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Datum: Sonntag, den 17. Februar 2002, um 1:06 Uhr

Betrifft: nur Woody Paiges Satire sorgte fÃ¼r Missstimmung

Berliner Morgenpost
17.02.2002

... Auch eine andere BefÃ¼rchtung hat sich als unbegrÃ¼ndet erwiesen: Die Mormonen halten sich, wie sie versprochen hatten, in ihrer Metropole dezent zurÃ¼ck. Es gibt kein aggressives Missionieren. Es sind eher andere Eiferer, religiÃ¶ser und weltlicher Art, die penetrant versuchen, sich in den Vordergrund zu schieben. Doch so richtig beachtet werden auch sie nicht.

... Friede, Freude, FrÃ¶hlichkeit in Salt Lake City. Nur fÃ¼r kurze Zeit sorgte Woody Paige, ein Kolumnist der Â«Denver PostÂ», fÃ¼r Missstimmung. In einer Satire hatte er alles und jeden in Salt Lake City mies und madig gemacht. Ein Sturm der EmpÃ¶rung brandete auf. Die Zeitung wurde mit E-Mails Ã¼berschÃ¼ttet, schnell der Artikel aus dem Internet genommen. Inzwischen hat Paige der Â«Salt Lake TribuneÂ» ein Interview gegeben: Â«Ich entschuldige mich, ich liebe Utah. Es ist alles groÃŸartig hier. Das sind die besten Spielen, die es jemals gab.Â» Na bitte, geht doch.

http://morgenpost.berlin1.de/print/archiv2002/020217/sport/story498848.html

Und was war das fÃ¼r ein Artikel? Jedenfalls ist er inzwischen der Zensur zum Opfer gefallen, wie die Berliner Morgenpost ja richtig andeutet. Wie kann man auch nur etwas negatives Ã¼ber Utah schreiben? Darum hier exklusiv fÃ¼r Euch der Artikel:

Denver Post

Colorado real winner of Games

By Woody Paige
Denver Post Sports Columnist

Tuesday, February 12, 2002 - SALT LAKE CITY - Relax, Colorado. Utah won’t be stealing skiers, snowboarders, snow bunnies, slush studs, sightseers and substantial-spending silver-spooners.

By the time the Winter Olympics are over nobody will want to come back or come ever to this state of gelatinous Deseret and gelatin dessert.

Especially Europeans, Asians, Australians and other foreigners, such as those from Texas.

Utah is doing more to promote the ski industry in Colorado than Aspen, Vail, Winter Park and Steamboat Springs combined could.

Colorado’s new slogan to attract tourists should be: "Visit beautiful Colorado. We won’t force you to take a religious brochure at every street corner, make you eat lime Jell-O at every meal, coerce you into joining a private club to enjoy a drink or buying a bottle from a state-owned liquor store, ask you to worship a salamander and a seagull, marry three of your mother’s cousins, consider you inferior if you’re not white, a man or heterosexual, order you to ride to a ski area in a school bus, compel you to dine at A&W and sleep at Motel 21/2 and Sub-par 8 and Worst Inn & Suites, require you to square dance and wear weird underwear under your parkas and ski pants."

Or: "Colorado Welcomes The Skiing World. We have more than beginners’ slopes and one resort."

Or: "Colorado: There’s Caffeine In Our Coffee And Cachet In Our Mountains."

Or: "Colorado: Champagne Powder while you Ski and Champagne apres ski."

Hey, Utah started the snow-slinging and the anti-Colorado advertising campaigns and the "We got the Olympics, and you didn’t, nah-nah-nah-
nah-nah-naaah."

Be careful what you wish for, Salt Lake City.

Now, everyone in the world knows.

No wonder the Salt Lake Organizing Committee had to bribe International Olympic Committee members in order to host the Winter Games. You wouldn’t visit or vacation - or pause - here unless you had to. Maybe Utah’s slogan should be: "If you promise to ski Utah, we’ll give your kid a job or pay for his college education or slip you a thousand bucks."

