Focus On The Family/Tim Tebow Super Bowl Ad

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
nathan1977 said:
An ad advocating life in the face of abortion in a country where the majority is, for the first time, pro-life, is probably going to be less controversial than an ad showing homosexual activity in a country where public opinion is still not in favor of gay marriage.

It will be interesting to see what CBS does.
Click to expand...

So because people cannot grant marriage rights to everyone, they are even intolerant and whiney enough to say an ad just making aware of a dating site for gays is controversial? Are they only happy enough when there is a Ugandan style anti-gay laws?
 
i do like that we're going to be reminded of the murderous consequences of reckless heterosexual activity. :up:






all pro-life ads are really ads for the many joys of gay sex -- that's one way to make sure you never have an abortion. :)
 
"Homosexual activity", in this case, is same-sex kissing. Is that really controversial to say? If so, my apologies.

In this case, CBS has to keep in mind the audience for its advertising. ManCrunch's ad seems to fall outside that category.

And, having seen the ad, I'm going to guess that ManCrunch doesn't have the $2.5M they would need in order to run it.

Shrug.
 
and after seeing the Mancrunch ad, i hope it doesn't play. it's creation and submission (with the knowledge that it would be rejected) seems designed to highlight double standards rather than being an actual commercial -- i could have shot and edited the same thing in my apartment.

it's a terrible piece of advertising. it looks like it was made by straight people, kind of like "Chuck and Larry."

and i'd never heard of the site before.
 
nathan1977 said:
In this case, CBS has to keep in mind the audience for its advertising. ManCrunch's ad seems to fall outside that category.
Click to expand...

You mean the population of gay people watching the Super Bowl is too small for relevance?
 
obviously, Tim Tebow can do whatever he wants, but what's striking me about him is just how self-aggrandizing the whole thing is. he feels as if he stands as a living example of what can happen if women will just find the courage to ignore their doctors and instead place your uterus in the capable hands of God the OBGYN, and if you do, you'll be rewarded with a child as magnificent as me, Tim Tebow.
 
if tim tebow wants to kill any sort of future endorsement career because some wacko right wing nut wants to spend a million bucks for 30 seconds of air time that nobody will even take seriously, well, he certainly has that right.

as for mancrunch... the commercial wouldn't be allowed to air in it's current form anyways because the two dudes are wearing packer and viking jerseys without expressed written consent of the National Football League http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar45JSbFlGM

so the controversy over CBS's "decision" is being overblown. i know, i know... hard to believe that the media would take something and run with it.

sorta like the group that's issuing flyers declaring pete townshend to be a threat to society.
 
Wow, when it was a setup by whatever organisation against CBS that's pretty bad. Though I also wondered a little bit when I saw the article came from Fox News of all places.

Whoever is tricking whom, that is despicable.
 
CBS rejects gay dating site's Super Bowl ad -- The Live Feed | THR

January 29, 2010
CBS rejects gay dating site's Super Bowl ad

Gay dating site CBS has rejected a Super Bowl ad submitted by a gay dating Web site that shows two male football fans making out.

The network shot down the commercial Friday in a letter to the site -- ManCrunch.com -- saying the "creative is not within the Network's Broadcast Standards for Super Bowl Sunday."

Also the network said its sales department had difficulty verifying the credit of the site to guarantee payment of the estimated $2.5 million cost to air the ad.

"After reviewing the ad – which is entirely commercial in nature – our Standards and Practices department decided not to accept this particular spot," said CBS in a statement. "As always, we are open to working with the client on alternative submissions."

Sources said the network felt the site was using the tried-and-true tactic of generating free publicity by submitting a Super Bowl ad they knew was likely to be rejected and was ultimately unwilling to pay for.

A ManCrunch.com spokesperson denied that the ad was a marketing ploy and called CBS' decision discriminatory.

"We're 100% serious," said spokesperson Elissa Buchter. "We have the money to pay for it. If the ad showed a man and woman kissing it would have been accepted. You see ads for erectile dysfunction morning, noon and night. It's discriminatory that they wont show this."

Buchter said the site spent more than $100,000 on the ad and has raised $40 million from investors.

"They should call our bluff," she said. "If the ad doesn't air on the Super Bowl, it will air on another network. It's not like it plays like Adam Lambert [kissing another man on the AMAs]."
 
