That's a very cynical view, Kev. Of course all Beck "really wanted" was an opportunity to "foist Mormonism on others". Nothing else.
No, I just think the opportunity presented itself, and thinking as Mormons tend to think, he figured that was God's way of presenting an opportunity for the Church. And it was. Because of his blurb, hundreds of people are online trying to figure out who the heck he was talking about.
His emotion and his tears were not for President Hinckley, just crocodile tears and another "missionary opportunity". Sorry, Kev, but fortunately I haven't gone there yet. I'm still among the uninformed and the deluded, and I haven't mastered the art of mind reading.
Hey, maybe you need to attend more testimony meetings. I see this phenomenon all the time. Mormonism teaches men to put more trust in emotion than anything else. Emotion = spirituality. That's taken for granted. I had to crank up some tears on more than one occassion, especially when my mission President literally forced me to bear my testimony in front of a crowd of people who were already in tears. It was probably easier for me to do since I was just a scared kid, and the tears were actually genuine in
that sense. But there is plenty of pressure in the Church to cry. If you don't then there is a spiritual deficiency in you. So yes, I think Mormon men are able to pump out tears with little effort, or at the least, tap into their femine side at the drop of a hat.
And while you haven't gone there, I have.
“All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it...Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality." - Albert Einstein