CrunchGear

I must say, you guys were terribly insensitive on several fronts. I don’t see how CrunchGear can be called a professional blog. I’ll just get my news from Engadget from now on.

Loved the interview! I didn’t find it a bit insensitive, just quite funny…

I guess it’s cool to bash Mormons nowdays. If I wanted to read more of it, I would go somewhere I would expect to find it…not CrunchGear. Consider me “unsubscribed” from here on out. You’re pathetic.

Hey, I’m an ex-mormon(haven’t gone to church since I was a wee lad) and I think this interview was just perfect Penn humor. I can see you guys were fans of his, and y’all seemed to kinda click. Makes interviews more fun… And don’t listen to those other guys. Nothing wrong with being alil Un-PC. People just need to stop taking everything so seriously these days.

Keep up the good work!

Glad to see bigotry is still alive and well in America. :p

I saw those saddles in an electronics shop in Tokyo, 2003.
It’s an exercise device you can use while sitting on your ass and watching tv.

hmmm…

I saw more about Mormons from the interviewers than from Penn. And Penn was surprisingly reserved with his comments. In fact, his comments were actually complimentary–though backhanded (Mormon girls are apparently prudish, but true to their faith). I’ve actually gained a little respect for the eccentric Penn, and lost a whole lot for the bigots who interviewed him.

What’s really amazing is that, while you folks at CrunchGear are generally irreverent with your content (which is sometimes funny and seldom bothers me), it’s also almost always relevant to consumer electronics. But this bit about Mormons is entirely out of place here, and, because of the belittling comments, actually negatively effects the value of this blog.

I’m not going to unsubscribe yet, but if this sort of thing continues, then I will. I’ll see if you guys can redeem yourselves.

Oh come on guys, this is the best interview ever! It’s hilarious!!!

Loved it!

Crucnhgear has more personality than Engadget and Gizmodo combined.

More != better.

Welcome to the land of people who take themselves too seriously. What’s that old saying “everything with a grain of salt.” Sure some of the things might have been crude. I’m Christian and could be totally outraged by the language and a few other things, but guess what, there are bigger things in the world to get worked up over.

It was a funny interview. Has everyone become so “PC” that we can’t laugh at one another now and then? Get over yourselves you morons.

CG keep up the awesome work! You guys do a great job or making tech news interesting and readable.

Wow, there are some tight-sphinctered commenters here. Remove the stick, people. A little Mormon underwear humor never hurt anyone.

Religious bigots, eh? Well, I find it happy that said bigots would probably point at the Mormons and call them hypocrites for thinking they’re better than other people. I guess they don’t understand the meaning of the word irony.

Eric, that doesn’t even make sense.

It would be different if Mormons had a big banner on all their churches that said, “We’re better than you, so shut up.” No, their religion teaches more tolerance than most, in fact the Mormon Church is one of the worlds largest donors of humanitarian aid on the globe. That was “DONOR”, as in “nothing in return”.

These guys clearly provoked Penn, and as others here have noticed Penn was the least crude about it of any of them. Apparently Matt has the best ever email about a mormon wedding night, which is likely filed in his email right between the guy from Zimbabwe trying to give him a Million dollars to help him leave the country and Bill Gates paying you to forward emails.

Funny, sure.
A bit crude? No problem.
Unabashed, repeated and blatant disregard for a whole segment of society that hasn’t ever harmed these guys based around false information and the credibility of an email about a wedding? If it’s not bigotry, it sure is ignorant, which makes me sad these guys have such a voice.

Why don’t you guys pick on someone that’s really deserving of your derision? Like gays. I make fun of gays all the time, with their interior design and affinity for the butt. Man, that’s some funny, weird stuff!

umm. Let’s just be chill with everyone. I don’t know why we’ve got to laugh at anyone’s expense. BTW: These guys are bastards.

I will be removing CrunchGear and TechCrunch from my RSS feed. Does it make you feel cool to degrade a group of people? You have not an ounce of class.

I don’t care what religion or culture you are. No one should accept this - I too am unsubscribing from TechCrunch and CrunchGear, as hopefully are all my blog’s readers.

This was just plain obnoxious, offensive, and stupid. Get out of the gutter, please.

Very poor choice… Bye Chrunch. Politics and religion mix better than bigots and techiphiles.

Very bad idea, TechCrunch. Mick Arrington ought to be ashamed of himself. I expect an apology soon. Well probably not Arrington is a a-hole. Good work guys…good work!

This is what you call an interview? What does half this stuff have to do with technology? If this is the type of content you’re featuring, then I too will no longer visit your sites and will encourage friends/family to stop as well.

Truly pathetic - replace “Mormon” with “gay”, “black”, or any other minority, and you’d have a public outrage demanding you apologize for such saturated bigotry. When has it become acceptable to Mormon bash as you’ve done here?

Goodbye, all things Crunch.

Everyone please welcome the “PC” freaks to the table. Some of you are reading too far into this. You’re acting as though Matt & Devin were walking around with little white hoods on their heads, torching the Book of Mormon and dragging a dummy of Joseph Smith behind them. Chill out!

If you were sitting at that table, and the word “Your Mom” was being used instead of Mormon, would you just sit there and laugh? Matt and Devin wouldn’t, I am sure.

Making fun of a religion you know nothing about isn’t classy, its dumb. I’ve heard plenty of mormon jokes that still make me laugh to this day because there was understanding and some respect there.

Why do people have to wait until someone is torching a religious book or a prophet in effigy and wearing KKK clothes before it’s “too far”?

And how long do we have to wait before we’re too afraid to speak our minds on anything because we’re too afraid someone will take offense? It’s not like we were joking about rounding up a lynch mob. Do I have to read your sacred text before I say I don’t believe? Do I have to wear the Pope’s hat before I say it’s ridiculous? Please. We live in a multicultural world here and you’d better thicken up that skin if you can’t take a little teasing about an admittedly unusual practice. Frankly, it’s offensive to me that you’re even TAKING offense at something so trifling.

For me, mormons are kind of the low hanging fruit right now of the world. You can make fun of them because typically they won’t make fun of you back, nor will they really take offense.

It’s still annoying.

(disclosure: I’m mormon.)

Consider the following, people: This was interview with a notoriously outspoken atheist who goes out of his way to challenge everyone’s beliefs and dogmas in everything from religion to simple everyday things. In fact, he reason this story is interesting is because such a controversial guy is getting a hookup with Sony of all people to put this kind of stuff out every day. And people are getting up in arms because we’re giving Mormons a hard time about one of their traditions. If we made fun of the pope’s hat, would we have gotten the same problem?

Sure, We talk about the technical aspects of his show, some of his gadgets and such, but did you think he was going to just restrict himself to bus speeds and gigabytes? The guy makes a living from controversy and he’d already thrown down the Mormon thing and the nun/Clinton thing in front of an audience of hundreds and broadcast it around the world. We mentioned it in the interview and cautioned him that the next guy was indeed a mormon. A guy we had already joked about this stuff with. Joked WITH! This wasn’t Mormon-bashing, it was Mormon-ribbing.

Please, Devin.

You and Matt kept it floating much longer than Penn did. He ONLY replied to YOU starting it, in fact.

Since I was actually present at the interview and helped paraphrase and transcribe it, Robert, I think I’ll tell YOU how it went down. He replied to our *warning* with a bit about not knowing anyone who’d ever slept with a mormon girl.

Anyway, I’m not trying to shift the blame because there’s no blame to be shifted. We were having a conversation and we all happened to agree there was some silly stuff going on with mormons - as we would have if the next guy were catholic, or buddhist, or russian, or whatever. I assure you that if he had chosen any other topic, we would have found something to laugh about, but since he had already broached that subject in his presentation, and the guy coming in next was in fact mormon, we happened to land on mormons as the topic.

Bashing…ribbing…joking. It’s all just perspective. Imus was just “ribbing” those Rutgers basketball players, too, right?

In fact, I think Imus was just ribbing, but look at the outrage that caused. I don’t find your comments personally offensive (as a Mormon). You can’t hurt my feelings, you just sound like idiots to me. What’s disgusting is that since it was about Mormons, you seem to think it’s ok…just good-natured ribbing, right? But do you honestly expect us to believe that you’d do that same kind of joking about gays, blacks, etc.?

Finally, stop trying to deflect your own responsibility to Penn. You and Matt both made your own derogatory comments about Mormons, regardless of Penn’s comments. He’s responsible for his own comments, but you are not guiltless in it, so lay off the “Penn said it first!” defense, dude.

Devin, your foot’s going further into your mouth every time you speak. It’s not the same as if you were making fun of the Pope’s hat. Frankly, if you were making fun of Gordon B. Hinckley himself I don’t think you would have the outrage you have. You have to put it more at the level of making fun of the “magic yarmulke” Jews wear - what you are attacking is personal to Mormons, something each person in their religion personally wears as a symbol of their devotion to God. You are attacking something that is part of every Mormon out there, and are attacking Mormons’ individuality by your comments. You said:

“Yeah, we were making fun of Mormons and he mentioned he’s from Utah and we were like, “Um, are you Mormon?” And he is.”

Now imagine if you said instead,

“Yeah, we were making fun of Jews and he mentioned he’s from New York and we were like, “Um, are you Jew?” And he is.”

I don’t think Jews would think it was very funny you were making fun of them. Me personally? I don’t take it personally, but the fact that it’s “okay” for you to post such an interview in such a public forum does offend me. Bigotry in America needs to go away.

This is all so lame…..!!!! If Matt & Devin were talking about Scientologists I highly doubt anyone would care. Bigotry in America is not the problem, “PC” nut jobs are. There is a whole rant here I can go on, but I will spare everyone the pleasure of reading it. I live in Southern California and come from a Hispanic family. You don’t see me getting all up in arms whenever I hear someone make a “Mexican” joke. Give me a break all of you! It kills me that people in this country can get so self righteous. Why not put your petty energy to good use and lobby the Chinese or Burmese governments for free speech. If you knuckleheads want to get offended about something why not get offended at the fact that people in this world are still thrown in prison for speaking their minds. If you that seems too far over some of your heads then try living by these words, “turn the other cheek.”

That “One Got Fat” vid was so fucked up…

I wrote cocmast instead of comcast

ha

Gah, give me a break, its like no one can say anything anymore in this damn country without someone wanting to go cry to big brother.

Mormons wear funny magic underwear, fact. Bigotry only happens when you an intent to harm in your statements and frankly I saw no attempt to harm, simply humor. Humor that most of you hypocrites above would laugh at if you could get past your own self righteous indignation.

Part of understanding and accepting is humor and questioning, and also being able to take it in stride based on the context. Stop getting upset over this sort of thing when there are plenty of real things to be worked up over. But its like they said, this is typical for Penn and his style of in your face reality, no apologies, no holds barred. Its a breath of fresh air if you ask me.

Nice interview guys, I find it amazing that he has half a terabyte of music, and even more frightened by the fact that I know between myself and my other half we have more then that ourselves -_-’

This is horrible. I was sent the email address to this form a friend. We are both mormonand this isn’t even funny. Just because you don’t nderstand our religion does not give you the right to talk down on us. You just showed your level of ignorance in this “interview”. Mormonsdont talk down on other religions. We don’t think we are better than anyone else. This was totally out of place.

I’m Mormon, I was directed to this article by others saying how awful it was. I thought it was stupid, but in all honesty I am so used to this that it’s no skin off my back. Sure, I won’t like Penn any more (I don’t think I ever did anyway), but I’m not so offended that blood is gushing out of my eyes…

By the way, my underwear is very comfortable.

Questions? Answers: http://www.mormon.org

ummm WoW…