I don't know a single religious person that would seriously take a cartoon character with horns to symbolize some kind of pact with the devil.
Then either you don't live in America, or you don't know many devout evangelicals.
know quite a few people who are offended
So that settle it: you're not keeping company with average "heartland" Americans. You self-select the people you know, so using people you know as a general population sample is usually flawed.
Many folks on the coasts are unaware of how wacky some crazy religious people are. Fundamentalism is a southern and rural phenomenon in the US.
I live in New York. There are definitely crazy religious people here, but not enough of them that they can strut their stuff in public and carry on with the crazy nonsense that you see in the South or Midwest.
Also, we have enough cultural and religious diversity that fundamentalists dominating school boards or town/city governments wouldn't fly. (We get machine politics and union domination instead)
It's not really Southern, just rural. We have a lot of rural down here, so it seems like it's a special regional thing. You'll find the same proportion of crazy and cosmopolitan in a Georgia city that you would anywhere else.
I wasn't trying to present an empirical study. I just think that the thought process of religious people (much as it baffles me sometimes) does allow them to make a distinction between satire and devil worship. It's not a matter of being more or less religious. I'm sure even the pope is perfectly capable of telling those two things apart (nowadays).
That hotel guest probably just wanted to make a political point (unless she was clinically insane).
If you believe those, yet aren't clinically insane, then concern about a devil icon on an in-room pay-per-view machine (purveyor of filth!) seems positively normal.
Then either you don't live in America, or you don't know many devout evangelicals.
know quite a few people who are offended
So that settle it: you're not keeping company with average "heartland" Americans. You self-select the people you know, so using people you know as a general population sample is usually flawed.