Sunday in Outer Blogness: Freedom of Expression Edition!

The fun this week centered around Everybody draw Muhammad Day! Quite a lot of people drew Muhammad or thought about it. I didn’t get around to it (or, perhaps, I was with free expression in principle, but didn’t want my own family killed on principle).

Meanwhile, there was a fascinating parallel discussion of what expression the COB of the CoJCoL-dS will allow!!! The big news is that McKonkie’s classic Mormon Doctrine is being discontinued!! Some applaud this “out with the bad”, others lament that the “jello will be a little harder to nail to the wall” so to speak. And — speaking of correlation’s control over what is Mormon doctrine — check out Daymon Smith’s fascinating four-part podcast on “Post-Manifesto Polygamy, Correlation, the Corporate LDS Church, and Mammon”. And, yes, this is the same Daymon Smith who wrote The Book of Mammon, which you’ll be hearing more about here soon! Meanwhile, BCC is a bit critical of the corporation’s latest ad campaign, and T&S comes in with a satire that hits it on the nose! (The CoJCoL-dS wants real people to post about their faith, but runs into trouble when it comes to correlating faith-promoting tales of the three Nephites…)

Then, there’s that other type of “free expression” that sends the faithful into a frenzy: porn. Here on MSP, the subject elicits little more than a chuckle (but I couldn’t help but notice some of our folks “helping” them with their discussion — myself included 😉 ). Then BCC helped them further…

On a related note, an Editor of Dialog wrote a piece for Slate about the “great Mormon novel” (or lack thereof, hat tip Andrew S.). David Haglund hit the standard points about how the Mormon lit market is too intent on warm-fuzzy validation for the challenges that serious lit requires. Coincidentally, I just read about COB folks in Daymon Smith’s book having this same discussion. (Perhaps this discussion is new to Slate‘s other readers?) Anyway, another contender has just been released! Watch this spot (on June 22) for the serialization of the final episode!!!

And the biggest drama this week has been Koda’s dealings with church leadership (plus some friendly solidarity). Feel free to swing by with your own support and advice!

And on the lighter side of Mormon expression: an amusing scene from Mormon life, a joke on par with drawing Muhammad, why information is tightly controlled, a moving-on rite of passage, and a sweet trip down Mormon memory lane that I suspect many of us can relate to! 😀