Salt Lake City has royally screwed up the Olympics.

You’ve already heard the spin-doctoring and excuse-twisting. They’re trying to paint a happy face on a donkey’s derriere.

"Oh, we’ve had a few glitches and one or two problems, but these are the greatest Games ever" is the constant refrain from the SLOC slugs.

And the local affiliate of NBC declared two nights ago on the news: "Everybody has told us they love the Olympics in Utah." What would they expect people with a microphone thrust in their mouths to say - the truth?

Here’s what some really are saying:

"It’s a dog’s breakfast," said an Australian. I don’t think that’s a positive reaction.

"Atlanta with snow," a German journalist told me. That’s a real low blow. Atlanta put on the worst Olympics since Hitler in 1936, but, at least, the Germans made the buses and trains run on time.

Ask several hundred Austrians - none of the local media did - their opinion after they put out thousands of dollars to travel to Utah to watch their men’s downhillers dominate. What should have been a 45-
minute ride to Snowbasin turned into the three-hour trip from (and to) hell, and they missed the Austrian skiers who won the gold and bronze medals. Things were so bad the head of the SLOC had to help direct traffic. "I can’t wait to get away from here," an Austrian told me. "And the beer, when you can get one, tastes like warm (use your imagination)."

America never should be awarded another Olympics. We can’t get this traffic and transportation thing right - ever.

All the volunteers and workers are very friendly, but they have been trained to say "Uh, I don’t know" and speak in tongues.

"When’s the next bus coming?"

"Uh, I don’t know. Would you like Jell-O while you’re waiting?"

"Where’s the speed skating?"

"Uh, I don’t know, but you have a wonderful afternoon."

"Why doesn’t the TV and the phone in my room work, and how can you call a bowl of cereal and a loaf of bread a breakfast buffet, and is there a reason I have no shower curtain or alarm clock or lamp or bar of soap or clean sheets in my room that costs $190 a night?"

"Uh, I don’t know. We’re trying to get someone out to fix it."

They only had seven years to figure out the Olympics.

At Olympic Sports Park outside Salt Lake City, spectators who paid outrageous prices for tickets are dumped in a parking lot and have to get up the hill to the venues by whatever means they can. One SLOC sloth admitted there aren’t enough shuttles, so a PR type turned a serious, subfreezing climb up a 10-degree incline into the cutesy "Gold Mile." "People are enjoying it. At the top they receive a pin." Or a heart attack.

But those people were fortunate. Europeans who purchased tickets to the opening and closing ceremonies and several events in the mountains arrived to discover all the bus passes had been sold. They had no way of reaching the venues. (Salt Lake has 400 taxis for hundreds of thousands of visitors.)

And the Church of the Latter-day Whatevers? It claimed there would be no overt involvement or interference in the Winter Games. Instead, this is a massive Mormon marketing scheme. There is no separation of church and Olympics. Young women, who act like they’re straight out of the "Stepford Wives," stand 10 feet apart downtown and at venues and thrust Mormon literature at passersby. Tables offering Mormon information and men offering Mormon salvation are all over the city. The Mormon presence dominates. One of the last stops for the Olympic torch was at Mormon headquarters so the church president could hold it and make a speech. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir was on prominent display throughout the opening ceremony. The Mormon-owned daily newspaper features a special section interspersing LDS propaganda with Olympic photographs.

The theme of the Salt Lake Games is: "Light the flame within." It should be: "Last one to escape Salt Lake extinguish the flame and turn out the lights."

Colorado will be the winner of the Winter Olympics.

Original war unter http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,111%257E396006,00.html zu finden.

