EDITOR’S NOTE: Have a burning sensation? Consult your doctor. Have a burning question for Matt Labash? Submit it here.
Hey Matt, the Mormon missionaries in my neighborhood are really annoying. How do you suggest I keep them from talking to me when I am doing yard work? – Matt Hutson
Just tie a pork chop around your neck and have your wife run through the sprinkler in a wet, cut-off abaya. Hold up a second. My mistake. That’s how you keep annoying Muslim missionaries from bothering you at home.
To deter missionaries of any persuasion from disturbing you during yard work, the best thing to do is keep your lawn mower revving loud and at full throttle – without the grass catcher. If they come anywhere near you, pretend like you don’t notice, then blow your cuttings all over them. Test their faith. See how serious their commitment is. If they really want to convert you, they won’t mind doing so while covered in dandelions and fescue.
Though personally, I enjoy Mormon missionary encounters. I usually invite them in for pound cake and caffeine-free sodas. They’re invariably polite and well-mannered. They wipe their feet. They say thank you. They have firm handshakes. They’re some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. The only thing I don’t trust about them is all the Christer bait-and-switching. If you don’t cut them off and force them to show their cards, Brother Enos will usually spend the first half an hour selling you on how similar Mormonism is to Christianity. They even sock it to you right there in their moniker, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
Now as a Christian, I don’t claim to have a monopoly on J.C. (though in fairness to us, we did name our whole religion after Him). But if my beliefs and your beliefs are basically the same with slight variation, why did you interrupt me from edging the lawn, to sit in my living room and try to convert me to the teachings of Joseph Smith, which were purportedly passed along on golden plates buried in a hill in upstate New York by the Angel Moroni, who is supposedly a resurrected indigenous American? Even if I’m a proselytizing Baptist, I don’t waste a perfectly good Saturday afternoon trying to do the same to Presbyterians.
Of course, when it comes to spectacular claims regarding holy books, we all have our crosses to bear, so to speak. But even if you don’t buy into the water-to-wine bits of the New Testament, at least Christ’s teachings have stood the test of time, enough so that we mark the whole of recorded human history before His birth, and after. Whereas, Joseph Smith’s extra-biblical teachings have only lasted since 1830, and all Mormons really have to show for it — besides the rock’n’roll genius of Jimmy Osmond — is a BYU basketball team that just this year, won their first NCAA tournament game since 1993. When I share such sentiments with my missionary visitors, that’s when they usually start sweating and leave. Not because I outdebated them in a devastating display of Christian apologetics — I’m not exactly Thomas Aquinas. But because before I’d invited them inside, I turned the thermostat up to 90 degrees. You try sitting through one of my harangues in your long-john temple garments in that kind of heat. Even when they’re pumping lots of fluids, they usually head for the door before I have to show it to them.
NEXT: Find out why Labash no longer speaks to The Daily Caller
Matt, I’ve been trying in vain for weeks to register. I’ve added info@dailycaller.com and emailalerts@dailycaller.com to my contacts. Today I received “DC Links” and “DC Mornings” emails, but I have yet to receive a password! Can you please help? – David L. Batcheller
I’d like to. I really would. But that’s not going to happen. I’m unable at this time to seek assistance from the editors of The Daily Caller. Because I’m trying to stake out my own journalistic independence, my brand manager has advised me to no longer speak to them.
What do they do with a gazillion recalled eggs? Cook ’em scrambled, and serve them as chicken feed? How about 99-cent store dogfood? I’ve been dying to ask that question, but I needed someone with journalistic depth in all things to keep me fully informed. – K.T. Sullivan
Unfortunately, you’ve come to the wrong place. I could easily tell you what happens to all those recalled eggs — I do have LexisNexis, and I’m brimming with sources in the dairy industry, due to my acute interest in Polly-O string cheese. But that would break a cardinal rule I’ve set for this column: absolutely, under no circumstances, will I ever do actual research for it. Then it becomes too much like my day job at the Weekly Standard, where they pay me with money, as opposed to here at The Daily Caller, where they pay me in store credits. (How many Keith Olbermann hacky sacks can one man buy?)
If you want well-informed opinions, ask Marilyn vos Savant. She’s supposed to be some kind of savant isn’t she, as her not-so-subtle name suggests? I make no such claims. I’m just a common man. I’m not here to educate you. I’m here to hold up a mirror, and to provide catharsis by reflecting you. You might hate me for saying that. But since I’m your mirror-image, you really hate yourself. (Please get to work on improving our self-esteem, would you? Also, those shorts make us look fat.)
As for eggs, I’m glad so many have been recalled. I’m against them as a food source. Not only because they have a revolting texture and smell bad (kind of egg-y). But because what are you eating when you eat eggs? Chicken fetuses. Therefore, when you go to your neighborhood diner and order eggs over easy, you might as well just ask if you can have the chicken abortion with a side of hash browns. I will say this unabashedly: I believe chicken life begins at conception, and am against eating chicken babies even in the first trimester. True, I will eat chickens themselves. But that’s because I’m against taking innocent life (eggs). Chickens aren’t innocent — they’re guilty: of being so tasty when you put them in a deep fryer.
Matt Labash is a senior writer with the Weekly Standard magazine. His book, “Fly Fishing With Darth Vader: And Other Adventures with Evangelical Wrestlers, Political Hitmen, and Jewish Cowboys,” was published this spring by Simon and Schuster. Have a question for Matt Labash? Submit it here.