Tebow

January 15, 2012

Tebow

mrsbadcrumble:

Listen, I don’t follow pro football anymore, I know nothing about him except what everyone knows - he’s a Christian.

If he’s ever said he’s specifically praying for a win, that’s one thing (although we could have a conversation about prayer as energy and a positive force) but as far as I know, no one knows exactly what he’s praying. The fact that he’s a Christian seems to mean it’s open season for mockery.

I would never advocate mocking somebody solely because they considered themselves a “person of faith”, because I feel that on an individual, personal level, every person has the right to believe in whatever the fuck they want without interference or mockery.

HOWEVER:

If you take that personal religious belief and turn it into pageantry, inject its core message into places where it’s not relevant, and use its tenets to manipulate public policy, then I have no sympathy for you when your detractors attack.

What Rachel said. I don’t think most people are attacking him because he’s a Christian. I think most people are attacking him because he’s a jerk. That he uses Christian language in service of his jerkiness is appalling, if not that uncommon in America lately.

Charles Pierce wrote beautifully about how Tebow brought all this upon himself and how it’s quite fair to criticize him for it:

But, of course, that was not what the past week was about, either. Tim Tebow became “compelling” because he became a character in the great national dumbshow that is our culture war. And we should be very clear about one thing — he wasn’t dragooned into this. Nobody drafted him. He walked into this role with his eyes open. Before he ever took a snap in the NFL, he appeared in an anti-choice television ad with his mother that was sponsored by Focus on the Family, an influential anti-choice, anti-gay-rights organization founded by the Rev. James Dobson. He knew what he was doing.

He’s a bad guy, regardless of his professed faith. I’m glad we’re (almost) done talking about him, at least for the next 7-8 months.

6:37am | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZEG6ZyEofUsr
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