The Newest Front in the Culture War: Tim Tebow

Back in the day, the culture war in this country revolved around simple things like abortion, evolution, prayer in school, gay marriage, the death penalty, assisted suicide or the size of government.  Today, apparently, it is about how one man’s ability to read a defense, throw a tight spiral on a 10 yard out pattern and whether any of this is directly attributable to God.  Tim Tebow is the latest hot button issue in the culture war of America.

Tim Tebow is a Christian.  Tim Tebow is also an NFL quarterback.  Somehow, his ability to play his position has become a referendum on God by proxy.  You see, Tim Tebow does not play the QB position particularly well by the typical standards that QBs are judged by.  He does not have a strong arm.  He has a long throwing motion instead of a more ideal quick-release motion.  He does not have good mechanics.  When he was coming out of college, a lot of experts thought he was more suited to be an H-back or a halfback than a QB because of his running ability.  They believed he would have to unlearn all of the bad mechanical habits he had that came as second nature to him.  They believed this was going to be practically impossible because in the pressure situations of the NFL that QBs typically find themselves, unless a QB has had the right mechanics ingrained into them early enough, guys like Tebow will revert to their natural throwing motion.  In short, they didn’t think there was any way that Tim Tebow could be a successful NFL QB.

Except that now that he has been given the chance to be a starting QB for the Denver Broncos, he is 7-1 as a starter this year, and 8-3 as a starter including the 3 games he started at the end of last season.  And in doing so, there has been a clear division of fans into the Pro-Tebow and Anti-Tebow world.  And the debate that has arisen makes it seem like there is no room for middle ground.  Either Tebow is the greatest or the worst thing ever.

Tebowmania has taken hold of the NFL and even beyond the sports world.  He has become the ultimate Rorschach test.  Do you see only the good (wins) or the flaws (mechanics)?  Presidential candidates (I’m looking at you, Rick Perry) are name-dropping him in their debates, hoping that the mere mention of is name will be enough to engender themselves to potential voters in the primaries; talk about pandering.  People have gotten to the point where they seemingly cannot talk rationally about him as a player.  “Tebow Magic” has become a way of explaining his 4^th quarter comebacks.  Other people are just completely incredulous, chalking him up to being nothing more than a product of the ESPN hype machine.

I feel like I am in a unique position.  I’ve never actually seen Tim Tebow play a game of football.  I have seen some of his highlights in recent weeks, but I’ve never watched a full game in which he has played from start to end.  I do not watch college football, so I never even saw him play when he was at Florida.  The only thing I have to go on is what I have heard everyone say about him, what I have heard from him personally, his pro-life Super Bowl commercial from two years ago (no doubt there’s a bit of latent animosity out there towards him for that for some people), and fantasy football analysis of him.  I’ve been fascinated and perplexed by everything surrounding the guy.  Just this past Sunday I was checking scores and stats online and noticed that the Broncos were down 10-0 to the Bears, Tebow was 3-for-18 and had an INT entering the 4^th quarter.  And I thought to myself, “Well, this is about when it’s time for the Broncos to turn it on.”  And they did!  As a sports fan, moments like that are exciting and are what makes sports so enjoyable.  But apparently not everyone can fully enjoy these things because they are so blinded by their perceptions and their entrenchments.

The divide between the pro- and anti-Tebow forces has gotten to the point where it very much like how entrenched people have gotten in this country about certain politicized issues.  Neither side is willing or able to listen to anything the other side has to say, nor are they willing to engage in a productive conversation of any kind, they just want to get their talking points out there and prove that the other side doesn’t know what it’s talking about.  And everything is dealt with in absolutist terms.

Well, I’ve got news for everyone, the truth about Tim Tebow as an NFL quarterback is somewhere in the middle between the two entrenched sides who remain steadfast in their opinion of the guy.

As a Christian, I think it is great that he is upfront and open about his faith.  He isn’t afraid to say what he believes, and he believes very strongly that his professional success has afforded him a unique platform to spread the word about something he believes passionately.  This is not unique.  All kinds of athletes and other various celebrities use their celebrity status to get the message out about various causes or topics that are near and dear to their heart.  Curt Schilling is an outspoken advocate of finding a cure for ALS.  Lance Armstrong is very vocal about cancer.  Tom Cruise has his Scientology.  Barbara Streisand has things which she is outspoken about.  No one in the general public is faced with the choice of having to choose between buying into what a celebrity’s cause or dismissing their professional output.

Countless people in the public eye also take time at the beginning of their acceptance speeches or postgame interviews to “thank God.”  Too often, I find this to be incredibly cliché and an insincere throwaway line.  Tebow is one of the few people who say that and seems genuine when he says that, which is unsettling to some people.

