The dirty-movie option on the remote control at that Marriott hotel where you were planning to stay on your next business trip is under siege by a clutch of conservative groups, including the American Family Association, a pack of Tupelo, Mississippi Bible-thumpers. A news release put out by that merry band reports that a letter signed by forty-seven "pro-family leaders" has been sent to the CEO of Marriott International, Inc., demanding that the chain stop offering the option of "adult entertainment" as part of its pay-per-view service. Marriott's vice president of communications, Bruce Conor, responded that, ""Every guest can quickly and easily block out just the adult movie offering by either calling the front desk or using their (TV) remote pad in the room. It does not appear at all if the guest does not want the offering." Conor chose to play dumb and act as if he didn't get the real thrust (go ahead and snicker, Beavis) of the AFA's plan for a better America: that real "pro-family leaders" don't watch dirty movies, and if they have to do without, by God, so are the rest of us. (To fully appreciate just how hard it is to make it from the cradle to the grave without watching smut until your eyeballs fall out, you probably have to have lived in Tupelo, Mississippi, and understand just how much the occasional stag reel would count for as a break from staring at the same four fake-wood-paneled walls. I drove through there once myself. You remember that freaky little kid in the Twilight Zone who was always wishing people he was mad at "to the cornfield"? This is where they went.)
The AFA recently ended a two-year boycott of Ford Motor Company, which it was made at for such transgressions as making "donations to groups that support same-sex marriage", saying that they'd broken the Satanic corporation, so apparently they needed new mountains to climb. For its part, Ford responded that it had cut back on its charitable contributions because they lost more than two and half billion dollars last year, which the pro-family forces probably think is their doing. So if you're a laid-off Ford employee, and you've always wanted to visit Elvis's birthplace anyhow...