Irvine511 said:
obviously, Tim Tebow can do whatever he wants, but what's striking me about him is just how self-aggrandizing the whole thing is. he feels as if he stands as a living example of what can happen if women will just find the courage to ignore their doctors and instead place your uterus in the capable hands of God the OBGYN, and if you do, you'll be rewarded with a child as magnificent as me, Tim Tebow.
Click to expand...

I can definitely see that side of it too-but I also think some of that might depend upon the prism through which the viewer is seeing it. I don't know what he or his Mom really think about their personal situation vs how that relates to every woman's/family's situation, without hearing that from them. But the ad as described could tend to give that impression. That was her choice, and she had that choice.

Now Gloria Allred is getting involved..

Huffington Post

A commercial featuring Tim Tebow and his mother Pam that is likely to air during Super Bowl XLIV may be rife with inaccuracies, according to power lawyer Gloria Allred.

The ad, which is expected to promote an anti-choice message, will be based on the theme "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life." The Christian conservative group Focus on the Family has paid for the spot. James Dobson, the group's founder, has a history of inflammatory statements and once said that gay marriage will "destroy the earth."

Despite resistance from women's groups, the ad is expected to air during the Super Bowl. It is believed that the commercial will focus on Pam Tebow's 1987 pregnancy, during which time she fell ill in the Philippines. According to reports, doctors recommended that she abort the pregnancy, but she chose to go through with the birth of her son Tim.

Tebow grew up to be one of the most accomplished and celebrated stars in college football history, capturing two national championships and becoming the first sophomore to win the Heisman trophy.

Because abortion under any circumstance has been illegal in the Philippines since 1930 and is punishable by a six-year prison term, Allred says she finds it hard to believe that doctors would have recommended the procedure.

The attorney, who has represented a roster of famous clients, claims she will lodge a complaint with the FCC and FTC "if this ad airs and fails to disclose that abortions were illegal at the time Ms. Tebow made her choice," according to RadarOnline.
 
MrsSpringsteen said:
Because abortion under any circumstance has been illegal in the Philippines since 1930 and is punishable by a six-year prison term, Allred says she finds it hard to believe that doctors would have recommended the procedure.
Click to expand...



i think this is worth repeating.

i know that there are many in here who are advocates of forced pregnancies, and so this will have no impact on their understanding of the situation. abortion should be illegal, in all circumstance and stages of pregnancy.

however, it's quite disingenuous to tie this to some notion of "choose life" when there was no choice here to begin with; just a government that actually forbade choice and forced a woman to carry her pregnancy.
 
Tebow's Super Bowl ad isn't intolerant; its critics are

By Sally Jenkins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 2, 2010; D01

I'll spit this out quick, before the armies of feminism try to gag me and strap electrodes to my forehead: Tim Tebow is one of the better things to happen to young women in some time. I realize this stance won't endear me to the "Dwindling Organizations of Ladies in Lockstep," otherwise known as DOLL, but I'll try to pick up the shards of my shattered feminist credentials and go on.

As statements at Super Bowls go, I prefer the idea of Tebow's pro-life ad to, say, Jim McMahon dropping his pants, as the former Chicago Bears quarterback once did in response to a question. We're always harping on athletes to be more responsible and engaged in the issues of their day, and less concerned with just cashing checks. It therefore seems more than a little hypocritical to insist on it only if it means criticizing sneaker companies, and to stifle them when they take a stance that might make us uncomfortable.

I'm pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I've heard in the past week, I'll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the "National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time." For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow's 30-second ad hasn't even run yet, but it already has provoked "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" to reveal something important about themselves: They aren't actually "pro-choice" so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.

Pam Tebow and her son feel good enough about that choice to want to tell people about it. Only, NOW says they shouldn't be allowed to. Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikinis selling beer is the right one. I would like to meet the genius at NOW who made that decision. On second thought, no, I wouldn't.

There's not enough space in the sports pages for the serious weighing of values that constitutes this debate, but surely everyone in both camps, pro-choice or pro-life, wishes the "need" for abortions wasn't so great. Which is precisely why NOW is so wrong to take aim at Tebow's ad.

