One of the aspects of This Travelin’ Life that I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned is the complimentary copies of USA Today that hotels distribute. While it’s not a paper I read under typical circumstances, it’s kinda comforting to find the issue waiting outside my door when I head out for breakfast during these trade show trips. This morning, I took my copy down with me and read it over migas and coffee. Lots of coffee.
The lead article in today’s Life section was “Mainline pulls in Protestants,” discussing a trend that may or may not be occurring among christians. I wasn’t interested in reading it until I noticed the headline for the story on its second-page jump: “Like television, religion is now ‘highly fragmented'”.
Those editors sure know how to get my attention.
This almost got trumped by the two articles on page 2 of the business section: “Flat wages, rising key prices a double whammy” and “After trailing inflation, wages rise at fastest rate since 2004.”
Fortunately, the absurdities and contradictions of USA Today’s headline writers was beaten by a giant ad in the News section:
How To Be $1,835,360 Richer
Win 95.12% Of All Trades
And Still Lose Nothing . . .
Even If You’re Absolutely 100% Wrong
On the plus side, the paper did tell me that PW Botha died.
The conference wraps up today, and I’ll be flying back into Newark Airport tonight. Which airport is that? Oh, you know: the one where they had a 90% failure rate in finding knives & explosives in check-in bags during a test, where two jets just “bumped wings” on the taxiway, and where an incoming plane from Orlando landed on the taxiway instead of the runway.
Oh, and I’ll be flying to Orlando next week.
As a mainline (and yes, Main Line) Episcopalian, I’m pleased to see that the press is covering Christianity from a different vantage point than that of the conservative fundamentalists. It may be a powder puff piece journalistically, but I see it as an encouraging sociological movement in recognition that to be a Christian doesn’t automatically mean one is a literal-minded, bigoted reactionary blindly following the black-and-white decrees of a few evangelical denominations. I just gave my father a copy of John Danforth’s book Faith & Politics for his birthday. Might be interesting for other VM readers as a more in-depth look at what USA Today was trying to explore here…
Well, since no one else is volunteering a joke about it, here goes:
“I’m not into mainline; I like to freebase my Protestantism.”
USA Today has a news section?