The Smug and the Dead

Two especially interesting blog entries concerning the Tebow Super Bowl ad produced by Focus on the Family have appeared on Slate recently. Those of you who haven't seen the ad may see it below.



In "The Invisible Dead: The grisly truth about the Super Bowl abortion ad," William Saletan discusses the facts about Pam Tebow's medical condition when she declined to abort the being who would become Tim Tebow. Saletan writes:

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.

Read the entire entry here.

In "Tebow Ad All Smiles, Cruelty," Amanda Marcotte discusses the perhaps unintended suggestions of the ad. Marcotte writes:

When you argue that you survived a harrowing pregnancy because you're "tough," you imply that other women who die under similar circumstances were too weak to deserve to survive. It's already bad enough that the religious right shames women who choose abortion for choosing their education, careers, relationships, already existing children, or their own lives over the obligation to have another baby. But shaming women for being weak who die trying to fill the mandate (or who are deprived of the choice) to bear children at all costs? That's dark indeed, no matter how glowingly white the background of the ad is.

Read the entire entry here.

Marcotte's blog entry resonated with me. As I recall saying elsewhere in this blog, a loathing of human beings is an essential part of Christianity, no matter how vociferously any particular Christian might deny it. Some Christians, however, reserve a special loathing for those of us who dare not to conform to their Christian worldview. The Tebow ad is an insult to anyone who is not irrational enough to roll the dice with their own lives like Pam Tebow. The smiling faces delivering the underlying "misogynist ideology," as Marcotte puts it, aren't nearly as kind as they are smug. And if there's one thing I hate, it's smugness. How they hope this ad will appeal to the very people the ad insults is a mystery.