A Utah moment: Moviegoers at the Jordan Landing Cinemark movies in West Jordan received a unique greeting Monday from the ticket taker if they purchased tickets to “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
To each patron, he called out: “Vote for Bush.” When queried, he said he was following instructions from management.
Terrell Falk, marketing vice president for Cinemark, based in Plano, Texas, was surprised by the news and said lobbying customers for Bush was not a company policy. She was still trying to get through to the West Jordan complex as of late Tuesday to find out what they were thinking.
What they were thinking? Terrell Falk is about to learn something about Utah, and Utahns.
Okay, now THIS pisses me off. It’s unlikely that I’ll see Fahrenheit 9/11, because although I’m sure I’d laugh out loud at a lot of it, I know there’s some truth stretching going on that will just screw with my ability to reason with someone on issues. However, some git standing out front of a movie theater hollering a political message to ticket-buying patrons… okay, that’s SO Utah. Take the money, but tell them how to vote.
Gee. That reminds me of something… what was it? Oh, yeah. The tissue-thin separation of church and state in Utah that’s pissed me off all my adult life. And the way people are told what to believe, what to think, and how to vote by not-so-subtle reinforcement. In spite of the annual “non-partisan” pronouncements “from the pulpit” (actually lecterns) in Morm*n waaards in election years urging everyone to vote their conscience, everybody knows that it’s not possible to be a good member of the Charch and vote Democrat. The announcements are merely to ensure that the Charch continues on the right side of tax law, because if they endorse a party or a candidate, they’re on the road to losing the precious tax-exempt status that the Charch enjoys.
And my sister wonders why I’m a Democrat. Hee!
Oh, I don’t know… experiencing unjust treatment at an early age by a religious and political majority kind of does that to a kid. Being stomped on tends to make a person interested in concepts like fairness, tolerance, and the rule of law as embodied by the Constitution. And be a thinking citizen, and not an unthinking one.