On the flip side of that, people who take umbrage with the “Tebowing” phenomenon need to realize that when you make your faith so public, you put it out there for public consumption and all that comes with it.  Personally, I find the Tebowing fad entertaining, but that’s just me.  Also, how public is too public with your faith?  Jesus said in Matthew 6:5-6, “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.  Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.  But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.  Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”  How does an athlete like Tim Tebow balance this with routinely kneeling to pray in celebration?  This is not necessarily a question to which I have an answer, but it is one that I think is worth asking.  And as a counter to that, you could just as easily toss in Matthew 5:16, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

I think it is ridiculous to think that Tebow is winning because he has God on his side.  I am sure that there are plenty of Christians on other teams and that the outcome of a sporting event is of eternal significance.  And too many people are willing to give all of the credit to Tim Tebow for the Broncos winning with him as a starter.  In reality, the team as a whole has stepped up.  The team has won, in part, because of Tebow, but as much if not more credit could be given to the Broncos’ kicker, Matt Prater, who made two 50+ yard field goals in the 4^th quarter and in OT last week to complete a comeback win, by no means an easy task.  And their defense has been playing very well too, led by stud 1^st round pick Von Miller and one of the best corners of all time in Champ Bailey.

However, I think, indirectly, God does have something to do with what is going on in Denver.  Tebow, for all of his faults as a quarterback, has belief in his abilities and an unwavering confidence, and has an ability to get his teammates to believe in their ability to win too.  And that is a huge thing in sports.  This is the same team that was underperforming with Kyle Orton as their quarterback.  And the quarterback position, fair or not, is often as much about the intangibles and the ability to lead than it is about the stats and the arm and how you play the position.  He’s an elite QB now, but Tom Brady was not the Tom Brady we know today when he first took over for an injured Drew Bledsoe in 2001.  But he had a similar confidence and belief in getting the job done that rubbed off on his teammates.  And when a team starts to believe in its ability to get the job done, the sky is the limit.  It is at moments like that when a team’s sum truly becomes greater than its parts.  And as a Patriots fan who has never seen him play before and whose team is facing him in just a few hours, I am terrified of what he might do to the Pats porous defense.

To me, the biggest thing the Tebow critics don’t get and refuse to accept is that he gets better in crunch time.  A lot of QBs can put up great numbers, but when the pressure situations come, they falter and fall apart.  That is a criticism that has been made of Tony Romo over his career.  Tebow can put up some awful numbers through the first few quarters, to the point that it looks truly ugly, but he believes that his team can keep it close, they can find a way to pull it out.  There is something to be said for that.  And it is something I don’t think he gets enough credit for, especially since everybody wants a player who gets better in the big moments.  Tebow gets better in crunch time.

At the same time, you cannot turn a blind eye to his poor play leading up to crunch time.  I don’t believe you can consistently succeed in the NFL if your only have two completions for an entire game, or after three quarters of another game you find yourself 3-for-16 throwing the ball.  That is an area he needs to improve.  Right now, he is able to get away with it, but he cannot do this forever.  He is proving a lot of doubters wrong right now and challenging conventions that have been held for forever in the NFL, because he is finding a way to get it done and win games, but one convention he cannot change is that of the scrambling QB.  Scrambling QBs have a shelf life.  They need to adapt or die.  Eventually, his running ability will not be the asset it is right now.  Age or injury always take their toll on scrambling quarterbacks, and once the running ability is not what it once was, they need to have the passing ability to get by without it or be more judicious with it.  That was true of Fran Tarkenton, John Elway, Steve Young, and, currently, Michael Vick.

Here is where Tebow should consider himself really blessed by God: His GM is John Elway, one of the greatest, most clutch QBs who ever played the position.  And he could run too.  If I was Tim Tebow, I would tie myself to John Elway’s hip as soon as the season is over, and spend the offseason trying to be a sponge and soaking in as much knowledge and whatever help I can gain from Elway.  You can’t ask for much of a better situation than that.

Lastly, people should keep in mind that how they feel about Tim Tebow is not a referendum on God.  Christians should not feel like they are obligated to support him blindly without reservation or criticism.  And non-Christians should not feel like rooting for Tebow is a tacit endorsement of God.  At the end of the day, it’s a helpful reminder to keep in mind that it is sports and it should be fun.  It’s a game where adults are being paid millions of dollars to play a children’s game.  Sit back and enjoy the spectacle of sport unfold.  If you’re a Broncos’ fan, you’re within your right to be over the moon with what is happening.  If you’re a fan of another team, you are well within your right to root on or jeer Tebow and the Broncos and not have it be about his beliefs.  And if you want to embrace him because of his faith, that is fine too.  What isn’t fine is to accept or reject his play based solely on his beliefs.  Don’t unnecessarily simplify what is happening and dig in just because you feel like you have to be pro-Tebow or anti-Tebow.  There is a wide middle ground.

