The angels — or, at least, the critics — are already singing the praises of HBO’s yet-to-air, six-hour adapatation of Angels in America, Tony Kushner’s epic play about Reagan, AIDS, Roy Cohn, and (naturally) God. But much of the mainstream press simply nods toward the play’s theological concerns. Chris Jones of The Chicago Tribune, though, understands that angels are more than harpists with wings. The play (and the movie), he writes, “returns constantly to two central questions. Can one find spiritual salvation from a cruel world without also taking on the ideological and historical baggage of a traditional religion? And, if so, what sort of spiritualism might that be?” Jones turns to religion and media guru Stuart M. Hoover among others for answers, but the best parts of his article are the questions he asks about media’s role in shaping, even inventing, theological responses to worldly matters. The New York Times, meanwhile cracks wise and ends up sounding stupid — TV critic Alessandra Stanleywrites that a Mormon’s character’s “withering insight” in itself constitutes apostasy, since, apparently, Mormonism forbids critical thinking. The Revealer wonders when Mormons became the new Polacks, fair game for dumb jokes in respectable papers. Not that Mormons themselves are above a few LDS yuks…