Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Wednesday, May 28
The Indiana Daily Student

It’s the Super Bowl, baby

Illustration

If you watch the Super Bowl on CBS this year, you might see a commercial featuring Tim Tebow, a former University of Florida quarterback known for referencing Bible verses on the eye black below his eyes during games.

In the 30-second spot, Tebow reportedly appears alongside his mother, and the two tell the story of how she decided not to abort her now-famous son against the recommendations of her doctors.

As might be expected, some women’s groups have demanded that CBS reject the ad as “an attack on choice.”

Indeed, Focus on the Family, the ad’s sponsor, sounds disingenuous when it claims its leaders are “surprised” by the negative response to the ad and that “there’s nothing political and controversial about it.”

Even if the commercial does not explicitly reference the legality of abortion, it is practically impossible to talk about abortion as a non-political issue in our society. And paradoxically, groups like Focus on the Family, which takes the position that a woman should not have the right to choose an abortion unless her life is in danger, are responsible for making it that way.

So should CBS run the ad at a time when more Americans report preferring to watch commercials than the game itself? Though we find its implicit message disagreeable, we believe it would not be unreasonable for CBS to show the ad.

Choosing to run the ad would, of course, speak to the standards of the organization. In 2004, CBS rejected a Super Bowl ad from the United Church of Christ that affirmed its open-door policy toward gays and others who might feel unwelcome in other churches.

Since that time, CBS claims it has adjusted its policy and run other advocacy commercials.

The controversy brings to mind a number of parallels with the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign’s struggle with the Bloomington Public Transportation Corporation to run an ad that stated, “You Can Be Good Without God.”

Although we don’t want to wade into the different legal ramifications of a private company’s self-imposed ban on controversy and that of a municipally funded public service, it does seem that a generalization can be made: anti-controversy rules are inherently and stiflingly conservative.

A rule that prohibits airing “controversial” ideas inherently works to promote traditional ideologies. 

Precisely because non-controversy rules are repeatedly used to stifle progressive ideas, we believe progressive organizations’ response to the Tebow ad should not be to seek its removal, but rather to use it as future leverage to run equally thought-provoking ads advocating more admirable causes.

Get stories like this in your inbox
Subscribe