~Moose

The Arizona Shooting

I was getting ready to watch some football on Saturday afternoon.  It was Wild Card weekend; the opening round of the playoffs of my favorite sport.  I was doing a quick browse of the web after playing some Madden football on my PS3 shortly after 3:30pm because I thought the first game started at 3:30pm, but found out it actually started at 4:30pm.  While on Facebook, I noticed a link that one of my friends had listed quoting a congresswoman’s twitter feed an hour before she got shot.  This confused me, so I switched over to the news which showed that Gabrielle Giffords, Representative from Arizona, had been shot in the head at point blank range, her condition was unknown, and that several other people were wounded or dead.  Instead of settling in for a full evening of football, my attention was divided for most of the rest of the day between an uneasy mix of sobering news and football action. 

As information began to trickle out over the course of the next few hours, I was fascinated with the minutiae of the details coming out.  The first reports of the suspect’s name were announced, which led to a Google search of his name.  I most of what I found was news sites and discussion forums where his name was listed.  I checked to see if the guy was on Facebook.  I even went onto Myspace, a site I hadn’t been to in at least a year when I heard the news talking about his Myspace page (that had been almost immediately shut down).  Then there was talk of YouTube videos; which I quickly searched for and found (and far more easily than anything else I was searching for. 

During this entire time I was also watching the news for updates on Giffords and other victims, details of the shooting, and reactions of people (friends and friends of friends on Facebook , public statements by public officials, public statements by people in the public eye, and some bloggers, particularly Andrew Sullivan’s live-blogging).  A lot of people, myself included, were trying to understand what was going on, why this woman was targeted.  Particularly, people were debating whether or not it was an overtly political action on the part of the suspect.  Almost immediately, there was information out there about her opponent in the last election, a Iraq vet, having campaign pictures of himself holding a gun and using militarized language in his campaign fliers (“Get on target for victory in November.  Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office.  Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.”).  Almost immediately, there were examples of pictures on Sarah Palin’s website (which were hastily removed) of gun sights on a U.S. map indicating congressional districts and Democrats in those districts to be targeted for removal in the next election because they had voted in favor of the health care bill (I have also read that Democrat websites had similar pictures online in 2007).  Almost immediately, the trendy words of the day became “rhetoric” “vitriol” and “tone”. 

And, sadly, even though people were saying that vitriol in the political rhetoric needed to be toned down, almost immediately both sides of the political aisle were doing their best to inoculate themselves of any responsibility and place the blame at the feet of the other party.  Depending on who you read or watch or listen to, the suspect was either a crazy who was swayed by the inflamed talk of the Tea Party movement, or that he was a crazy liberal extremist who smoked pot and read Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto (two books that would never be found on the shelf of a true Tea Partier).  This is something that will continue to play out over the next few days and weeks.  Because too many people in positions of power and influence in this country don’t just see this event over the weekend as a tragedy; they also see opportunity.  Opportunity to bury their opponents and gain the upper hand in a back and forth fight for control of this country, that, in reality, ebbs and flows constantly anyway.  In my eyes, that makes it a bigger national tragedy, because events like this lift up a big mirror to the national face, and I don’t like what I’m seeing in the reflection. 

It is simplistic to say that this act perpetrated by this suspect was without any political underpinning whatsoever.  An assassination, by definition, is an attempt on someone’s life who is in the public eye precisely because of their stature and because they are involved in politics.  You cannot separate the two entirely.  But I think it is also an oversimplification to say that a political ideology or motive was the driving force behind what this suspect did. 

There is a lot of speculation as to what his motives were in attempting to take this woman’s life, and in actually taking the lives of several others, including a federal judge and a nine year-old girl.  But the biggest single factor in all of it was availability and opportunity.  Politically, Rep. Giffords is not considered an extreme left-wing Democrat; instead being grouped in with a group of moderate Democrats known as Blue Dogs.  She deviates far from the party line on the issue of border control and immigration (I would point out here that is was most shameful of Fox News when details of the shooting were still murky to try to subtly suggest that the shooting could have had something to do with her stance on immigration and wonder aloud if it had any connection to the story reported earlier in the day of 14 decapitated heads being found in Mexico).  I don’t know how close her re-election was in November, but if the shooters major motive for shooting a Representative was because of politics, he could have found someone far more to the extreme that he disagreed with, I am sure, in some other part of the country.  The major reason that she was the target was because she represented his district, she was making herself available to the public, and the opportunity to get her was there for him. 

