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You are here: Home / Healthcare / Late Night Open Thread: Mormon Humor, More Risque Than You Might’ve Expected

Late Night Open Thread: Mormon Humor, More Risque Than You Might’ve Expected

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Toss the Jello Salad?…

… “The Governor understands the importance of the Utah Department of Health conducting a campaign to educate Utahns about HIV prevention,” his spokeswoman, Anna Lehnardt, told FOX 13 in a statement. “He does not, however, approve the use of sexual innuendo as part of a taxpayer-funded campaign, and our office has asked the department to rework the campaign’s branding.”

The condoms had wrappers that touted the “Greatest Sex on Earth” (a parody of Utah’s “Greatest Snow on Earth”); “This is the Place” (which was uttered by Brigham Young when pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley); the subversive “SL, UT” for Salt Lake, Utah; “Toss the Jello Salad;” and, of course, the local landmarks “Fillmore, Beaver.”

The campaign was a joint venture between the Utah Department of Health and Love Communications. Wyoming and Alaska have done similar campaigns using popular slogans native to their respective states…

About 100,000 of the condoms were to be distributed for free through local health departments, the Utah AIDS Foundation, bars and other community locations. In response, the Utah Department of Health said Wednesday night it has told those who would distribute the condoms to refrain from doing so while the campaign is re-worked…

[Insert your own ‘now a collector’s item’ joke here.]

Reader Interactions

53Comments

  1. 1.

    Litany

    The Times drops their endorsement:

    “It was a privilege for us on the editorial board to spend more than a dozen hours talking to candidates, asking them any question that came to mind. Yet that exercise is impossible for most Americans, and we were left wanting for a more focused conversation for the public. Now is the time to narrow the race.

    The history of the editorial board would suggest that we would side squarely with the candidate with a more traditional approach to pushing the nation forward, within the realities of a constitutional framework and a multiparty country. But the events of the past few years have shaken the confidence of even the most committed institutionalists. We are not veering away from the values we espouse, but we are rattled by the weakness of the institutions that we trusted to undergird those values.

    There are legitimate questions about whether our democratic system is fundamentally broken. Our elections are getting less free and fair, Congress and the courts are increasingly partisan, foreign nations are flooding society with misinformation, a deluge of money flows through our politics. And the economic mobility that made the American dream possible is vanishing.

    Both the radical and the realist models warrant serious consideration. If there were ever a time to be open to new ideas, it is now. If there were ever a time to seek stability, now is it.

    That’s why we’re endorsing the most effective advocates for each approach. They are Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar.”

  2. 2.

    phdesmond

    i sent a link to that utah article to my girlfriend in virginia. i don’t see that happening in VA or even MA, where i live.

    thanks for sharing it, though!

  5. 5.

    phdesmond

    Quite a bombshell, Litany!  went to tell a friend and found this:

     
    The New York Times has endorsed not one but two candidates for the Democratic nomination for president, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar from the party’s moderate wing and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren from its progressive wing.

    By Associated Press, Wire Service Content Jan. 19, 2020, at 11:30 p.m.

  6. 6.

    Anne Laurie

    @phdesmond: I think the (snobby) Masshole reaction would be that we don’t need that kind of wink-wink-nudge-nudge sex ed marketing, since we’re all progressive’n’stuff.

    (Yeah, I’m rolling my eyes, too.)

  8. 8.

    ziggy

    Those are great! I don’t get the middle one though–“toss the jello salad”? Please DON’T explain it to me though!

    Is this what BJ after dark is about?

  9. 9.

    jonas

    Once again, moral scolds end up making something they want to condemn a million times more popular than it otherwise would have been if they had just ignored it and STFU. These are going to be valuable collectors’ items now.

    Well done, sir. Well done. *golf claps

  10. 10.

    Anne Laurie

    @Litany: Only the FTFNYT could irritate me by nominating the same candidates *I* would have recommended, and for much the same reasons, too!

    Srsly, they bobbled the lead-up with their cutesy ‘hip to the cutting edge, fellow opinion leaders’ promo videos, and the way they’ve set up this endorsement doesn’t help.  But I figured it made more sense as a post topic during ‘prime time’ on the blog — I’ll have something up tomorrow, if Betty doesn’t beat me to it!

  11. 11.

    Ohio Mom

    Thank goodness for google and the urban dictionary. I now know what tossing a salad is. Already knew Mormons liked jello,so now I get the joke and can go to sleep. Sweet dreams one and all.

  13. 13.

    phdesmond

    @Anne Laurie: we could get away with it, like they did for so long in Utah, before they were detected.

     

    and, hey, it’s funding for the arts.  :-)

    it would involve competing for funding for an arts project.  :-(

  14. 14.

    Anne Laurie

    @ziggy:  Jello salad is an established Mormon (and Midwestern!) humor trope.  No culinary event involving more than three people (parties, holiday dinners, funerals) is complete without one or more variations of it, ranging from the sometimes delicious-if-calorific (involving canned fruit, walnut pieces, toasted coconut and/or mini-marshmellows) to the vaguely Lovecraftian (lime jello with cottage cheese and… other stuff).

    You can check out Urban Dictionary for the ‘tossed salad’ innuendo, but *not* on a work computer!

  16. 16.

    Litany

    @Anne Laurie: I was shocked at how callous this sentence in particular was:

    “Basket-case governments in several nations south of the Rio Grande have sent a historic flood of migrants to our southern border.”

