Anyone else catch the second hour of Medved's show today. He had the John Voight and the writer of the movie September Dawn (the movie about the Mountain Meadow Massacre) on the show. Medved was very respectful of both men, but at the same time raised a number of issues in regards to the portrayal of Brigham Young and Joseph Smith as being contrived and the "worst-possible" interpretation one could take.

The writers defended himself by stating that his article was not "intended" to be about the LDS religion, or about Brigham Young and that the amount of time required to establish the full character of the personages or religion would be impossible to do in a 90 minute movie, the movie was about the massacre.

Voight defended his actions by stating that the church head of family history posted this article just today... http://www.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=17bef28172543110VgnVCM100000176f620aRCRD&vgnextchannel=9ae411154963d010VgnVCM1000004e94610aRCRD

And insinuated that while the church has officially stated it will make no official statement about the incident or the movie, that the posting of this article is painfully conspicuous and he seemed to indicate to be clearly in response to their movie. As for the contents of the article (linked above) Mr Voight had no disagreements--in fact he seemed encouraged and proud that his movie could bring the church to make this information public, and seemed to claim that the church had never heretofore done such a public acknowledgement.

I was disappointed in the one caller who acknowledge himself as mormon. Medved (who is an observant Jew and a true believer in the free expression of religion in America) made the most impassioned points, be very positive about Mormon contributions in society, and how this sort of pointed/onesided portrayal of religious sentiment in American religion hurts all religions in America, and will be especially savored by the enemy to all religious conservatives.

--Ray

PS> Thoughts?

-- Edited by rayb at 15:42, 2007-06-22