the guy who was rubbing his hands together with glee over this forum getting shut down.
Does your obsession/agenda know no limits?