Here's what we do need a lot more of: Tebows. Collegians who are selfless enough to choose not to spend summers poolside, but travel to impoverished countries to dispense medical care to children, as Tebow has every summer of his career. Athletes who believe in something other than themselves, and are willing to put their backbone where their mouth is. Celebrities who are self-possessed and self-controlled enough to use their wattage to advertise commitment over decadence.

You know what we really need more of? Famous guys who aren't embarrassed to practice sexual restraint, and to say it out loud. If we had more of those, women might have fewer abortions. See, the best way to deal with unwanted pregnancy is to not get the sperm in the egg and the egg implanted to begin with, and that is an issue for men, too -- and they should step up to that.

"Are you saving yourself for marriage?" Tebow was asked last summer during an SEC media day.

"Yes, I am," he replied.

The room fell into a hush, followed by tittering: The best college football player in the country had just announced he was a virgin. As Tebow gauged the reaction from the reporters in the room, he burst out laughing. They were a lot more embarrassed than he was.

"I think y'all are stunned right now!" he said. "You can't even ask a question!"

That's how far we've come from any kind of sane viewpoint about star athletes and sex. Promiscuity is so the norm that if a stud isn't shagging everything in sight, we feel faintly ashamed for him.

Obviously Tebow can make people uncomfortable, whether it's for advertising his chastity, or for wearing his faith on his face via biblical citations painted in his eye-black. Hebrews 12:12, his cheekbones read during the Florida State game: "Therefore strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees." His critics find this intrusive, and say the Super Bowl is no place for an argument of this nature. "Pull the ad," NOW President Terry O'Neill said. "Let's focus on the game."

Trouble is, you can't focus on the game without focusing on the individuals who play it -- and that is the genius of Tebow's ad. The Super Bowl is not some reality-free escape zone. Tebow himself is an inescapable fact: Abortion doesn't just involve serious issues of life, but of potential lives, Heisman trophy winners, scientists, doctors, artists, inventors, Little Leaguers -- who would never come to be if their birth mothers had not wrestled with the stakes and chosen to carry those lives to term. And their stories are every bit as real and valid as the stories preferred by NOW.

Let me be clear again: I couldn't disagree with Tebow more. It's my own belief that the state has no business putting its hand under skirts. But I don't care that we differ. Some people will care that the ad is paid for by Focus on the Family, a group whose former spokesman, James Dobson, says loathsome things about gays. Some will care that Tebow is a creationist. Some will care that CBS has rejected a gay dating service ad. None of this is the point. CBS owns its broadcast and can run whatever advertising it wants, and Tebow has a right to express his beliefs publicly. Just as I have the right to reject or accept them after listening -- or think a little more deeply about the issues. If the pro-choice stance is so precarious that a story about someone who chose to carry a risky pregnancy to term undermines it, then CBS is not the problem.

Tebow's ad, by the way, never mentions abortion; like the player himself, it's apparently soft-spoken. It simply has the theme "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life." This is what NOW has labeled "extraordinarily offensive and demeaning." But if there is any demeaning here, it's coming from NOW, via the suggestion that these aren't real questions, and that we as a Super Bowl audience are too stupid or too disinterested to handle them on game day.
 
Me too.

Although I think the posturing by NOW probably has more to do with not wanting to cough up millions to do their own ad rather than the Tebow ad itself.
 
i don't like it at all. :shrug: it's reminiscent of the Blankenhorn argument where one can say "i'm pro-choice/liberal! therefore, i'm an honest broker!"

the fact remains: Mrs. Tebow was lucky she didn't DIE giving birth to her son, and that her son didn't die along with her.



Tim Tebow, the college football hero and Heisman Trophy winner, won't be in next Sunday's Super Bowl. But he's already one of its stars. Focus on the Family, an interest group opposed to abortion, will air a 30-second commercial featuring Tebow and his mother, Pam. According to the group's press release, the Tebows "will share a personal story centered on the theme of 'Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.' "

The story, apparently, is about Tim's birth in 1987, when his parents were missionaries in the Philippines. According to Pam's account in the Gainesville Sun, she contracted amoebic dysentery and went in a coma shortly before the pregnancy. To facilitate her recovery, she was given heavy-duty drugs. Afterward, doctors told her the fetus was damaged. They diagnosed her with placental abruption, a premature separation of the placenta from the uterine wall. They predicted a stillbirth and recommended abortion.

