Whenever I see a picture of J. Willard Marriott and his son in a Marriott or a Marriott-affilliate, I feel like my worlds are colliding. Are they Mormons? Are they businessmen? Are they BOTH? All I know is those suits are conservative.
Whenever I’m staying at a Marriott-affilliate, I pull open the drawer next to the bed and the worlds collide again when I see that slim blue Book of Mormon. Am I at home? Am I in a hotel? WHERE AM I? All I know is that even though I’m happy to see the book in the drawer, I never read it. Even before I got my kindle. I’m not sure why.
The plentiful adult options on tv make it all the more confusing. The Mormon legend has it that J. Willard Marriott held off offering porn in his hotels until he couldn’t justify (y’know, legally) to the shareholders (corporate directors and officers have duties to make prudent business decisions, after all). I have no idea of this is true. I researched this issue (for approximately three minutes), but kept turning up articles about how Marriott more recently decided to stop offering porn in all its new hotels. The company calls it a sound economic decision, given the decreased demand for in-room movies (I am, after all typing this on my laptop in a hotel room). So, is it a Mormon morality-rooted decision? A sound business decision? Just more political pandering? ALL THREE?
This is my last Mormon hotel musing: Is there any way to get that dank instant coffee smell out of the coffee maker so I can brew up some herbal tea that doesn’t taste faintly of stale cheaper-than-Folgers?
Bending the Rules 