MÃ¶gliche jetzige Quelle: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22woody+paige%22&hl=en&selm=744f39c1.0202131027.4bfeaf61%40posting.google.com&rnum=4

Das blieb fÃ¼r Paige nicht ohne Folgen, denn die HLT-Kirche und ihre empfindlichen Mitglieder mochten das nun wirklich nicht:

CBS

Mormon Church Responds To Negative Media Coverage

Feb. 13, 2002

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) A Mormon official called media coverage of the church biased and sloppy in an open letter sent Wednesday to reporters covering the 2002 Winter Games.

While most news reports from Salt Lake City have been fair, the letter said, others are "full of arrant nonsense and prejudice" and prove that Mormons are still as persecuted as they were when they fled to Utah in 1847.

Also Wednesday, the church criticized a Denver Post column mocking Mormonism and the Olympics. The piece was pulled from the paper’s Web site and an apologetic column was planned for Thursday.

The letter was attributed to Alan Wakeley, director of public affairs for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, but was originally written for a church-affiliated magazine.

Church spokesman Dale Bills said Meridian Magazine editor-in-chief Maureen Proctor gave Wakeley permission to rewrite her article "to address a few concerns he had about some media coverage in Australia and New Zealand."

The piece criticizes articles written by the Sydney Daily Telegraph and five other news outlets, including one written by The Associated Press. It accused the media of "drive-by reporting," saying reporters have focused on polygamy, which has been banned by the church for more than a century, or portrayed the church as "a vast, wealthy, clannish and secretive empire."

"Unfortunately, when some journalists talk about members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, they create a caricature," the letter said.

The Salt Lake-based church has long been skittish about media attempts to dub the 2002 Winter Games the "Mormon games."

After repeated questions about polygamy and other dark spots in the church’s past, Mormon officials mailed more than 3,000 press packets detailing the church’s history.

And though Mormon officials say they’re generally pleased with news reports, the official Web site posts a frequently updated list of corrections and clarifications of stories about the church.

Such mistakes are to be expected given the media’s lack of interest in theological details, said Jan Shipps, a non-Mormon historian who has written several books about the faith. Newspapers are depending on their reporters in town to cover the games to give them quick stories about Mormons.

"They don’t send the religion reporters, they send the sports reporters," Shipps said. "And they do the best they can. They don’t know about the trinity, they know about a triple salchow."

An egregious example, church officials said, was a column by Woody Paige that appeared in Tuesday’s edition of the Denver Post. Paige’s story, titled "Colorado real winner of Games," joked that Olympic visitors would be so annoyed by Utah’s cultural quirks they would never return to the state.

"The whole piece can be characterized as just a really nasty piece, an offensive piece for Utahns," said church spokesman Mike Otterson.

The article drew so many angry E-mails that technicians at the paper’s Web site set up a special spot for complaints about the column. Denver Post editor Glenn Guzzo said Wednesday that the column was "inappropriate" and never should have been published, and promised that Paige’s Thursday column would include an apology.

http://cbs.sportsline.com/u/wire/stories/0,1169,5003500_15,00.html

Und wie versprochen kam dann auch die Entschuldigung, die selbstverstÃ¤ndlich vÃ¶llig ohne Druck und freiwillig abgegeben worden ist:

Denver Post

Upon reflection, Utah, all apologies offered

By Woody Paige
Denver Post Sports Columnist

Thursday, February 14, 2002 - SALT LAKE CITY - Happy Valentine’s Day, Utahans. I love you.

I’m sorry I hurt you.

A column I wrote that appeared Tuesday in The Denver Post has enraged members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and officials of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, Winter Olympics volunteers, the decent people of Utah, Colorado and, presumably, other states and countries and my superiors and fellow workers.

I was wrong to write what I did. I am totally responsible and regretful for it.

"Obviously, it has a satirical emphasis," said Mike Otterson, director of media relations for the Mormon Church headquarters here.

Obviously, it was satire that didn’t work.

"It was a pretty mean-spirited piece," Otterson said Wednesday. He also said the column was "a hatchet job hostile designed to ridicule clearly intended to be an attack on Utah and Mormons so vicious invective ridiculous and downright wrong."

