Monday, September 14, 2009
Rants on Ponzi Tithing
Posted By Eric S. Peterson on September 14, 2009, 2:47 PM
An AP story about convicted Ponzi mastermind Val Southwick and his $202,000 worth of tithing being returned to victims by the LDS church set the SL Trib’s comment boards let loose with another typically inane holy war between anonymous and overly zealous defenders of the faith fielding potshots by the crazily anti-mo crowd.---
The story, while brief, noted that the con artist Southwick, who’s Ponzi empire fleeced hundreds of hapless victims out of roughly $142 million. Southwick was known for sealing deals with unwitting investors by flashing his temple recommend and even concluding business deals by sharing trips to LDS temples with newly recruited investors.
The AP story was brief enough to cause many an angry and anonymous (of course) commenter to ask the question of how come $202,000 was given back when your ten percent tithing of $142 million should be $14.2 million.
While the article indicated that $202,000 was all the tithing they had received from Southwick, still the comment boards went crazy. It certainly gives one pause to think how such an online “dialogue” can accomplish anything meaningful when people feel free to shit out all their nasty, mean-spirited vitriol with the impunity of someone knowing they can do it completely anonymous and completely without accountability.
On the Trib’s site, for example, getting voted “down” by more than six votes by all the ivy-leaguers on the comment boards results in the post being hidden from view unless you go the trouble of clicking on the button to un-hide the post.
Clicking that button on one post, I was expecting to reveal the worst of the worst in small minded jeremiads. Instead I found a post suggesting to all the haters: “how about turning to something productive like getting involved in your community, donating your time to a good cause that helps people out.”
Silly mcd1994, why help out a real community when you can sell crazy on a supposed “online” community.
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