Great post Jesse - good points about the "Magic Underwear" - publishing that commentary was totally unacceptable!

While the comments were unacceptable, it's hard for me to boycott TechCrunch because of a few bad apples. Like too much stuff in the blog world, racism, women bashing, and general disregard for fellow humans somehow gets published under the guise of journalism. Until this changes, bloggers will not get the credit they deserve. Shame on them for publishing this trash.

You know, I read the story, and I thought it was funny. I have many friends who are former mormons and they'd laugh their asses off at this. I don't see anything wrong with making fun of magic crucifixes, either. I was brought up catholic and still am a believer, but I understand where others don't, and I think it's ok if they make fun of me for it, and anyone else. I make fun of babtists and snake handlers for taking things far to literally. Does that make me a bigot? I make fun of the far religious right for using the bible as a tool to discriminate against those of other religions, which is horrible. Does that make me a bigot? I make fun of the mormons for arranging marriages for their teenaged daughters and having no tollerance for people who aren't white americans. Does that make me a bigot?

No, it doesn't. It makes me someone willing to point out the deficiencies in religion, all of them, including catholocism. Now quit the witch hunt, you're only making it more fun to laugh at you.

Brian I have a challenge for you:

Follow the terms, "Catholic", "Mormon", "Baptist", and "Jew" on Google Blogs via rss. Also track it on Twitter. Now count the number of posts making fun of each.

I do that, because it's related to the business I own. I can tell you that far and wide Mormons get ridiculed the most. I know Mormons are sick of it - they take this stuff personally, because it's part of their identity, and it's getting worse over time. They hear this stuff almost daily! Sure, your ex-Mormon friends may laugh at it because they are no longer Mormon and it's no longer a part of their identity.

You also don't make fun of Mormons or Catholics or Baptists in such public forums as TechCrunch do you? TechCrunch gets thousands of visitors a day that are looking for anything but religion, it was inappropriate for them to post that nonsense in such a public forum.

I agree that making fun of garments isn't particularly funny, and it does get pretty old to see important parts of our religion and doctrine ridiculed on a daily basis, but I actually had a different reaction to Teller's comments. The point that he was making was not that we wear funny underwear, but rather that as yet, he has been unsuccessful convincing an active Mormon girl to sleep with him. I think that is a wonderful commentary on the fact that unlike so many other ostensibly conservative religious people, we actually live the religion we claim to believe in. Good for those LDS girls that showed Teller what it means to be a Mormon girl!!

Some of the Mormon faith themselves have criticized me for being critical of Crunchgear. From Elder Jeffery R. Holland himself: "We cannot stand on the sidelines while others attempt to define what the church teaches". I think, as a Mormon, it's my duty to ensure correct information is getting disseminated (no, my underwear is not magic, and no - it's not right to make fun of anyone's religion!). I'm perplexed at the Mormons criticizing my remarks and why they think I'm wrong.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/LDSWebGuy/~3/222696687/

Here's the video, embedded:

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Personally, I found it offensive too. However, I'm not boycotting all of the TechCrunch network. It is quite clear to me that, while all owned by TechCrunch, CrunchGear is a very different blog. It is run by completely different people and appears to have complete control over its own content without oversight by Arrington and crew.

However, I have boycotted CrunchGear and removed them from my feed list. This despite the fact that they have been good to me in the past. I even won a prize in their 1st anniversary contests, but I just can't look past their insensitive comments.

My view is that CrunchGear isn't a very professional blog and TechCrunch should probably get rid of them because if they keep it up, they could be a liability.

Andy, I see your points. I'm finding it very hard to boycott TechCrunch altogether. While Mike Arrington himself has defended his employees at Crunchgear (see phil801.com), it's really hard to avoid TechCrunch! I've removed them from my reader, but they are on Techmeme, and linked from other sites so often it's easy to still come across them. I guess if we boycott TechCrunch completely, we must also boycott Sony, whom they were promoting, and of course, Penn & Teller. I won't stand to hear things like that, and you bet I'll defend any religion that is criticized like that, but boycotting may not be the best solution.