Thousands of others who e-mailed and called me and others at The Post weren’t as kind in their evaluation.

When I contacted Otterson, I requested a conversation with church president Gordon Hinckley, but he, Otterson said, "respectfully, is too busy to handle this." So Otterson said he would serve as the senior spokesman.

I told him I am not anti-Mormon, anti-Utah, anti-Salt Lake City or anti-Winter Olympics. My weak attempt at humor failed. For those few who missed it, the basic premise of the column was that Colorado would be the real winner of the Games because "Salt Lake City has royally screwed up the Winter Olympics." But the main complaints were about references to Utahans and, specifically, Mormons, who make up 70-75 percent of this state’s population.

"The overwhelming reaction from the world media, the athletes and the visitors has been extremely positive and that the Games are going off admirably well," said Otterson.

He wanted to concentrate on "issues of fact" regarding the church and Mormons.

"The line about worshipping salamanders and sea gulls obviously is one’s expression of opinion. I don’t know how to respond to that type of satire, but it’s simply not true." He said African-Americans and women are not considered inferior by the church. "More than half the members of our church are now outside the United States in Latin America, Africa and the Philippines, for instance, and (the numbers are) growing faster. Only 14 percent of our members live in Salt Lake City.

"The stereotypical image of Mormons is changing."

The church took exception to my line that the Winter Olympics is a "massive Mormon marketing scheme."

According to Otterson, the church "has resources that Salt Lake City needed, and we have provided them willingly. If the church had boycotted the Games, the city could not have hosted the event. But president Hinckley has made it clear from the beginning that there would be no proselytizing (attempts to convert one to another’s religious faith) during the Olympics. We are not handing out literature or selling books. We don’t sell the Book of Mormon. To the contrary, the literature being passed out is anti-Mormon. The Mormon Temple is a highly visible presence in downtown, but no more than the Vatican in Rome. We are sensitive to the purpose of the Olympics."

He said the church has remained in the background throughout the Games. "Your inferences that the church is using the Games as a marketing scheme is downright wrong. Judging by the reaction, we’ve done it right and would do it exactly the same way if we started over."

He reiterated that the Mormon Church had "outlawed polygamy more than 100 years ago, and I’ve never met a polygamist."

There also was the mention of "weird underwear," which both Otterson and I agree was totally uncalled for.

As for transportation, traffic, ticketing, access to the venues and other problems brought up in the column, Otterson said a Salt Lake Organizing Committee official would have to comment. However late Wednesday afternoon, SLOC said it would have no statement.

Aside from some transportation and traffic snafus and inconveniences for athletes and spectators, the Winter Games in Salt Lake City and surrounding Utah have been very successful - and certainly safe and secure.

Sincerely, I’ve enjoyed my stay as a bystander. Utah can be proud of its Olympian effort so far.

I’ve been here and at other locales in Utah 50 times or more and genuinely like the people. As has been noted this week, Salt Lake has become "the capital of niceness." I don’t understand the infatuation with Jell-O or fry sauce, but I appreciate "friendly." Maybe we should all eat more Jell-0 and fry sauce.

I have studied the history of the state and the church. I have read the Book of Mormon, and I have toured the Temple grounds.

Honestly, I am not against Utahans and Mormons, just as I am not, despite what they believe, against Nebraskans and Cornhuskers.

Sometimes I want to be funny, and I offend people.

The column was not intended to be a vicious, hostile attack, but, upon reflection and rereading what I wrote, it went over the line of propriety.

This country was founded on principles of freedom of religion and speech, and both are to be respected. I did not.

I am not writing this column under duress or threat. It’s my choice and responsibility.

I apologize to Mormons, to Utahans, to a dedicated employee of The Post who is "embarrassed," to everyone at the newspaper who has endured the wrath I caused, to my mother and sister for when I’ve poked fun at Southern Baptists and to anyone else I angered or annoyed.

Be My Valentine.

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,111%257E400621,00.html