Mormons hearing the same old story

Newsflash! Mormons are misunderstood and unliked.

Recently, it was announced that most Americans don't understand what a Mormon is — and, ohmyheck — have an "unfavorable view" of Mormons.

That revelation — ahem, so to speak — was made by a national pollster last week in Salt Lake City.

Memo to pollster: This was news — about 180 years ago.

Get back to us when there's a new development.

Well, maybe you'd expect something had changed since then due to, oh, thousands of missionaries, Donny and Marie, Mitt Romney, Steve Young, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley on "60 Minutes," the 2002 Winter Olympics, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, numerous disaster relief efforts, TV ads, etc.

And yet public opinion pollster Gary Lawrence said 67 percent of Americans don't know if Mormons believe in the Bible; 77 percent don't know if Mormons are Christians; 75 percent believe Mormons practice polygamy.

In other words, it's the same old story.

Mormons feel about as understood as a teenage girl.

There's more. Lawrence said 49 percent of Americans have an "unfavorable impression" of Mormons.

That's old news, too — but it still hurts. Let's be honest, we Mormons want to be liked and accepted like everyone else. We rush out to claim with open arms any celebrity who had a cup of (decaffeinated) coffee in Salt Lake City or had some remote connection with Mormonism. We're so desperate for acceptance and recognition that we tried to claim Steve Martin, Elvis and Christina Aguilera, who may or may not have been a former Relief Society president.

I kid! I kid!

We considered it a compliment that Howard Hughes — who saved his fingernails and urine in bottles — preferred to surround himself with Mormons because he could trust them.

Great.

Right now we feel like Sally Field in reverse — You don't like me; you really, really don't like me!

We want to be liked, of course, but not at the expense of our dignity (BUT WHAT IS IT? THE WHITE SHIRTS? THE JELL-O JOKES? TOO MUCH DONNY? OR MARIE? PLEASE, TELL US — WE'LL TRY HARDER!)