Is this for real?
May 18th, 2007 by Glenn
My mom sent me this sound-byte by email. From all the “from and to” email addresses I could see it had changed hands a few times. Anyone else heard this? Is it for real, or a hoax?
It sounds like it starts out as a legitimate news cast but then when it goes to the traffic report it sounds like someone intentionally tacked this on to make it sound genuine. But the way it ends certainly does not sound like a real radio broadcast to me.
Either way, I think it says a lot about the impact of Mormon culture/tradition in the ways we think and speak (not to mention the traditional expectations surrounding media-culture as well). I think these kinds of “slip-ups” into Mormon-speak are fairly common, although, again, this one seems a little fishy.
And really, the more I think about it — my mom’s email trail goes back to people in Arizona. This could be a hoax originally intended for non-Utah Mormons as a way of supporting the Utah-Mormon stereotype. Maybe I’m wrong — it wouldn’t be the first time. Let me know what you think.
STANDBY="Loading Windows Media Player components..." TYPE="application/x-oleobject"> WIDTH="220" HEIGHT="250" ShowControls="1" ShowStatusBar="1" ShowDisplay="1" autostart="0">
I thought it was fishy too, or that the lady did it on purpose on a dare or something. But when my wife heard it she said she has done similar things. When she worked at McDonalds she once accidentally said, “Thank you for choosing McDonalds, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.” And she once greeted a car in the drive thru with “Dear Heavenly Father.” I think it’s really strange, but she assures me it happened. So I guess it’s possible that the traffic lady would make the same kind of slip up.
I was wishing the clip would end with the radio host saying, “Amen.”
This topic has brought back a strange memory. When I was in high school in Texas, I was in the Air Force Junior ROTC. One of the things we had to do was taken turns leading the entire school (of about 3000 students) in the pledge of allegiance. I was terrified that I would accidentally use the standard Mormon closing phrase. Church was the only palce I ever spoke publicly with any regularity, so I suppose I thought I would automatically switch into that mode. It didn’t happen, of course, but the fact that I worried about that (instead of worrying that I would forget the words, or faint, or whatever) is interesting.
Tom,
Your wife’s McDonald’s mitake is understandable given my own wife’s revelation about McDonald’s the first time I brougt her to Japan. She walked in to the McDonalds in Hiroshima and was impressed that no matter where you go in the world, the McDonald’s is always the same. “What a comfort,” she joked, “McDonald’s must be true.”
Okay — I just heard that there is a version of this being passed around where the “goof up” is accredited to her drinking too much cough syrup. This is so a hoax. I’ll bet my pinky toe on it. Anyone come across the “cough syrup” variant? Are there other variants out there? The one my mom sent me only said “Listen to the complete news cast from Utah” — but apparently there is at least one larger narrative circulating out there. If anyone comes across it, let me know.
This may be true based on my experiences.
I caught myself asking an employee to ’start us off with a word of prayer’ at our weekly meeting. What made it really awkward is that I live in Ohio and am the only member at my company; so noone else had a clue where that came from.