A bunch of people will be booking hotel rooms in Memphis for a big conference next April 2-5. That’s good news for Memphis hotels because, well, that’s what they do for a living, and having an empty hotel for four days would harm their livelihood. But for anyone outside of that city’s hospitality industry (and the airlines, restaurants, cabbies, etc., who will also be grateful for their business) it’s not news at all.
Yet because the conference in question involves an atheist convention, and because that weekend is when (western) Christians celebrate Easter, the local Action News team is suggesting that this is somehow a matter of controversy because … well, I can’t really figure that out. Hemant Mehta is dead on about the unintentional hilarity of the “news” team’s attempt to make this some kind of thing. (Hemant has the Action News video embedded, click over to Friendly Atheist to watch it.)
Scheduling an atheists gathering for Easter weekend seems eminently sensible, since A) They can probably get good travel and hotel rates for that weekend, since tens of millions of Christians are less likely to be traveling then, and B) while Good Friday is a sectarian holy day, not a federal holiday, Christian hegemony makes this an easier long weekend to take a day or two off work, and C) atheists don’t celebrate Easter, so there’s a good chance they’ll be free that weekend.
Action News complaining about this, or imagining that anyone else should be complaining about this, is just … weird. It’s like the local Methodist church complaining that the Presbyterians down the block have scheduled a worship service for Sunday morning at 11 o’clock. That’s the very same time as the Methodist worship service! How dare they intrude upon the Methodist holy day of Sunday by scheduling this rival gathering!
Or, perhaps, it’s even more like complaining that those offensive Jews plan on disrespecting Good Friday by gathering for their un-Christian prayers that evening (coming out after dark, so you know they’re up to no good).
The really weird thing is that this might be somewhat controversial if Memphis hotels were being booked for a big Christian conference on Easter weekend. That would provide a slender hook for something like a news story — shouldn’t those Christians be back home celebrating that holy day with their local congregations? But here you’ve got a bunch of people who, by definition, don’t celebrate Easter. The fact that his is an atheist convention makes it utterly non-controversial.
The Action News story boils down to this: While people who are Christians do a Christian thing, people who are not Christians will be doing something else. That’s not news. That’s pretty much a logical necessity. To think of it as news requires a staggering narcissism, something like the opposite of empathy wherein Other People, those who are Not Us, somehow cease to exist or to live when we are not directly interacting with them.
Action News — and the Jay-walking embarrassments they find to contribute to their ignoramus-on-the-street interviews — only imagine this is news because of the unspoken, and false, assumption that governs this “report.” That assumption is that there is no such thing as a non-Christian, only an anti-Christian. And, therefore, anything that is not an enthusiastic endorsement must be a vicious attack.
Thus Action News, apparently, believes that all Memphis hotels should be like Chick-fil-A, closed on Sundays. And don’t get them started on all those evil hospital workers, restaurant staff, gas station attendants, convenience store clerks, dairy farmers, freight associates and first responders who disrespect our Lord and Savior by working every Sunday.
I look forward to Action News’ next hard-hitting report on how people who sleep in on Sundays are violently persecuting the one, true faith.
Could’ve gone with Paul Simon or Marc Cohn here, but let’s go with John Hiatt instead:
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