    Am I crazy to think this incredibly dismissive of the history of coups, colonialism, and covert regime change which comprise the legacy of US involvement in Latin America? I expect Fox to run stories that credulously ask why so many people are leaving Nicuragua as if our involvement with the bloodthirsty Contras never happened, but really the “paper of record” should know better than to use language like this that’s little better than Trump’s “shithole countries.”

  17. 17.

    phdesmond

    found this over on whatzis —

     

    “No animal, according to the rules of animal-etiquette, is ever expected to do anything strenuous, or heroic, or even moderately active during the off-season of winter.”
     ~~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1906)

     

    do you think cats are covered?

  19. 19.

    Mnemosyne

    @Anne Laurie:

    My 13-year-old aspiring chef niece was in charge of Thanksgiving in Illinois (except for the turkey) and included an array of Jello salads in the spread, mostly of the Lovecraftian variety.

    We weren’t there, but they looked cool on Facebook!

  20. 20.

    Anne Laurie

    @Litany: That’s the infamous FTFNYT trying to please Both Sides!!!  at the same time — and, as usual, succeeding only in getting both sides pissed at them.   It was widely assumed / predicted they’d endorse Warren, because her campaign & her proposals are very much in line with those of the average NYTimes subscriber: liberal, but still firmly capitalist.  But they’re terrified of offending noisy wingnuts (who’ll never vote for *any* Democrat, and who almost certainly aren’t subscribers)… so they offered Amy ‘Sorry, We Can’t Afford That’ Klobuchar as a sop to the ‘moderates’.

    There’s some positions, like babies, that can’t just be split down the middle without losing their essential integrity.

  23. 23.

    Litany

    @Anne Laurie: I understand the Times’ urge to split their support, though I disagree with you about which candidate they’re more sympathetic to. The Times writes “The history of the editorial board would suggest that we would side squarely with the candidate with a more traditional approach” and admit of Warren that they’d “certainly push back on specific policy proposals, like nationalizing health insurance or decriminalizing the border.”

    Either the Times doesn’t speak for Warren’s actual base of support or that base of support is voting tactically with an understanding that Warren either can’t or won’t do any of these things.

  24. 24.

    oldgold

    Another one for “only the best people” file.

    • Rumor inside NSC is that Peek ‘had relations with Russian hookers and could not locate his government cell phone.’ 

    https://apnews.com/d62eab2291688a96acc7a3bb48a3eec2 …
    AP sources: Security probe targets Trump’s Russia adviser
    WASHINGTON (AP) — A White House adviser on Europe and Russia issues has been placed on administrative leave pending a security-related investigation, two people with knowledge of his exit.

  25. 25.

    Amir Khalid

    “Sexually oriented humour on condom packages will lead to the moral collapse of Utah!”

    The absurdity, it burns …

  29. 29.

    Anya

    @oldgold: I am surprised because I didn’t think this what he is accused of is a problem in the Trump administration. My first assumption when I’ve read on twitter about him being escorted out of the WH was that he disagreed with Trump.

  30. 30.

    Jim

    “He does not, however, approve the use of sexual innuendo as part of a taxpayer-funded campaign,

    I wonder how many porn pictures he has on his computer (as most politicians download porn) ?

  31. 31.

    tomtofa

    The Republicans, furrowed brows included, seem to be lining up to disallow witnesses and documents to sully the Senate trial. Can we have an office pool on what the distraction will be to shift the next week’s media coverage to something shinier?

    • Iran: something something
    • China: something something
    • Refuge children being roasted and fed to their parents
    • Something new and outrageous
  33. 33.

    Chris T.

    @Ken: Vul, VA? But I don’t think there’s any place called (or abbreviated) “Vul”, unlike Salt Lake = SL.

    There are a lot of -ma words but not many suggestive ones. (A lot of cancers though!) Smeg, MA, perhaps, but … ew.

  34. 34.

    Van Buren

    Remembering that FTFNYT endorsed Hillary…after throwing her under the bus a hundred times. If I were Warren or Klobuchar I would be on high alert for same.

  36. 36.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Litany:

    “Basket-case governments in several nations south of the Rio Grande have sent a historic flood of migrants to our southern border.”

    Pot? Meet Kettle.

  37. 37.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Amir Khalid: Well, everybody knows that good Mormons have sexy time only for procreation purposes.

    Funny how all the Mormons I ever met were of the bad type.

  40. 40.

    JPL

    Pleased to see that the NYTimes recognizes the strength of the females running for President.   Klobucher or Warren would make an excellent president.   I dreamed that they endorsed Wilmer and thought to myself well nothing really matters.

  41. 41.

    West of the Rockies

    Just woke up from an icky repeating dream cycle, so brain is only semi-functional, but all these condom slogans will probably lead to Utah receiving a good ribbing.  Hopefully, it won’t be a pain in the ass to dispose of these raincoats.  The whole thing really sucks.  It must be a real grind.

    That is all.

  44. 44.

    different-church-lady

    Insert your own ‘now a collector’s item’ joke here.

    Seriously, are we not doing ‘phrasing’ anymore?

  49. 49.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @different-church-lady: Who you callin’ “athol,” you thunofabidge?

    (ahem)

    My Favorite Mormon, probably the last great infatuation of my life (I was 54, she was 29 – sweartoDog she only looked 16), related to me the following bon mot:

    • Q: Why do Mormon women stop having babies after 35?
    • A: Because 36 is too many even for them.
  52. 52.

    Fair Economist

    @Ohio Mom:

    Thank goodness for google and the urban dictionary. I now know what tossing a salad is.

    (Googles)

    Hmmm, yes, but the pedant in me points out you don’t need a condom for “tossing the salad”.

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