"Global Games" reading/rant

Alright, I am going to do it.  I am going to let my own values and opinions trump my common sense and spend my entire blog entry complaining about a single paragraph in John Nauright's "Global Games: Culture, Political Economy, and Sport in the Globalised World of the 21st Century".

So what paragraph am I going to complain about that I took personally?  If you read my introduction, you might be able to guess.  I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or a Mormon for those who prefer to shorten things up a little bit).  On page 1328 of his article, Nauright blasts the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics of 2002 for focusing on Mormons in their presentation of local culture, stating "The focus of broadcasters and image makers upon the Mormon history and identity of the city and the state of Utah was misrepresentative" (Nauright, 2004, p. 1328).

Nauright's complaint is that Salt Lake City and Utah are only partly made up of LDS members, that there are other cultures in Utah.  I have several issues with Nauright claim that focusing on LDS was a poor choice.  First, while Nauright says the focus was on the LDS church, he does not say that the entire presentation of Salt Lake City's culture was here.  I find it hard to believe that any presentation as large as the Olympics could focus on a single aspect of the culture of a city and land.  Certainly some of the focus must have been on the overall American culture.  However, I have not recently seen the presentation, so I can concede this argument.

So for the sake of things, let’s say that 75% of the presentation on local culture was focused on Mormons and the Church.  Is that a terrible thing?  Mormons make up 58% of Utah according to the February 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, a report produced by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.  Doesn't it make sense that the majority of the presentation on local culture would focus on the majority, specifically because it is so different from other locations throughout the world?  How much do most of you really know about Mormons?  And I am not talking about the common jokes about polygamy, which has been banned by the church since the 1890s, or that Mormons are sweet people who are brainwashed idiots (I'd like to consider myself evidence that this myth is false, though you may have a different opinion).  So isn't it an interesting topic and culture within America, something that would grab the attentions of Americans and the challenge the general stereotype of America itself?

And come on, Salt Lake City was founded by 148 people way back in 1847.  Guess how many of them were Mormons?  That’s right, 148.  They were looking for a place where they could practice their religion freely, escape from persecution like Missouri Executive Order 44.  This order signed in 1838 made Mormons the only religious group in American history to have a state issue the legal extermination of its members.

Isn't this an interesting history?  And it is only the bare surface of the story itself, one that is much more complex and surprising that it all happened here in our own country.

I have no doubt that there are many other interesting stories of the non-Mormons in Salt Lake City that should have been told and I doubt that all of them were ignored.  But what I think that Nauright is missing is that the Salt Lake City games gave an opportunity to present the real history and culture of Mormons to a large audience, one that has largely only been taught myths and lies.  Mormons only make up 2% of America in 2008 according to the Pew Forum's survey.  So if anything, the Salt Lake City games was focusing on a minority in America, giving opportunity to a culture's story that is so often ignored and misconstrued.