The Mormon Mask

 Mitt Romney takes some time to enjoy a Full House rerun

Mitt Romney says he lives for laughter. In a futile attempt to appear down to earth and human, he's spoken to the press many times about droll pranks he often plays on members of the Romney brood. Classmates recall a young Mitt Romney dressing up in a cop uniform and pulling motorists over- just for shiggles (shits and giggles) I guess. I hope to god this isn't true, for Romney's sake of course. 

The venerable James Lipton has apparently spent his time away from Inside the Actors Studio examining Governor Romney's laugh, and he's not impressed. 

All jokes aside, I can't help agreeing with him. Americans certainly don't care if their president is a stand up comic, but he or she at least has to have a lighter side.  Romney doesn't laugh for fun it seems. He tends to laugh to diffuse tense or awkward moments, which in turn makes all of us feel tense and awkward.

But I'm going to throw Mitt a bone here. Perhaps his awkwardness isn't an inherent part of his personality, but an effect of his Mormon upbringing. I ran across an article detailing something called "the Mormon mask".  This is apparently a thing. The reasoning goes that Mormons have historically faced skepticism and even hostility from those around them. The mask is essentially a defense mechanism that allows LDS members to simply grin and bear it/kill them with kindness/make their haters their motivators. This would definitely explain Romney's tendency to laugh awkwardly when faced with a direct attack. At the same time, I'm skeptical of the whole thing. Yes, Mitt has probably experienced discrimination against his faith, but his privileged upbringing likely shielded him from harsher attacks. 

Despite all the speculation, Romney's personal faith shouldn't be a deciding factor in one's decision to vote for him or not, but as the first Mormon nominee for President, it opens the doors to further analyze a unique and often misunderstood set of beliefs.