Aside from the premature canonization of Peyton Manning and the more deserved immortalizing of Kim Kardashian’s ass, the big story during Super Bowl week was the specter of Tim Tebow and his mother starring in a pro-life propaganda commercial sponsored by the Colorado-based evangelical organization Focus on the Family.
The content of the commercial turned out to be a lot less controversial than expected. As long as you were able to watch Timmy-T get all gooey with his mom without up-chucking your pre-game buffalo wings, the actual content of the commercial couldn’t possibly have offended you.
Unless you are National Organization for Women President Terry O’Neill, who posited that the commercial glorified violence against women because Tebow “tackles” his mom in one of the spots. “I am blown away at the celebration of the violence against women in it,” she said. “That’s what comes across to me even more strongly than the anti-abortion message. I myself am a survivor of domestic violence, and I don’t find it charming. I think CBS should be ashamed of itself.”
It is hard to understand where she is coming from. The “tackle” is clearly computer generated, it makes sense because the alleged “Big Virgin” plays a sport where tackling is fairly common and there is absolutely no context for O’Neill to make such an outlandish claim.
It seems that O’Neill was unable to find anything remotely offensive about the commercial’s actual content, so she reached deep. It is too bad because not only did O’Neill make herself look stupid, she hurt NOW’s national brand with her inanity and, even worse, she played right into the hands of Focus on the Family.
The commercial wasn’t trying to get viewers to completely change the way they think on the spot. Rather, it was a clever way to make people aware of their organization while herding the sheeple to their website.
By offering a watered down message, Focus on the Family was able to pull a “What could be offensive about a boy loving his mommy?” argument while promoting their extremist agenda. They couldn’t get away with going on TV and saying that their organization is “dedicated to defending the honor, dignity and value of the two sexes as created in God’s image.” But if you visit their website, they will tell you just that and many other reasons why homosexuals will burn.
O’Neill’s asinine assertion was just the icing on the cake. What could be better for Focus on the Family then their ad running successfully and one of their ideological opponents discrediting herself and her organization in the process?
Neither of these organizations speak for mainstream America. While I think it is fair to say that most Americans love God and family, very few of us give a rat’s ass about what Focus on the Family has to say for themselves. On a similar note, Americans by and large abhor violence against women, but that doesn’t mean that NOW is anyone’s mouthpiece but their own.
Which brings us to the bottom line: This is motherfuc*ki&g FOOTBALL, not a Tea Party Convention or a an anti-war rally. Let me repeat: This is motherfuc*ki&g FOOTBALL, not a Tea Party Convention or an anti-war rally.
SportsChat has not spent the last two plus decades glued to his couch every Sunday during football season because it seemed like that might solve America’s budget crisis. Nobody sits down for a MNF football game so they can debate cap and trade at half-time. The only choice SportsChat wants to debate during a football game is whether or not his team should kick a field goal or go for it on fourth down.
Sports is supposed to be an escape from the scrum. It is a time when a person can put their worries aside and simply enjoy the game.
At least it used to be.
