...and to make an utter ass of himself. Hey, if he wants to be a tool for Dobson and his merry band of gay-bashing, anti-choice zealots, who are we to tell him he can't?
Tebow reminds me a bit of the young kids who find their parents record collection and say, "Hey, these Miles and Coltrane dudes are cool!!" and then proceed to spend their high school holed up in the basement trying to learn to play Kind of Blue note for note on a pawn shop trumpet and smoking dope so that he can be "authentic".
Tebow is a reincarnated Archie Bunker, pining for the 50s, a world he's probably only heard about in legend, or in reruns of Father Knows Best. Because as we all know, that era of American life was bsolute paradise! I Like Ike, Fords in every garage in every brand new suburban, white-picket fence domicile, country clubs with no Jews...and then of course, along come the American commies, the feminists, the Negroes, and those dirty hippies the Carpenters and their subversive, LSD-influenced tunes!
First of all, this is so obviously a sop to the religious right it's downright hilarious to watch CBS trying to spin this thing. They have turned down a gay dating ad, a Planned Parenthood ad, and can you imagine if someone from, say, the Kennedy family, had proposed an ad advocating gun control (abortion's political coin-opposite) for the Super Bowl?? I guarantee that would never have been considered in a million years, and any group that dared to do such a thing would immediately be labeled "Left-wing extremists" and pilloried non-stop.
But you know what? I'm OK with that. IOKIYARism is so prevalent in society that it's hardly a shock anymore.
Second of all, there's already cracks appearing in Madam Tebow's story, as abortion is illegal in the Phillipines anyway. Either Ms Tebow's doctors at the time were a) ignorant of this law, b) ready to commit an illegal act which could have landed everybody in jail, or c) she's lying.
But you know what? I'm OK with that too. Lying to further the conservative agenda? Shockers! In other news, grass, green, water, wet.
Third: If the story is true, she still comes out looking like a doofus. What if she and/or lil' Timmy HAD died during the pregnancy/delivery? (whch, BTW, DOES still happen in America and elsewhere in the world thousands of times). As William Salteman of Slate magazine, illustrates, if that had happened her other children would have been absent a parent, and her husband would be a widower. If she had had an abortion and lived she could have always had one or more children in the future. So even if her story is true, she's extremely short-sighted.
But hey, I'm OK with that.
Fourth: "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the White Man's God Complex!" Not only is it hilarious to see a privileged White, Protestant Male telling women what to do with their bodies, but he's a college football jock at that! How many football players have been arrested/convicted for spousal/girlfriend abuse and rape over the years? Now granted, given the choice between a Rae Carruth who has his pregnant girlfried shot because he doesn't want to pay child support and a Tim Tebow who self-righteously appoints himself arbiter of all that is good and decent in the world, I'll take Tebow...even though the ideological chasm between Carruth and that of the Dobsons and Pat Robertsons of the world is perilously narrow. (They would have us live in a world where a woman seeking to have an illegal back-alley abortion would be forced to have the child and THEN be shot.)
...But hey, I'm OK with that.
Fifth: it would be nice to know if the Tebows have any opinion on a legislative bill that would appropriate funds to build orphanages for unwanted children, a federal health bill that would universally cover all children 17 and under, a program that would increase aid to financially challenged women who choose to keep their children...oh wait, you can't fit all that into a 30-second ad?? Pity.
But I'm OK with it. "Conservatives! "Who needs Solutions? We've Got Slogans!"
Bottom line: While I oppose Hatred On The Family to the core of my being, I'm really not too upset about this ad. FOTF and Tim Tebow have freedom of speech. Just because CBS is hypocritically granting it to them and nobody else on the biggest advertising day of the year does not diminish that fact.
If they want to spend $3M on an anti-abortion ad, they have that right.
If they want to spend $3M on an ad advocating that we junk all automobiles and go back to horse and buggies, they have that right.
If they want to spend $3M on an ad advocating that we can lower health care costs by only going to doctors who use leeches, they have that right
If they want to spend $3M telling kids that instead of texting they should use Morse Code, they have that right
If they want to spend $3M to ban calculators and have everybody use an Abacus, they have that right.
If they want to spend $3M advocating that all department stores be closed on Sundays -- at least in the morning -- they have that right.
If they want to spend $3M to ask that Rockstar discontinue "Grand Theft Auto" and instead produce Hula-Hoops they have that right.
If they want to spend $3M to advocate that we mummify our dead instead of burying them, they have that right.
If they want to spend $3M to lobby PC makers to go back to using DOS, they have that right
If they want to spend $3M to lobby to ban PC's and have everybody go back to using typewriters, (or hell, papyrus) they have that right.
If they want to spend $3M asking women to stay home and care for the children and wear long dresses that cover up the shins, while men go out to work, and wear hats and ties when doing so, and have the whole family eat dinner all at the same time, and have the television networks go back to having married couples on TV sleep in different beds, and not show Lady GaGa below the waist whenever she's on TV and have radio stations not play any of that "race music"...well they have the right.
You know why I'm OK with all this?
Because, ultimately, society has already rendered judgement on these things. American society knows what it wants and what it doesn't want, and there's precious damned little that Tim Tebow, James Dobson, Pat Robertson or the rest of the "Theocracy in America" crowd can do about it.
They have done their best to have morality legislated and have failed. The rest of America is happy to view the 50s on Mad Men and I Love Lucy reruns, but we're not about to go back there.
And you can believe, I'm ULTRAMEGA OK with that ($1 to Soundgarden!)
Good night. God Bless. WHO DAT?!??!?!