The mainstream media’s descent into madness over their desperation to either oust the President or score a black-market DeLorean to zoom them all into 88-mile-per-hour pre-Trump oblivion has resulted in some bizarre moments.  Convention has been turned on its head, and enemies have become friends, all in the name of anything that might gain them one more night of sleep as they restlessly dream of a world where Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election.

No better example of this strange new world is Thursday’s New York Times piece by religion reporter Laurie Goodstein.  The article, profiling retiring Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake and his criticism of the President, not only features his Mormon faith, but glorifies it.  This sudden respect for non-Islamic religion — particularly the ultra-conservative Church of the Latter Day Saints — stands in stark contrast to the basic DNA of leftism.

In 2012, the Times ran a “Room for Debate” online covering Romney’s chance at the White House, wherein one writer mockingly commented, “I wouldn’t buy the underwear just yet.”  Another contributor stated that Romney’s cryptic church had “used its mobilizing genius to pursue political goals, and individual Mormons [had] obeyed like sheep.”  An anti-patriachy selection was titled “A Male Dominated World,” while another was sub-headed “There is a Dark Side to Mormonism.” The latter demeaningly stated:

“Mormons typically create their perfect world not by embracing the future, but by fetishizing the past....With no marriages outside the church, zero tolerance of homosexuality and very little coffee, the L.D.S. worldview would positively smother most Americans.  It might be smothering most Mormons; Utah's antidepressant use makes it one of the most-medicated states in the country.”

No friend to Jesus-centric religion to begin with, these attacks fit the paradigm at the time in a war against the Republican nominee.  Such belittling characterizations were ubiquitous in the leftist media in general, such as Slate’s printing of Christopher Hitchens’s “Romney’s Mormon Problem:  Mitt Romney and the Weird and Sinister Beliefs of Mormonism.”

However, following The Art of War’s directive that an enemy of an enemy is a friend, with Flake, the media now have a different attitude.  Goodstein writes:

“As a child growing up in Snowflake, Ariz., a town that his Mormon pioneer great-great-grandfather helped found in the 1870s, Senator Jeff Flake learned to sing a popular children’s hymn, ‘Choose the Right.’

“He had no trouble recalling the hymn’s words on the telephone Wednesday, a day after he took to the floor of the Senate to deliver a stinging rebuke to his party and president, and to announce that he would not run for re-election in 2018.

“His decision was political and pragmatic, he acknowledged: he faced a tough primary battle and trailed in the polls. But his revulsion at President Trump also appeared to reflect his Mormon faith.  It is a faith that puts a premium on decorum and comity, one that was born in America but is increasingly international and multicultural, and one whose young people often wear rings engraved ‘CTR’ as a reminder of the hymn, which begins, ‘Choose the right when a choice is placed before you.’”

Regarding a presentation by Flake on Tuesday which voiced decisive criticism of the President, Goodstein noted:

“Max Perry Mueller, an assistant professor of American religion at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said he heard so many religious overtones in Mr. Flake’s speech that he plans to set aside his next planned lesson for the American religious history class he teaches, and instead have his students deconstruct the senator’s remarks ‘as a Mormon speech…[It] reflects a Mormon understanding of human agency and participation in history, that humans bring about change, and move the world towards perfection,' said Professor Mueller, the author of Race and the Making of the Mormon People.”

Furthermore, Goodstein gushed:

“In the telephone interview, Mr. Flake spoke of his deep involvement with his church, of serving as a missionary in South Africa and Zimbabwe in the 1980s, and of rarely missing a Sunday service with his family in Mesa, Ariz., over his 17 years in Congress.”

It’s nice to see religion portrayed as what it is:  a longstanding pillar of society.  However, given the Times' and the Left's penchant for denigrating faith when it doesn't serve their political agenda, their sudden reverence seems more than a little transparent; it reveals the media’s religion -- which is, purely and simply, leftism.