Good Mormon USA!

So, the Republicans have finally got an official Presidential candidate who isn't howlingly mad (i.e. not Palin or Ron Paul).

Or have they? OK, Mitt Romney ticks all the boxes for a candidate from any party: hugely rich, privileged and ideologically well to the right. But what caught my eye is his Mormon belief. Now as far as I'm concerned, any religious belief is akin to mental illness (whether you agree with a Vengeful God or a Nice God, you'd still rather think that somebody deliberately made Auschwitz, plague and Justin Bieber rather than accept that physics brought them about without regard for our feelings).

But Mormonism. Wow, that's crazy. And offensive, especially when you get to the bit about Americans being the chosen people. I've never quite got why God would go 'eeny meeny miny mo' when it comes to humanity, and it's certainly clear enough that Somalians, for instance, haven't come in for any special treatment - unless from the Vengeful Smiting God), but there's something rather unpleasant about Joseph Smith announcing that Americans are the Special Ones. You can bet he didn't mean African-Americans or Native Americans, too: black people were only recently permitted entry to the priestly caste in 1978. Apparently Christ did have a go with the natives, but they didn't take to it.

What of other Mormon beliefs. Well, like Catholicism, it's male supremacist, which is why you only get neatly-dressed young men wearing out your door bell. We'll pass over the polygamy: like mainstream Christianity dropping social justice when it made a pact with political power, most Mormons quietly dropped this when Joseph Smith got Utah into the Union after Missouri chucked them out for staging a violent insurrection (wonder what Romney thinks of that). Smith was lynched while awaiting trial for treason.

This is the Joseph Smith who was given the new texts of Mormonism on solid gold plates, dropped off by an angel. Solid gold plates that he carelessly mislaid.

Oh yes, and Mitt Romney will be wearing the special and compulsory Mormon Religious Underpants.

I'm uncomfortable with anyone religious wielding power, because I want them to answer to and act on behalf of their citizens, not their religious beliefs. Perhaps I'm more bothered by Romney because his chosen sect is so recent and therefore merely looks more bonkers than Catholicism or Islam.

There are plenty of reasons to find Romney repulsive, starting with all his revolting hard-right policies. But I still think that anyone who has to wear special undercrackers shouldn't have the nuclear launch codes.

Man Ray (LaMontagne)

Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Ray LaMontagne, of whom I'd only read in Word magazine. (Thanks, by the way, for your comments). Why do all American musicians have beards at the moment, except Kelly Deal? Talking of Kelly Deal, she really is the perfect woman: she's designed her own font and it's free! Her band The Breeders have a site called Breeder's Digest, which is rather brilliant.

I went because Christine and James had managed to book an extra ticket in a different area of the venue - so I ended up on my own, in the balcony, directly in front of the singer - brilliant. Less brilliant was sitting next to a yummy mummy and her daughters Portia and India (I'm guessing). Clearly Mr. LaMontagne and his support act, Radio 2-friendly Josh Ritter, are approved objects of middle-class desire. After they sneered at the scruffy fat singleton in a Green Lantern t-shirt, I sipped beer and read my Shakespeare commentary during the intervals. That showed them.

So anyway, the music. It was odd. I'd heard of LaMontagne and Ritter, and assumed that they were middlingly well-known sensitive folk-country artistes, and so they are. I didn't realise that Mr. Lamontagne is the object of freakish devotion - a mostly full hall (probably 2500) at £25 a go in Wolverhampton is truly astonishing. They whistled, stamped and cheered like Mormons at Joseph Smith's resurrection (don't write in - I've no idea if Mr Smith is expected to rise again, though I imagine the Church would like to know the whereabouts of the golden tablets detailing the Semitic origins of America's ancient peoples he 'received from the prophet/angel/time-traveller Moroni' and then 'misplaced' or 'returned to the angel' before anyone else got a look. Actually, Some Chilean Woman could enlighten us). But I digress. LaMontagne's music was good. It was country-folk-blues and the later the set got, the more impassioned he became. The band was beautifully lit in pools of liquid, varying light, and they stood on rugs, which added to the 1970s atmosphere.

Actually, they reminded me of the post-Slowdive band Mojave 3 but more country, which is high praise from me (listen to some here)!

Then home for the glorious, ambiguous and complex ending to The Wire… Here's LaMontagne on somebody's crappy mobile phone from a couple of years ago, in Wolverhampton. There's nothing up yet from last night's gig.