But Pam was against abortion, and she had faith in God. She refused. Today, her reward is a healthy, athletic, stellar son. "I've always been very [pro-life] because that's the reason I'm here, because my mom was a very courageous woman," Tim told reporters last week. That's the prescribed moral of the story: Choose life. Dave Andrusko, the editor of National Right to Life News, puts it eloquently: "This amazing young man is able to share his many gifts because, and only because, Pam Tebow said no to abortion and yes to life."

Pam's story certainly is moving. But as a guide to making abortion decisions, it's misleading. Doctors are right to worry about continuing pregnancies like hers. Placental abruption has killed thousands of women and fetuses. No doubt some of these women trusted in God and said no to abortion, as she did. But they didn't end up with Heisman-winning sons. They ended up dead.

Being dead is just the first problem with dying in pregnancy. Another problem is that the fetus you were trying to save dies with you. A third problem is that your existing kids lose their mother. A fourth problem is that if you had aborted the pregnancy, you might have gotten pregnant again and brought a new baby into the world, but now you can't. And now the Tebows have exposed a fifth problem: You can't make a TV ad.

On Sunday, we won't see all the women who chose life and found death. We'll just see the Tebows, because they're alive and happy to talk about it. In the business world, this is known as survivor bias: Failed mutual funds disappear, leaving behind the successful ones, which creates the illusion that mutual funds tend to beat market averages. In the Tebows' case, the survivor bias is literal. If you're diagnosed with placental abruption, you have the right to choose life. But don't be so sure that life is what you'll get.

Placental abruption is rare. The detachment from the uterine wall can range from partial to total. By most accounts, it occurs in fewer than 1 percent of pregnancies. The more broadly it's diagnosed, the less fatal it is on average, since the subtlest cases are also the least dangerous.

In 2001, the American Journal of Epidemiology published an analysis of 7.5 million births that took place in the United States in 1995 and 1996. Abruption was documented in 46,731 of these pregnancies. Six percent of normal pregnancies produced babies with birth weights low enough to risk long-term health damage. Nearly half the abrupted pregnancies produced such babies. Ten percent of normal pregnancies ended in premature births; most abrupted pregnancies ended that way. In normal pregnancies, the perinatal mortality rate—death of the fetus after 20 weeks gestation, or death of the baby in its four weeks after birth—was less than 1 percent. In abrupted pregnancies, the rate was roughly 12 percent. If the total number of abrupted pregnancies in the United States in those two years was 46,731, then the number of fetuses and babies killed by placental abruption was 5,570.

And that's just the U.S. number. In less developed countries, studies have found higher rates of perinatal death. In Thailand, a 2006 review of 103 abrupted pregnancies showed a rate of 16 percent. In Sudan, an analysis of more than 1,000 cases from 1997-2003 yielded a rate of 20 percent. In Tunisia, a 2005 review of 45 cases indicated a rate of 38 percent.

If you see no moral difference between an early fetus and a late fetus or baby, you can argue that any perinatal death rate short of 100 percent is better than preemptive abortion. But what about the women who carry abrupted pregnancies? For them, the potential complications include internal bleeding, hemorrhagic shock, kidney damage, embolisms, and heart failure. The Thai study reported hemorrhagic shock in 19 percent of women with abrupted pregnancies. In Burkina Faso, a 2003 review of 177 abrupted pregnancies reported a maternal death rate of 4 percent. In Pakistan, a 2009 review of 106 cases found a maternal death rate of 5 percent. By some estimates, placental abruption causes 6 percent of all maternal deaths.

I can't tell you what drugs Pam Tebow was given or how severe her abruption was. I sent her a query through Focus on the Family three days ago and haven't heard back. But remember, she was doing missionary work in the Philippines. The perinatal and maternal death rates from abruption in her area were probably closer to the rates in Pakistan or Burkina Faso than to the U.S. rate. She and her son are with us today not just because of courage but because of luck.

And don't forget her age. Pam entered the University of Florida at 17 and graduated in 1971. That would make her about 37 years old in 1987, when she developed her abruption. She and her husband were literally praying for another baby. In that situation, at that age, carrying a compromised pregnancy to term carries an additional risk: that you'll lose not just this baby but the ability to conceive another. That's a further reason why a doctor might recommend abortion—or why a woman might choose it.

