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Quarterback sneak
Q: The conservative Christian group Focus on the Family is sponsoring a pro-life ad, featuring football star Tim Tebow, during Sunday's Super Bowl. Should CBS show the ad? Should CBS allow other faith-based groups to buy Super Bowl ads promoting their beliefs on social issues? Is a major sporting event, or a TV ad campaign, an appropriate venue for discussing such vital and divisive culture-war issues like abortion?
The Focus on the Family anti-choice ad that will appear during this Sunday's Super Bowl will not be based on a reasoned discussion of the issues surrounding abortion, rather it will be an emotional appeal meant to equate a fetus with a fully-grown Heisman-trophy winner. We shall be manipulated to imagine a mother killing her beloved son Tim Tebow sometime in early 1987. It is the standard anti-choice sucker punch, and I regard it as utterly misguided if not actively dishonest.
Now we are faced with the question whether or not Focus on the Family should be allowed to run such an ad during one of the most sacred (i.e. profitable) yearly television events. The argument against allowing the ad is that abortion is a social issue and should therefore not intrude on the lives of fans. I guess we don't want to ruin a good football game with anything beyond beer, trucks and fast-food (party-on!).
But why should social issues be banned? So far I've not heard a reasoned argument to convince me that efforts to raise awareness of social issues should not use tried-and-true methods to grab the television-twitter-web-numbed mind. Honestly, if an environmental group could gather enough steam to host a 30 second spot during the Super Bowl to raise awareness of global warming, I'd be PayPaling my way to help fund it and cheering them on.
So here I am hoist with my own petard of very atheist moral values based on reason (it can be such a bore at times). I am forced to question my initial inclination to ban the ad. My conclusion is not at all in line with my passionate belief in the right of a woman to choose what happens with her own body, at least where the fetus is too young to have a nervous system capable of suffering. However, I have to be consistent. I strongly object to the notion that religion should receive special privileges. I am adamantly opposed to granting religious organizations reduced government oversight, and I detest the 'hands-off-don't-pick-on-religion' mindset that seems to have paralyzed any reasoned discussion. I'd like to see these 'special privileges' end... but it cuts both ways. If I don't want religion to receive special privileges, I can't at the same time argue that they be denied the right to speak their mind (while spending about $2.5 million to do so).
So, like many others I will work on swaying public opinion, knowing that in the end what will most influence CBS and the other Super Bowl sponsors will be their pocketbooks. I'll be watching closely.
By
R. Elisabeth Cornwell
|
February 3, 2010; 11:01 AM ET
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Posted by: YourMightyOverload | February 3, 2010 8:35 PM
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I think the important point to keep in mind is that they aren't merely giving a religious group unearned special priveledges, they are choosing which religious group's views they are willing to give voice to. A few years ago a religious group submitted an ad showing a church that accepted gay and lesbian couples. CBS turned this ad down. Why? They don't air "advocacy" ads. But what is an anti-choice video if not an advocacy ad? CBS is playing favorites and allowing ads that suit them and denying those that don't. That is the point.
Posted by: pulseteresa | February 3, 2010 4:35 PM
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Hey,
There is no problem with ABC accepting money and allowing this group to get their message out. The problem is denying other groups who have the same money the opportunity to get their message out. How about an advert for a gay dating service???? Two years ago the ad was submitted and denied. Why? What happens to the free speech when the message is NOT the one YOU want to hear? Tolerant people like me respond like the above statements. Intolerant people (like most of the decision makers about tv ads --- and for that matter the people who run an ad like this one) censor those that they disagree with and then cite freedom of speech when it is their "harmless" message they put out.
Posted by: jamesmccusker6 | February 3, 2010 2:58 PM
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Well, unsurprisingly pro-lifers are trying to use this transparently obvious piece of casuistry in hopes of winning over the sympathy of the feeble-mided. What they don’t realize - or perhaps do but decide to ignore knowing that most people are gullable and easily impressionable and therefore likely to take the bait - is that the same sophistry can be used against a pro-life position. Hitler, BTK and Osama Bin Laden could be as well concieved as products of a decision against abortion…there.
Posted by: stanleygarden | February 3, 2010 1:58 PM
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What a shabby line of argument that ad uses. Based on the same reasoning, one could make an anti-abstinence ad starring a football player whose mom was 14 when he was born. "Good thing they weren't teaching abstinence in her school. Otherwise, I never would have been given the chance to win the Heisman!"
Posted by: ruminant | February 3, 2010 12:31 PM
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"The Focus on the Family anti-choice ad that will ... be an emotional appeal meant to equate a fetus with a fully-grown Heisman-trophy winner."
Yes, and I suspect this is a large part of what's behind the pro-life movement: the belief that since God sees the past, present and future all at once, that to Him a fetus is the same as a full life it might lead.
But death row at Attica is full of people whose mothers we would have recommended get an abortion decades ago. No one's going to make an ad about it.
Posted by: WmarkW | February 3, 2010 12:11 PM
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Ruminant,
You know, a pro-rape campaign could also use the same reasoning. Well, I guess Focus on the Patriarchy think rape is just fine and dandy then.