The Chris Moeller Archives

The Tim Tebow/CBS agenda

Former University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow has every right to speak out passionately and publicly about his political and cultural beliefs, but the CBS television network is engaged in the worst kind of double-standard by allowing the right-wing hate group Focus on the Family advertising time during the Super Bowl to present Tebow as an opponent of women's reproductive rights.

If CBS's standard policy was to allow issue-advertising during this event, I would have no qualms about allowing the organization to purchase the ad, but that has not and still is not CBS's standard policy. In just the last week, executives rejected an advertisement by a gay dating site that featured (in a humorous presentation) two men watching a football game and kissing each other on the couch after their hands meet inadvertently over the snack bowl. This ad features physical action that millions and millions of Americans no longer find either offensive or controversial, and it is advertising for a commercial enterprise that deserves equal access to the broadcast airwaves, as heterosexual dating sites, such as EHarmony.com, are commonplace.

In addition to a standing network policy against issue-oriented advertising, CBS, as recently as 2004, rejected a Super Bowl ad by the United Church of Christ (those bastards!) that depicted a church door being opened for a gay couple to enter. PETA and MoveOn.org are among the other "left-wing" organizations that have been denied ad slots by CBS even as Focus on the Family, a radical right-wing group that has publicly advocated for the Federal Marriage Amendment, and whose founder and leader has described gay marriage as the "end of Western civilization" is allowed to get airtime inconsistent with the policy.

If the network doesn't take out Focus on the Family and Tim Tebow, then perhaps the Federal Trade Commission will. A petition has now been filed with the FTC calling the particular ad 'misleading,' questioning the truthfulness of the information presented. Tebow and his mother claim during the 30-second spot to air Sunday that the Heisman Trophy-winner was born in the Philippines to his missionary mother after doctors had advised the pregnant woman, suffering from a tropical illness, to have an abortion for her own safety.

But oops! Not so fast. Turns out abortion has been very illegal in the prodominately-Catholic Philippines dating back to 1930, it's punishable by a 2 to 6-year jail sentence, and there are no exceptions under the law for rape, incest, or yes, even the health of the mother.

Yet we're expected to believe that, despite this, and despite the threat of medical license(s) being suspended or revoked, and despite widespread reports of a culture in which healthcare workers threaten to and are encouraged to report such activity, a married, pregnant American woman in the Philippines in 1987 was counseled at a hospital to illegally abort the child. And even if this unlikely scenario were true, we then have to take the additional leap to presume that Pam Tebow's decision was based, not on the presumable lack of access to such a procedure, but on her devout religious beliefs. And then CBS breaks it's long-standing policy against airing issue-based advertisements to make an exception in this of all cases.

It's pretty clear that CBS is displaying some enormous favoritism here to a right-wing hate group, presenting its highly dubious message to the largest television audience in the world this year, and without equal time. It's sickening.

posted by CM @ 3:36 PM