I saw this headline, and I just assumed it was a message to the bishops’ priests and other moralizers. You know, “Sure, drunken fornication is usually a major sin, but this is Carnival–it’s just to be expected! Give 'em a couple of Our Fathers and don’t make such a big deal out of it!” Wacky Brazillians, I thought. We should be so lucky!
Seriously, though, since when does “go easy on” mean “abstain from”? Even understood correctly, it sounds like the bishops are saying, “A little sex? A little booze? Why not? Just go easy on it!”
Before anyone stones me, I do know that (marital) sex and boozed are not completely verboten to Catholics, even during Lent. I still think it was a poorely worded and amusing headline.
The Chicago Tribune produces a short, “hip”, commuter tabloid, the Red Eye. I read it most days because it has a good sudoku and it’s free. Last week, they had a story on a synagogue being vandalized with swastikas and neo-Nazi graffiti. The headline:
Okay, it’s as bogus as “Eats shoots and leaves” but my favorite of that ilk is the one about the escaped mental patient who raped a woman near the asylum: “Nut bolts and screws.”
Sighted a few months back in the U.K. edition of Metro, the free commuter newspaper, atop a story about an effort to change drug laws:
“Legal Blow Hopes Dealt Legal Blow”
And of course let us not forget The Sun’s all-time great inspired a few years back by lowly Inverness Caledonian Thistle’s upset win at mighty Celtic’s home ground in the Scottish FA Cup: