In this ZD feature–Titles in Search of a Post–we provide catchy titles and you, our scintillating and creative readers, have the opportunity of offering suggestions in the comments section as to what such a post should be about, ranging from half-baked free associations to polished paragraphs, and (this should go without saying on our blog) from the sublime to the ridiculous. Enjoy!
(And if you aren’t familiar with the Keystone Cops, click here.)
The mormon male and the message board/forum. A survey of mormon message boards of the right wing and apologetic variety and their testosterone haze. Gunz, Wimmenz and teh UNz ruinin’ our perfect land and all that fun stuff.
Boy Scouts/Scout Leaders?
One-Issue Bloggers (Evolution, Gay Marriage, Women and the Priesthood, The Temple, Sex, etc.)
Discussing a particular topic? Here comes (Insert Name), who won’t comment on any other topic discussed on your blog.
When I think of the Keystone Cops, I think of a sort of bumbling officiousness, combined with an inability to see something which is in plain sight. I don’t think either one of those characteristics is distinctively Mormon, since every non-Mo boss I have ever had has displayed them in great abundance. But the Mormon manifestation of the Keystone phenomenon is captured in the slogan “Every member a mission president.” We have a lot of jots and tittles to attend to, but we usually also find time to lay down the law to others on the minutiae of WoW observance, what constitutes modest dress, and whether the viewing of R-rated movies disqualifies a prospective missionary under the new, raising-the-bar guidelines. A desire to read white bread and refined sugar into sec. 89 (or whatever) then distracts us from the One Big Thing. I do this all the time.
Brother-in-law borrowing book to read on business trip and deciding at the airport it was digusting and threw it away so no one would see him with it. No offer to replace as he feels he was doing you a favor.
FYI – Wicked
Anyone who puts on an air of “make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter” tsh, tshing those that don’t appear to have clean cups (non-white shirts, beards, long hair, flip-flops, denim, tattoos, piercings, etc.)
The Honor Code office?
Book of Mormon wielding Stake youth dance chaperones?
ZLs and APs?
The counterpart to Ray’s One-Issue blogger: The I-have-an-opinion-which-I-will-state-forcibly-on-EVERY-possible-topic-regardless-of-how-well-informed-I-am-(not)-on-the-matter-at-hand Blogger.
Overzealous bishops (No more bunko night! No skits at the ward party!), keeping the ward safe from lack of reverence and appropriate dress-up clothes, one denim skirt at a time.
How about the ward membership clerks in the Church, who manage to produce a certificate commemorating a child’s blessing, but somehow forget to actually create a membership record.
(Same applies to baptisms.)
#8 – Touche.
I guess I was mixing up the order of the words in the phrase, but I thought of the keystone cops being the cops who enforce copyright restrictions on common Mormon phrases (like “the keystone of our religion.”) So every time someone says “the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion,” it’s their job to note down that Joseph Smith gets another credibility point. Just like when someone says “tender mercies of the Lord,” Elder Bednar gets a point. (Don’t tell me Nephi should get it. He’s above caring.) It’s kind of like a grand version of scriptures.byu.edu.
Or, alternatively, perhaps the keystone cops are the ones who police the use of potentially slippery metaphors like “keystone of our religion.” So, for example, if I were to stand up in sacrament meeting and claim that since the Book of Mormon is the keystone, then the Doctrine and Covenants is the whetstone of our religion (because it keeps us sharp), the Pearl of Great Price is the peepstone (because we would just as soon not talk about where it came from), and the Bible is the Blarney Stone (because it gives us the gift of gab), then they Keystone Cops would bust into the meeting and haul me off for ruining the metaphor. Of course, they might have to make an appearance in many meetings to keep us all from our loony gospel comparisons. Elder Bednar might have been paid a visit by them after his pickle talk. After all, if people can be pickled cucumbers, what’s to prevent us from talking about all kinds of different vegetables getting pickled or going through all kinds of other processes (I’m a chopped, dried onion)?
We just had our first lesson in Gospel Doctrine on the D&C. The teachers’ manual begins with a suggested intro talking about the ball at the top of the Salt Lake temple on which Moroni stands. This ball, they said, is the capstone of the temple, as the D&C is the capstone of our religion.
It then follows with something like: The D&C is the capstone, and the Book of Mormon is the keystone, and they both testify of Jesus, who is the cornerstone.
Could the “keystone cops” regulate over-use of building stone references in Sunday School?