Pro-lifers have always struggled with the invisibility of unborn life: millions of babies aborted every year, concealed in wombs behind closed doors. How do you open the world's eyes to what it can't see? In Tim Tebow, they see the invisible made visible: a child who has lived to tell his story because an abortion didn't happen. "If his mother had followed her doctor's advice," notes LifeSiteNews, "he would be just another abortion statistic."

But what's true of abortion is also true of pregnancy complications. If Pam Tebow's abruption had taken a different turn, her son would be just another perinatal mortality statistic, and she might be just another maternal mortality statistic. And you would know nothing of her story, just as you know nothing of the women who have died carrying pregnancies like hers.

And what do you know of the women who chose to abort in similar circumstances? You never saw their tears for the life lost. You never heard their prayers for another chance. Maybe you've seen them rocking their babies or laughing with their toddlers. But did you make the connection? Do you know their stories? Is Pam Tebow's choice the only way to celebrate life and family?

Pam made a brave choice, and she has raised a fine son. Celebrate his life. But celebrate her luck, too—and say a prayer for all the women and babies who didn't make the cut.

http://www.slate.com/id/2243218/
Click to expand...
 
I don't know if you caught Blankenhorn's part in the recent Prop 8 hearing,

I think he is one of the most despicable people on the planet, right now.
 
A really good response video from Planned Parenthood:

YouTube - Sean James and Al Joyner respond to the Tebow Super Bowl ad

PP's statement:

"Planned Parenthood urges all Americans to ponder the true meaning of the Tebow family's experience - one in which a woman was presented with medical and moral considerations and made a deeply personal decision in private without government interference. That is exactly what we want every woman to be able to do when she must make important and highly personal medical decisions."

:up:
 
corianderstem said:
"Planned Parenthood urges all Americans to ponder the true meaning of the Tebow family's experience - one in which a woman was presented with medical and moral considerations and made a deeply personal decision in private without government interference. That is exactly what we want every woman to be able to do when she must make important and highly personal medical decisions."
Click to expand...

:up:

The risk she took in her decision is frankly no more fair ground to criticize or judge than had she aborted and faced the wrath of anti-abortionists.
 
corianderstem said:
PP's statement:

"Planned Parenthood urges all Americans to ponder the true meaning of the Tebow family's experience - one in which a woman was presented with medical and moral considerations and made a deeply personal decision in private without government interference. That is exactly what we want every woman to be able to do when she must make important and highly personal medical decisions."

:up:
Click to expand...

Nice. :)

What so few anti-choice people understand: It's about CHOICE.
 
martha said:
Nice. :)

What so few anti-choice people understand: It's about CHOICE.
Click to expand...

I don't know about you, but I attend pro-abortion rallies in my spare time. I stand outside of OB-GYN offices and urge women who are planning to go through with their pregnancies to abort. That's just how strong my beliefs are. ;)
 
VintagePunk said:
I don't know about you, but I attend pro-abortion rallies in my spare time. I stand outside of OB-GYN offices and urge women who are planning to go through with their pregnancies to abort. That's just how strong my beliefs are. ;)
Click to expand...

You do that TOO?!1!? :cute:

I thought I was the only one who needed something to fill my lonely, lonely days.
 
YouTube - Pam & Tim Tebow in Focus On The Family Commerical



evidently, this is the ad.

it's so devoid of any context or content that it wouldn't make any sense to anyone unless they knew the background and controversy. it might as well be about how Tim Tebow is gay but his mother still loves him. (i just made that up).

so it just comes across as self-congratulatory. :shrug: aren't the Tebow's awesome? or does their relationship strike you as a bit too much like Miley and Billy Ray?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

MrsSpringsteen
Gilead States Of America
Replies
16
Views
916
MrsSpringsteen
MrsSpringsteen
Janet H
Forum Downtime - software update 1/23-24
Replies
13
Views
686
Headache in a Suitcase
Headache in a Suitcase
Headache in a Suitcase
  • Locked
  • Sticky
Reminder - Forum Downtime for Software Update Begins January 23, 2024.
Replies
0
Views
284
Headache in a Suitcase
Headache in a Suitcase
DaveC
2024 NFL Playoff Pick 'Em
2
Replies
41
Views
2K
DaveC
DaveC
N
NBA 2023-24 Thread
12 13 14
Replies
399
Views
11K
Headache in a Suitcase
Headache in a Suitcase

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom