Ever the gentleman

Though I loath football, I have a great admiration for Tim Tebow -- partly because he's a devout Christian and isn't afraid to show it, and partly because he just seems like a durn nice guy.

Proof? It seems a cameraman had some sort of locker-room mishap and took the Lord's name in vain as follows:

“In the Pats locker room, a camera guy has a mishap and yells, ‘Jesus Christ!’

Tebow, in earshot, looks at the guy and says: ‘He loves you.’”

The article is here.

Yep, ever the gentleman. Keep up the classy work, Tim.

A few random thoughts

A few things have caught my attention lately that I thought I would combine into a single blog post.

Tim Tebow

I'm not a football fan. Neither is my husband. The sport absolutely leaves me cold. But I must admit, I'm delighted with Tim Tebow's "buck the system" approach to the game. Not only is this young man a devout Christian, but he isn't fazed by the good-natured and not-so-good-natured teasing and heckling he gets about "Tebowing."

And darn it, he's a GOOD football player. As in, incredible. That's what annoys the hecklers the most.

Keep it up, Tim -- even non-football fans are rooting for you.

Black Friday from the Trenches
I have a friend who works in a large department store, specifically the fragrance department. She was required to report to work on Thanksgiving evening since the store was opening at midnight.

Here's what she wrote about her experience:

Yup, I'm alive. I survived black Friday.

It was simply stunning to me at midnight when all of us [department store] associates were ready for the doors to be opened and there were actually people, hundreds of them waiting to come in the store AT MIDNIGHT ON TURKEY DAY!!!! I was thinking: "Are all you people nuts??? Apparently not.

Because they spent like drunken sailors. Where is all this money coming from? Who knows??? I personally sold over $1600 today during my 11:30pm to 9:30 am shift.

Honestly unless I hadn't already experienced it I would never known we were in a virtual depression in this country! If I was Jim (her outspoken husband) I'd be having a soapbox moment. I'm just too tired. I got home from work at 10:15am and was fast asleep by 10:30 easy. Got up at 2 and tried to pretend it was a normal day.

Passing on the Baton
In response to a blog post called Preserving the Work of Five Millennia, a young homeschooling mom named Sara wrote me the following email. I was so delighted with the idea of this woman passing the baton of knowledge to neighborhood kids -- a true Titus 2 woman -- that I thought I'd pass it on to you.

My 6 year old home schooled daughter, Ella, wanted to start a club. So, we spent some time brainstorming and this is what we came up with: Ella's Edible Club. Several of her friends come over once a quarter and they learn how to make something from scratch. Ella had the idea to make food based on seasons.

We met for the first time in October and made small pumpkin pies and applesauce. Several of the girls had never cracked an egg much less mold a pie crust in to a pan. They did not realize that you could make your own applesauce. We all live in a suburb of Houston, Texas and are far removed from the food chain. None of her friends home school and most of their moms make cookies with frozen pre-sliced cookie dough. They all had a great time and we able to take their goodies home to share with their families.

Other items that I will be teaching them are making your own hot cocoa mix, Christmas finger food type dessert (good to give away as gifts), sugar cookies decorated with icing, pick strawberries and make jam, and bread (no mixers involved). That should get us through the summer.

It's the little things that we contribute to society -- like this mom's efforts to teach other children that food doesn't grow in grocery stores -- that is our culture's salvation.

Good for you, Sara! Keep it up.

Hey feminists: You're kind of lame

I don't know how many of you saw the controversial Super Bowl ad featuring Tim Tebow and his mom. This is the ad got NOW's panties in a wad because (gasp) it implied that abortion was wrong.

Well, all the hoopla from the feminist groups happened before anyone saw the actual ad. They just objected, you know, on principle. (If feminist principles isn't an oxymoron.)

Here's the actual ad. Very mild. It shows Pam Tebow chatting about her pregnancy. At the very end, Tim affectionately tackles his mother, and she scolds him for interrupting. Cute.

So - once the ad aired and everyone began asking, "Sheesh, what's the big deal?", the feminists (unable to object on the grounds of principles) start stuttering about violence.

Yeah, seriously. NOW president Terry O'Neill said that bit of the ad "glorified violence against women."

"I am blown away at the celebration of the violence against women in it," she told the Los Angeles Times. "That's what comes across to me even more strongly than the anti-abortion message. I myself am a survivor of domestic violence, and I don't find it charming. I think CBS should be ashamed of itself."

O'Neill's reaction "drew guffaws even from hardcore abortion advocates."

This just cracked me up and shows the ridiculous lengths to which feminist groups will twist and turn in an effort to show decent people in a revolting light.

Abortion advocate Amanda Marcotte had this post on Twitter that has drawn a reaction from pro-life advocates: "Hey Mom! Tried to kill you from the womb and failed. How about a blind side tackle? Violence against Moms."

Fortunately the feminists' absurdities are coming back to bite them in the butt. Pro-life groups got a tremendous - and positive - exposure from the weeks of hoopla surrounding the ad.

Americans United for Life Action president Charmaine Yoest told LifeNews.com, "This ad was funny, light-hearted, and had a positive message for everyone. The hate-filled reaction from pro-abortion groups reveals a radical abortion-at-any-cost agenda that is far out of step with the American people. Congratulations to Focus on the Family for inspiring us all in the face of extremism."

Monica Miller of the Center for a Pro-Life Society noted, "the very fact that pro-abortion people made a stink about it in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, was a plus for the pro-life movement."

"The threat that a pro-life commercial was to air during the Super Bowl caused millions of people to focus on the abortion issue--and the pro-abortionists looked foolish, narrow-minded, paranoid and ridiculous," Miller added.

"Now that the real ad has aired--and the abortion issue was never addressed--the pro-abortionists look even more ridiculous."

Football with a conscience

I have about as much interest in football as I do shoe fashions. But I'm coming to greatly admire this Tim Tebow guy for his strength of character and his ability to quietly live his beliefs.

And while I'll have to disagree with sports columnist Sally Jenkins' pro-choice stance, she wrote a wonderful piece in support of Tebow's pro-life position. My heartiest congratulations, Ms. Jenkins, for having the courage to say what you did.

[This article is excerpted, not printed in its entirety.]
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Tebow's Super Bowl ad isn't intolerant; its critics are

By Sally Jenkins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 2, 2010

I'll spit this out quick, before the armies of feminism try to gag me and strap electrodes to my forehead: Tim Tebow is one of the better things to happen to young women in some time. I realize this stance won't endear me to the "Dwindling Organizations of Ladies in Lockstep," otherwise known as DOLL, but I'll try to pick up the shards of my shattered feminist credentials and go on.

I'm pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I've heard in the past week, I'll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the "National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time." For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow's 30-second ad hasn't even run yet, but it already has provoked "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" to reveal something important about themselves: They aren't actually "pro-choice" so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.

Pam Tebow and her son feel good enough about that choice to want to tell people about it. Only, NOW says they shouldn't be allowed to. Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikinis selling beer is the right one. I would like to meet the genius at NOW who made that decision. On second thought, no, I wouldn't.

There's not enough space in the sports pages for the serious weighing of values that constitutes this debate, but surely everyone in both camps, pro-choice or pro-life, wishes the "need" for abortions wasn't so great. Which is precisely why NOW is so wrong to take aim at Tebow's ad.

Here's what we do need a lot more of: Tebows. Collegians who are selfless enough to choose not to spend summers poolside, but travel to impoverished countries to dispense medical care to children, as Tebow has every summer of his career. Athletes who believe in something other than themselves, and are willing to put their backbone where their mouth is. Celebrities who are self-possessed and self-controlled enough to use their wattage to advertise commitment over decadence.

You know what we really need more of? Famous guys who aren't embarrassed to practice sexual restraint, and to say it out loud. If we had more of those, women might have fewer abortions. See, the best way to deal with unwanted pregnancy is to not get the sperm in the egg and the egg implanted to begin with, and that is an issue for men, too -- and they should step up to that.

"Are you saving yourself for marriage?" Tebow was asked last summer during an SEC media day.

"Yes, I am," he replied.

The room fell into a hush, followed by tittering: The best college football player in the country had just announced he was a virgin. As Tebow gauged the reaction from the reporters in the room, he burst out laughing. They were a lot more embarrassed than he was.

"I think y'all are stunned right now!" he said. "You can't even ask a question!"

That's how far we've come from any kind of sane viewpoint about star athletes and sex. Promiscuity is so the norm that if a stud isn't shagging everything in sight, we feel faintly ashamed for him.

Obviously Tebow can make people uncomfortable, whether it's for advertising his chastity, or for wearing his faith on his face via biblical citations painted in his eye-black. Hebrews 12:12, his cheekbones read during the Florida State game: "Therefore strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees." His critics find this intrusive, and say the Super Bowl is no place for an argument of this nature. "Pull the ad," NOW President Terry O'Neill said. "Let's focus on the game."

Trouble is, you can't focus on the game without focusing on the individuals who play it -- and that is the genius of Tebow's ad. The Super Bowl is not some reality-free escape zone. Tebow himself is an inescapable fact: Abortion doesn't just involve serious issues of life, but of potential lives, Heisman trophy winners, scientists, doctors, artists, inventors, Little Leaguers -- who would never come to be if their birth mothers had not wrestled with the stakes and chosen to carry those lives to term. And their stories are every bit as real and valid as the stories preferred by NOW.

Let me be clear again: I couldn't disagree with Tebow more. It's my own belief that the state has no business putting its hand under skirts. But I don't care that we differ. Some people will care that the ad is paid for by Focus on the Family, a group whose former spokesman, James Dobson, says loathsome things about gays. Some will care that Tebow is a creationist. Some will care that CBS has rejected a gay dating service ad. None of this is the point. CBS owns its broadcast and can run whatever advertising it wants, and Tebow has a right to express his beliefs publicly. Just as I have the right to reject or accept them after listening -- or think a little more deeply about the issues. If the pro-choice stance is so precarious that a story about someone who chose to carry a risky pregnancy to term undermines it, then CBS is not the problem.

Tebow's ad, by the way, never mentions abortion; like the player himself, it's apparently soft-spoken. It simply has the theme "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life." This is what NOW has labeled "extraordinarily offensive and demeaning." But if there is any demeaning here, it's coming from NOW, via the suggestion that these aren't real questions, and that we as a Super Bowl audience are too stupid or too disinterested to handle them on game day.