Editor:

Thanks for publishing Adam Benson’s April 5 column (“God loves Mormons, too”) about the kooks who like to chant at the Mormons during their semi annual downtown blitz. It’s fun to see each new generation of young locals and campus transplants pick up on this now time-honored Utah institution-as if they were the first to notice it-and make some interesting observation about how profound or how stupid it is.

As an alumnus and expatriate, I would caution anyone against getting all bothered about civil rights and peaceful co-existence because I think these stormy clouds might have a small silver lining. You see, there are a lot of Americans who harbor a lot of hate. Not just a little bit, either, but a real trainload of it. (It’s cheap to keep, doesn’t require any intelligence to speak of and can be a real motivator-if you know what I mean.) Well, hate in most of it is usual manifestations has become so stridently incorrect-in the political sense, that is-that even the biggest rednecks are starting to hang their heads and mumble. But simply making something politically incorrect does not neutralize it-rather this drives it underground where it festers and cankers the soul. So, encouraging people to “let it all out” twice a year is probably the only thing that keeps the whole state from boiling over. I say we stay the course by giving it the usual wink and a nod and count ourselves lucky that they haven’t yet discovered what they can download off the Internet.

Cory Burt

Alumnus