Focus On The Family eyes this year’s Super Bowl
Tebow!
In the middle of the 1980s, while heathens like you and I are were busy slapping bracelets around our wrists and getting our Huxtable on, Pam Tebow was barnstorming the Philippines talking all kinds of Jesus. But here’s the thing about barnstorming the Philippines talking Jesus: You leave yourself susceptible to illness, and Pam Tebow was no exception. Stricken and pregnant with her fifth child, doctors advised Pam to abort, noting that if she carried the baby to full term it would likely suffer the after-effects of the crazy Filipino disease. But Pam said nay. That would go against her faith. And so Pam carried the baby to full term, crazy disease and all. And not only was that baby born happy and healthy, he was born Tim Tebow!
Tebow, mighty Tim Tebow, star quarterback for the University Of Florida Gators! Tebow, glorious Tim Tebow, he of the 2007 Heisman Trophy and BCS championship! Tebow, walk-on-fucking-water Tim Tebow, the son of Christian missionaries, the home-schooled football prodigy, the man with bible verse citations scrawled on his game-day eye-black! Tebow!
Just imagine if Pam had listened to those doctors and aborted her child, the world would have been deprived of Tim Tebow. And I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like a world that I want to live in. Ditto Focus On The Family, the Colorado Springs-based mega-church which has teamed up with Tim and Pam to make a commercial to share their story and pro-life message, a commercial that you and I and a hundred million other people are going to get to see during this year’s Super Bowl.
To Pam Tebow, I ask you this: Isn’t it a little early to decide whether or not you’re glad you didn’t abort little Timmy? Jury’s still out if you ask me. Yeah, he had a pretty solid college career and everything, but who knows if he even gets drafted. Christ, he employs a jump pass in his arsenal. A jump pass! Try that shit once in the NFL and you’ll be picking Polamalu hairs out of your vertebrae. And after a failed football career, do you really think you’re still going to be so happy having Timmy around when he’s telling that washed-up Heisman story for the 400th time? And is Tim going to thank God every day when he’s softly sobbing away his lunch break in the back of a demo car outside Tebow Honda Of Gainesville? All great questions for a rainy day.
To Focus On The Family, I say this: Bravo. This is a coup for you and a new high water mark in your effort to spread division and intolerance under the guise of Christianity. You somehow managed to get the go-ahead on this commercial and, as a life-long hip-hop fan, I’ve learned not to hate the player, but instead to hate the game.
In this instance, the game that I hate is CBS deciding to reverse its stance on Super Sunday advertisements to allow advocacy commercials. CBS is already catching hell, as they refused to allow an ad for a gay dating site called ManCrunch (odd, considering football essentially is one giant man crunch) to air during the Super Bowl, and everybody and their non-aborting mom seem to have an opinion on the whole debacle: Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, The National Organization For Women, Sarah Palin, Dr. Huxtable. So now, instead of stuffing nachos in our head and sitting back for perhaps the largest and most shared experience in modern America, something we all embrace—or, at the very least, tolerate—we’re busy slinging mud at each other and going at it like it’s election season.
No matter what your political persuasion, the sad truth is that Super Bowl commercials, perhaps the last bastion of innocuous commonality, have now been taken away from us. So, I say it’s time to start searching for a new unifier, a message that we can all get behind. How about: Fuck you, CBS.
