Resigning. JON HUNTSMAN, Jr., 50, after serving one year as U.S. ambassador to China. The son of billionaire businessman and philanthropist JON HUNTSMAN and grandson of LDS Apostle DAVID B. HAIGHT, Huntsman is reportedly exploring a 2012 Republican presidential bid.
Excised. FRED HUNTING, who played the part of the apostle John in the 1991 temple film. Bloggers report that Hunting’s image has been carefully edited out of the film and replaced with that of a different actor. A Fred Hunting signed the Reconciliation Petition Request at ldsapology.org asking that Church leaders re-examine the “ways in which official statements, rhetoric, policy and practice have been injurious to gays and lesbians,” but it has not been confirmed that this is the same Fred Hunting.
Died. Historian BRIGHAM D. MADSEN, 96, of natural causes. Madsen, who in 1954 resigned his position at BYU over academic freedom issues, had a long career at the University of Utah as a teacher, researcher, and administrator. An expert in the history of Utah and the American West, Madsen produced an edition of B.H. Robert’s controversial Studies of the Book of Mormon (1985) and an autobiography, Against the Grain: Memoirs of a Western Historian (1998).
Convicted. Self-proclaimed prophet BRIAN DAVID MITCHELL, 57, for the 2002 kidnapping and rape of ELIZABETH SMART. After deliberating for five hours, the jury rejected the defense’s claim that Mitchell had been insane when he had abducted the 14-year-old girl from her Salt Lake City home and took her as a “plural wife.” Smart, now 23, temporarily returned from her LDS mission in Paris, France, to testify. In 2009, Mitchell’s wife WANDA BARZEE was sentenced to 15 years for her role in the kidnapping.
Released. The FBI file of former LDS President and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture EZRA TAFT BENSON (1899–1994), including confidential letters that President Benson sent to then-FBI director J. EDGAR HOOVER. In the letters, Benson, a firm believer in a worldwide Communist conspiracy, defends the work of the John Birch Society, condemns DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER for being soft on Communism, and asks Hoover to conduct background checks on Benson’s top aides in the Department of Agriculture. Last October the New Yorker magazine listed Benson as one of the Tea Party’s “confounding fathers”, noting that “Glenn Beck’s view of American history stems from the paranoid politics of the fifties.”
Too Hot. For Deseret Book, The Scorch Trials, the new young adult novel by best-selling author JAMES DASHNER. The book reportedly contains graphic scenes of violence and expressions such as “damn,” “this sucks,” and “shuck it.” Deseret Book’s managing director of marketing, GAIL HALLADAY, told the Salt Lake Tribune that the book “contains language that some of our customers would find offensive.” Dashner has published three books with Deseret Book’s imprint Shadow Mountain.
Debuting. TREY PARKER and MATT STONE’s The Book of Mormon, a Broadway musical which Vogue magazine is calling “the filthiest, most offensive, and—surprise—sweetest thing you’ll see on Broadway this year, and quite possibly the funniest musical ever.” Written in collaboration with Avenue Q composer ROBERT LOPEZ, and peppered with foul language and adult themes, the musical centers on two 19-year-old Mormon missionaries who are sent to Uganda.
Televised: On 23 January 2011, a fictional Sunstone Symposium session on HBO’s series Big Love. In it, Barb (the first wife of Bill Henrickson) played by Jeanne Tripplehorn participates with her mother on a panel session addressing the effects of excommunication on a family.
Hairy. Former BYU football player and current Steelers defensive end Brett “Diesel” Keisel who grew an epic beard for luck in the 2011 Super Bowl. He suggested that if the Steelers won the game, BYU officials could “Maybe have a ‘Diesel Day’ or ‘Diesel Week’ where everybody [on BYU campus] can let their beard [grow] for a month or so.” However, the Steelers lost.
