Tim Tebow anti-choice ad not harmless

I watched the infamous Tim Tebow anti-choice Super Bowl ad, and I have to conclude that it isn’t harmless. That it skirts around its objective — the subjugation of women — probably makes it even more dangerous because it wishes to appear to be harmless. (The title of the book Friendly Fascism comes to mind right now…)

No, I didn’t expect to see a shrieking bloody embryo in the ad, but the ad gets its anti-choice message across nonetheless. At the end of the ad, which features friendly sounding singers in the background, is the message: “For the full Tebow story go to FocusOnTheFamily.com” and “Celebrate family. Celebrate life.” 

If nothing else, the 30-second ad directs the viewer to the website of the “Christo”fascist group Focus on the Family. CBS probably wouldn’t have aired an ad for any other hate group, but it aired the ad for Focus on the Family.

The Nation sums it up well:

The Tim Tebow/Pam Tebow [Super Bowl] ad has finally aired, and it is about as vanilla as an Andy Williams Christmas special. This is none too surprising. After all, CBS actually co-produced the ad to run seamlessly with the rest of its slick Super Bowl coverage.

This has the anti-choice right wing on the blogs mocking the National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood for “making a big deal over nothing.” But the concerns of NOW and Planned Parenthood were absolutely spot-on when you saw the final shot of the ad: “This message is brought to you by Focus on the Family.”

The idea that Focus on the Family — an organization that believes in reparative therapy for LGBT people, that likens abortion rights to the Nazi holocaust, and that has shadowy connections to open hate groups — gets this kind of a mammoth public forum is an absolute disgrace.

As for the ad, Pam Tebow speaks about the choice to ignore her doctor’s advice and risk her own life. She has every right to stand on a soapbox with her hunky, Heisman-winning son, and tell other women about the benefits of ignoring your doctor.

But the idea that CBS would provide the platform for such a message without so much as a medical disclaimer is simply wrong.

Also, the idea that Focus on the Family, an organization that stands unequivocally for the view that other women should be denied Pam Tebow’s choice, would get this kind of prime commercial real estate exposes CBS as a frighteningly fraudulent operation.

They should offer free commercial time to Planned Parenthood. And if Roe v. Wade is ever deemed unconstitutional, I hope the executives at CBS ponder their role in this process. Maybe it will cross their minds when they are taking their daughters on a first-class trip to France for legal, safe abortions.

Somewhere, Edward R. Murrow weeps.

Well, Murrow has been crying uncontrollably for some years now, starting no later than when the major American television networks acted not as critical journalists, but as “embedded” cheerleaders for the unelected Bush regime’s “shock and awe” when it launched its bogus Vietraq War in March 2003. The networks treated this “shock and awe” like a fucking sporting event — like the Super Bowl.

That was when I stopped watching television.

Tim Tebow nativity story false?

Associated Press photo

CBS will show football star Tim Tebow’s anti-choice ad paid for by the radical-right group Focus on the Family during the Super Bowl, but reportedly has turned down an ad for a gay men’s dating service. Meanwhile, the circumstances of Tebow’s nativity have been called into question. But the most important question of all still remains: When do we get to see him nekkid???

Shit, with all of the controversy surrounding the impending Tim “I’m Sure Glad That My Mama Didn’t Abort Me!” Tebow anti-choice Super Bowl commercial coming up, Focus on the Family could have saved its $2 million-something for the ad, since we all know the story by now.

But is the story true?

According to Wikipedia,

Tebow was born on August 14, 1987, in Manila in the Philippines to Bob and Pam Tebow, who were serving as Christian missionaries at the time.

While pregnant, Pam suffered a life-threatening infection with a pathogenic ameba. Because of the drugs used to rouse her from a coma and to treat her [amebic] dysentery, the fetus experienced a severe placental abruption. Doctors expected a stillbirth and recommended an abortion to protect her life[, but] she carried Timothy to term and both [of them] survived.

That’s a story to warm a wingnut’s cold, cold heart, but apparently the doctors were trying to prevent Pam Tebow’s death. I don’t think that they were hell bent on snuffing out her unborn child.

However, an interesting twist to the Touching Tebow Birth Story is that, according to an article in AlterNet:

In a series of new interviews, the first of which was given to RadarOnline, high-profile attorney Gloria Allred argues that Pam Tebow’s heartwarming story omits a rather significant detail that renders the whole thing suspicious: namely, the fact that abortion was illegal in the Philippines in 1987.

Indeed, abortion has been illegal in the Philippines since the 1930s, even in cases of rape or incest or if the mother’s health is in danger.

According to Radar:

Allred says she believes it an impossible scenario to believe that Philippine doctors would [have] ever suggested abortion as a viable option for Tebow in the first place.

And when you learn that physicians and midwives who perform abortions in the Philippines face six years in prison, and may have their licenses suspended or revoked, and that women who receive abortions — no matter the reason — may be punished with imprisonment for two to six years, it’s easy to see why.

Stay tuned. Hopefully we will learn soon whether the Tebow Nativity Fable is apocryphal or not.

Hell, I’m surprised that Pam Tebow doesn’t just claim that Little Timmy, God’s Gift to Football If Not to Mankind, was an immaculate conception. You know, she was visited by an angel wearing a golden football helmet or something… 

After all, Wikipedia also notes:

All of the Tebow children were home-schooled by [Pam Tebow], who worked to instill the family’s Christian beliefs along the way. In 1996, legislation was passed in Florida allowing home-schooled students to compete in local high school sporting events.

The rest, of course, is history; now all of that home-schooling will pay off as Tiny Tim delivers a misogynist, anti-choice message to the world.

But seriously, that Tim Tebow was home-schooled — wow.

No wonder he wears scriptural references painted on his face like a Jesus-freak drag queen.

I have at least a little bit of sympathy for him now that I didn’t have just hours ago. Given his indoctrinating parents, it appears as though he didn’t have much of a choice except to become a Bible-thumper.