It’s the Mormon moment.

The Republican Mormons Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman may run for president, braving more questions about whether they wear the sacred undergarment and more resistance from evangelicals who consider Mormonism an affront to Christianity.

TLC just renewed its hit “Sister Wives,” and HBO’s popular “Big Love” just had its big finale.

On Thursday, “The Book of Mormon,” by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the scatological scamps who created “South Park,” and Robert Lopez, who co-created “Avenue Q,” opened on Broadway in a confetti burst of profanity, blasphemy, hilarity and rapturous reviews. Stone called the musical “an atheist love letter to religion.”

Aside from impersonating Jennifer Lopez and Gwyneth Paltrow at the 2000 Oscars, Stone and Parker are known for mercilessly mocking religion, celebrity, phonies and Snooki in their cartoon world with the four potty-mouthed fourth-grade boys from Colorado.

They pushed the limits at Comedy Central when they put the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit. But as Terry Teachout wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “Making fun of Mormons in front of a Broadway crowd is like shooting trout in a demitasse cup. … If the title of this show were ‘The Quran,’ it wouldn’t have opened.”

Stone and Parker said they were drawn to the Rodgers and Hammerstein and Disney qualities at Mormon sites in Salt Lake City. “Mormonism has this great cheesy aesthetic,” Stone told The Journal. “When you watch their videos, it’s almost as if they’re about to flash a smile at the camera and burst into song. … Mormon cheesiness is so close to musical cheesiness.”

The Mormons in the musical are depicted just as Mormons on “South Park” were — naïve but nice.

There is one song called “Spooky Mormon Hell Dream” featuring Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, Johnnie Cochran and a couple of Starbucks coffee cups in hell. (Mormons can’t have caffeine.)

The raunchiness is offset by traditional tropes. There’s an odd-couple pairing of two 19-year-old missionaries, Elder Price, a golden goody-goody, and Elder Cunningham, a schlubby boy with a penchant for lying; and a cultural collision between white-bread missionaries and Ugandans plagued by AIDS, warlords, maggots and female genital mutilation.

“Africa is nothing like ‘The Lion King,’ ” a befuddled Price says. “I think that movie took a lot of artistic license.”

Cunningham manages to baptize a lovely young Ugandan named Nabalungi, but he keeps calling her Neosporin, Noxzema and Neutrogena.

The sly writers send up the church for its belated admission of blacks to temple ceremonies. In 1978, beset by protests, the president of the Mormons announced that God had changed his mind about black people.

But they also send up do-gooding celebrities like Bono and Angelina when the Mormon boys sing “We Are Africa.”

Some connected with the production have been monitoring the reaction of the Mormons, but so far, the church has put out one bland statement, and some Mormons who have seen the show told reporters they were pleasantly surprised. At least it doesn’t dwell on polygamy, they said, and its ribald humor seems braced by traditional values and affection for the Mormon characters.

If you already find some aspects of Mormonism exotic and strange — including its start with crystal-gazing Joseph Smith, the buried gold tablets with hieroglyphics and an angel named Moroni — the musical won’t assuage your doubts.

Smith claimed Jesus appeared to him in upstate New York. “Did you know that Jesus lived here in the USA?” calls out a Mormon boy in the musical. Elder Cunningham offers this lyric about the crucifixion: “Jesus knew he had to man up.”

Elder Price sings, “I believe that God lives on a planet called Kolob.” In Mormon scripture, God lived on or near Kolob — the inspiration for the planet Kobol in “Battlestar Galactica,” written by Glen Larson, a Mormon.

The authoritarian Mormon church still does not have equal status for women, blacks and certainly not gays. It provided the majority of the funding for California’s Prop 8 against same-sex marriage.

The Mormon boys do a tap dance wearing glittery pink vests, singing about how to switch off feeling gay: “Go flick; it’s a nifty little Mormon trick.”

When Ugandans cannot relate to Mormon history, Cunningham blends in other myths from “Lord of the Rings” and “Star Wars,” putting the Angel Moroni on the Death Star.

In the end, the message is not against Mormonism but literalism: that whatever our different myths, metaphors and rituals, the real purpose of religion is to give us a higher purpose and a sense of compassion in the universe.

“The moral,” the writer Andrew Sullivan observed on opening night, “is that religion is both insane and necessary at the same time.”

YORBA LINDA, Calif. — Most presidential libraries are as much celebrations of a president as historical repositories. They are packed with official papers, photographs, limousines, proclamations and baby shoes representing the president’s life and times; dark chapters are traditionally ignored or at least understated.

That tradition was exploded Thursday as the Watergate Gallery opened here at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. The unveiling ended a nearly yearlong struggle between national archivists and the Richard Nixon Foundation, a group of Nixon loyalists who controlled the former president’s papers until ceding them to the National Archives four years ago. The fight was over how to portray the scandal that led to Nixon’s resignation.

From the first words a visitor sees entering the gallery — a quotation from Nixon, “This is a conspiracy” — the exhibit offers a searing and often unforgiving account of one of the most painful chapters of the nation’s history. The timeline methodically chronicles the stream of misdeeds leading up to the Watergate break-in, followed by the attempts to cover it up, which led to Nixon’s resignation.

It is a far cry from the library’s original Watergate exhibition, “The Last Campaign,” created by the Nixon Foundation with the former president’s direct involvement. That installment portrayed Watergate as an orchestrated effort by Democrats to overturn the 1972 election.

Timothy Naftali, the director of the library and the curator of the exhibition, said that given the uniqueness of the Nixon presidency — starting with the fact that he was forced out of office — there was no other way to honestly depict the complicated bundle of scandals that have become known as Watergate. He said the conflict with the foundation was unavoidable.

“It was inevitable, wasn’t it?” Mr. Naftali said. “This was a private institution with a particular point of view. It was accustomed to presenting the president in a certain light. I was coming in as a professional historian who was committed to making sure the facts were known.”

Mr. Naftali said he had no interest in prolonging the disagreement with the Nixon Foundation, and declined to discuss negotiations with them.

“I would actually like the healing to start,” he said. “I’m sure they are as tired of this fight as I am.”

The archivist of the United States, David S. Ferriero, flew in for the ribbon-cutting, reflecting the national significance of the project. None of the foundation’s board members attended. The chairman, Ronald H. Walker, posted a statement on the foundation’s Web site that also appeared to take pains to end the battle.

“Nearly 40 years after President Nixon left office, Watergate remains a controversial and much-studied subject,” he said. “It is, however, just one chapter in the enormously consequential life and career of the 37th president of the United States. The new Watergate exhibit at the Nixon Library represents one interpretation of the events that led to President Nixon’s resignation in 1974.”

Sharon Fawcett, the assistant archivist for presidential libraries, said that other presidential libraries were making increased efforts to deal with difficult chapters of a presidency: Iran-contra is reflected in the Ronald Reagan library, and the library for Franklin D. Roosevelt notes his failure to respond to the Holocaust.

This one, though, is, by any measure, far more harsh. The Watergate gallery is the largest one in the museum. In tone and substance, it is nothing like what one finds in presidential libraries devoted to Truman and Hoover, for example.

The sections within the gallery have titles ranging from “Dirty Tricks and Political Espionage” to “Road to Resignation” to “The Coverup.” Panels on the wall invoke famous quotations, like “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” and one from a Time magazine editorial urging Nixon to resign, reading: “Richard Nixon and the nation have passed a tragic point of no return.”

But the Watergate exhibition is particularly evocative because the curators were able to draw on two resources not available to most presidential libraries. For one thing, it draws on some of the 2,700 hours of secret tapes Nixon recorded in the Oval Office. With the push of a button, in a technology that Mr. Naftali likened to an iPad, a visitor can hear Nixon in incriminating conversations with associates in the Oval Office. His words scrawl along in text to help listeners decipher the often scratchy recordings.

For another, the curators drew on 131 oral interviews they did with critical figures in the Nixon presidency and the scandal, in which they reflect on what happened. “We used the oral histories and the tapes to substantiate the claims that we express in these panels,” Mr. Naftali said.

In one, Alexander M. Haig, who served as a Nixon chief of staff, told Mr. Naftali that Nixon had asked him to burn the tapes and that Mr. Haig had refused. At the same time, Mr. Haig has also said that Nixon’s biggest mistake was failing to destroy the tapes. In another, George P. Shultz, who was Treasury secretary under Nixon, said he had refused Nixon’s request to help him gather information for the president’s infamous enemies list.

“I was being asked to do something improper, and I wouldn’t do it,” he said.

At one point, responding to an early version of the exhibition, the foundation filed a 150-page report requesting significant alterations. The foundation said the exhibition failed to point out, for instance, that other presidents had also surreptitiously recorded people in the White House or gone after political enemies.

Almost none of the requests made by the foundation was reflected in the final exhibition.

A steady stream of visitors walked through after the opening, among them George A. Summerhill, 73, a retired paper manufacturer from Reno, Nev.

“It’s devastating,” Mr. Summerhill said as he emerged from the end. “I mean, so many people felt Nixon betrayed his country.”

Mr. Summerhill, who said he voted for Nixon, said the exhibition was fair and belonged in any presentation devoted to Nixon’s life. “I am looking at this and watching it with mixed emotions,” he said. “I have great respect for Richard Nixon. I can look past this.”

Damascus, Syria

MY foreign friends always tell me when they visit that the comment they hear most often from taxi drivers, shop owners and others is, “In Syria, there is security.”

True, Syria does seem much more stable than its neighbors. And though I often find it difficult to ascertain the opinions of my countrymen, especially in matters concerning politics and the regime, many do believe that it’s a fair bargain: limits on personal and political freedoms in exchange for the stability that is so dear to them. And those limits are quite strict: Syria has been ruled by emergency law since 1963, under a strong-fisted security force; opposing (or even just differing) opinions can lead to arrest, imprisonment or, at the very least, travel restrictions.

For example, I have two separate restrictions, from two different branches of the security forces, that forbid me from leaving Syria. One of these was put in place simply for attending a human rights conference in a neighboring country.

This apparent lack of real discontent over the restrictions on our freedoms meant that when the revolutions across North Africa and the Middle East began in January, the Syrian regime considered itself immune to them. President Bashar al-Assad told The Wall Street Journal that the situation here was different and said that “real reform is about how to open up the society and how to start dialogue.” For years, he said, his government had been having just that dialogue with its people, and he was unconcerned about calls on Facebook and Twitter for Syrians to revolt.

But then, in early February, Syrian policemen roughed up people who had gathered to light candles for the victims of the uprisings sweeping the region. This was followed by a security crackdown and a campaign by the regime or its allies to discredit calls for reform by attributing them to Israeli conspiracies or opposition leaders. Protests began to spring up in the central square in Damascus and then moved south to Dara’a. Troops opened fire, and several protesters died. Videos of the violence spread on YouTube and Facebook.

The Syrian government now seemed to understand that it had to take this surge of unrest seriously. So last week a counselor to Mr. Assad affirmed the right to peaceful protest, assuring Syrians that government troops had been ordered not to open fire on demonstrators.

The next day, a Friday, I went out with one of my friends to join a small protest in the Hamidiyah Market in the Old City section of central Damascus. We were, all in all, just a few dozen people chanting slogans for freedom, and yet we were surrounded by hundreds of members of the security forces, who responded with chants in support of President Assad. The security forces then began to beat and arrest protesters. My friend and I slipped away from the market and headed to Marja Square, just outside the Old City, where — it turned out — even more security forces were waiting for us.

First, they went after those photographing and recording the demonstration with their mobile phones. Then they began to hit the rest of us with batons and sticks. Dozens were arrested. (They are still in police custody, but we don’t know where.)

After that, the security forces were joined by other young men, apparently civilians, who formed themselves into a march for President Assad. This demonstration the guards allowed to be photographed and recorded. And, in the evening, state television reported on the marches all over Damascus in support of Mr. Assad.

That same day, the situation worsened elsewhere in Syria, when security forces violently oppressed protests in the cities of Homs and Latakia. Dozens of peaceful protesters were killed in Dara’a.

When the international community condemned the violence, the Syrian regime began to blame “armed groups,” from inside and outside the country, for killing the civilians in Dara’a as well as members of the security forces. The official Syrian position on the motives and nationality of the armed men changes often: sometimes they are Palestinian or Jordanian; sometimes they are working at the behest of foreign operatives from Israel or the United States. An Egyptian-American was even arrested on charges of espionage and, on state television, made a transparently false confession to inciting the protests and to being paid 100 Egyptian pounds ($17) for each photo he took.

This conspiracy theory, to which the regime continues to cling and of which many Syrians have been convinced, means that there are conflicting reports of the violence in places like Latakia. Eyewitness reports of what happened there last weekend vary: some say security forces opened fire on a peaceful protest; others spoke of snipers on the rooftops shooting civilians and security forces alike; still others of cars using loudspeakers to stir up the residents of different neighborhoods of the city against one another on sectarian grounds. What is certain is that people are now dead.

And it is also clear that these “armed groups” attacked only those protesters asking for freedom and reform, those who rally for those killed in Dara’a and elsewhere, who call out “peaceful, peaceful.” One can’t help but wonder why the police did nothing to protect these small groups of demonstrators. Some commentators close to the Syrian regime have justified this lack of action by saying that the security forces could not defend civilians because of President Assad’s orders not to fire.

Meanwhile, the pro-government marches, which state television claimed involved millions of people, were not interrupted by a single bullet. No one was killed or attacked. These demonstrators held signs with language like “O Bashar, don’t be concerned — you have a people that drinks blood.” But not a single sign was raised in memory of the dead at Dara’a and Latakia.

Syria has degenerated into chaos and bloodshed so quickly in these past few weeks that I keep thinking: was our stability, our distinguishing characteristic, ever even true? The government tells us that if the regime falls the country could devolve into sectarian chaos. Perhaps that is so. But what did the ruling Baath party — the leader of our state and society, according to the Syrian Constitution — accomplish over the last 48 years if that is so?

And then came President Assad’s speech on Wednesday.

I was waiting for a different speech, one that spoke of holding those who fired on protesters accountable, that announced the end of the emergency laws, that called for closing the files of political prisoners and amending the Constitution to create greater freedoms. But what we saw instead was a show of power by Mr. Assad and a show of loyalty by the members of the Parliament. There was a clear declaration that anyone who continued to protest, to request our rights, to petition for the future of our country, was nothing but a troublemaker.

Because of his speech, many of those Syrians who called for reform will now begin calling for regime change.