COLUMN: Wackier than a piñata
Utah is digging itself a public relations hole so deep the Chinese delegation will be able to drive to the Olympics via the underground highway created.
It’s a good thing it’s the winter Olympics and not the summer games coming to Utah because, other than a few figure skaters, everyone will be wearing a lot of clothes. However, Utah’s porn czar and ever vigilant citizens will be watchful for any signs of nudity, world peace or normalcy of any kind. The state held it together long enough to get the Olympic bid, but in recent months, has gone back to its Mecca of absurdity designation on the world map.
For instance, the state briefly lost its U.S. Jell-O consumption crown to Iowa, but quickly won it back earlier this year. The state legislature sealed the crown by naming Jell-O “the official state snack,” once again proving Utah is too weird to be part of the Union. It is the only state that is being asked to secede from the nation. Besides, everybody knows Jell-O is not a snack, it’s a salad. But wait there’s more.
A Utah mother raised a national outcry because she took her son to the mall and was confronted with Victoria’s Secret posters that were neither Victorian, nor kept many secrets. Her 6-year-old son was duped by a marketing plan designed to make lingerie look sexy rather than serve the utilitarian function it is best known for.
Missing the whole point of lingerie and consumerism, she was quoted as saying she thought the mall was a “family place.” Disneyland is a family place, malls exist for no other reason than to sell you stuff you mostly don’t need. Have you ever noticed malls don’t sell milk, eggs or toilet paper?
In another part of the state, a woman was threatened with arrest for mowing her lawn in a bikini. The real crime was that her home was being vandalized every night by neighborhood men wielding watering cans and sprinkler hoses.
A polygamist magazine salesman, that thinks his trailer park harem is God’s will, did the state proud by going on any TV show that would have him espousing his multi-level marrying lifestyle. In the end, it caused few men to seek more wives and most women to opt for celibacy.
As a world community we may be trying to stop the worldwide spread of AIDS, end famine and bring peace to the Middle East, but we will have to do it without the blessing of La Verkin, Utah. The town made national news because it wants to be a United Nations free zone because, once peace breaks out, we’re not going to have any use for guns.
I used to defend Utah by saying, “Well, you know we’re not any weirder than the people in, say, the movie Deliverance.” I stand corrected, but I still love Utah because it is so weird that it makes people, like me, seem absolutely mostly normal.