However, while means and availability were the overriding factors in making her the target, there is also plenty of room to be critical of politicians and pundits in the media who trade in the currency of demagoguery and demonizing their opponents.  And again, it is utterly shameful for anyone on either side of the political spectrum in the country to try and exploit this situation for gain.  Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and many others in the Tea Party movement should be criticized for the kind of rhetoric that they have invoked in the past few years.  But so should Keith Olbermann, who has a running “Worst Person in the World” segment on his show.  It is amazing to me how sanctimonious some people on TV and the internet are about how things need to change and be toned down and scaled back, and then ripping the other side for how vile and disgusting their tactics are.  They’re talking out of both sides of their mouths.  One comment I read online compared Tea Party members to pedophiles in black vans with tinted windows.  How exactly does that help anything? 

Drudgereport.com had link to a comment that Barak Obama made back during his campaign that if Republicans brought a knife to the fight, then Democrats had to bring a gun.  And while it would be easy to say that such a quote is not much different than some of the things Palin or Beck have said, it is also cheap, and I’m not going to go in that direction.  Instead, I think it is a very telling quote about the climate of politics that both sides have fomented.  Then-candidate Obama was quoting from The Untouchables, when Sean Connery’s character Malone asks Kevin Costner’s Elliot Ness what he is prepared to do to win.  And Connery tells him, “They pull a knife, you pull a gun!  He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue!”  That is what passes for politics today with the “Gotcha!” mentality and the 24-hour news cycles.  Republicans do something and then Democrats top it.  Then Republicans come back and go over the top on them.  And it keeps escalating and escalating until the stakes are so ridiculously high that neither side can afford to lose or else it is viewed as the end of the world.  It has to change.  Unfortunately it seems to take big tragedies like this to point this out to us.  And things change for a while, and then people forget, move on, and get charged up about the latest political news story du jour.  One talking point I read was that a liberal pundit said he would be willing to change his tone if Republicans concede that they don’t have a monopoly on loving America.  That is all well and good, but people should keep in mind that one party does not have a monopoly on vile, hateful rhetoric, either.  There are plenty guilty on both sides when it comes to stirring the pot and vilifying the other side.

We also need to keep in mind, that this suspect is, by all accounts, unhinged to say the least.  As of now, he has not said anything to authorities about his reasons and motives for why he did what he did.  Even if he does ever speak, it might not be logical or coherent in thought.  Based on what I read from his YouTube clips, the man does not seem to have a firm grasp on reality.  I’ve seen some people on TV and the internet speculate as to whether he is mentally unstable, and, if so, what that instability might be.  I thought it was a keen observation that someone made that his list of favorite books (not just Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto, but Animal Farm, Brave New World, Alice in Wonderland, etc) is rather eclectic and an impressive, but the pervading theme of nearly all of them is that they deal with perception of reality being controlled by higher powers, changing the reality around you, and the possibility of alternate realities. 

He goes on and on at points about the government using mind control on the country through grammar.  He claims that only 5% of the people in his district are literate and that he studies grammar and language, yet his grammar is poor at best, using “you’re” when he should be using “your” or writing “implying” when he means “employing” or “conscience dreaming” when he means “conscious dreaming”.  There are rants about creating new currency, being the mind-controller, and rejecting God.  The best I can make of it is that of someone taking two or three tidbits from various philosophies he’s come into contact with that are beyond his mental capabilities to fully understand, and tried to take these disparate parts and mold them into something for himself that he thinks sounds profound and deep.  Based on everything I have read and seen about the suspect, he does not sound like the type of person that will easily fit into the ideology of either political party. 

So, with all of that said, where do we go from here?  What changes?  What is to be done?  People on both sides of the political aisle will dig in and try to win on talking points while mentioning how tragic it all is.  Attempts at legislation on gun ownership will be made.  There will be the usual hand-wringing and self-righteousness from talking heads on cable news.  But real change in Washington is not going to come until the rest of America decides that this is unacceptable and needs to change.  We need to stop lending our ears to people who spew this stuff and charge things up and are in the business of escalating.  These people have a voice because there is a market for it.  And that market has moved more and more into the mainstream of political discourse.  And I think politicians will only continue to pay lip service to these kinds of tragedies or continue to talk out of both sides of their mouths about them, even when it is one of their own that is attacked. 

I think a tangible thing we can do is to curtail the ability of mentally unstable people from getting their hands on guns.  It seems like this suspect fell through the cracks on multiple levels (high school, the military, community college, etc.).  It will probably mean more surveillance and diligence on the part of authorities.  I’m not sure how exactly that manifests itself.  But guns in the hands of responsible, sane people, is not a problem and should not be brought under scrutiny. 

I think another tangible thing that can be done is to increase the level of security for people in public office.  I hope that people do not shy away from the public spectrum and that this does not discourage people from seeking public office.  I also hope that it doesn’t discourage Representatives and Senators from meeting regularly with their constituencies.  The last thing we need right now is for people in Washington to become more insulated from the people they represent. 

I also hope this begins to spell the end of some peoples’ sway over the political narrative in this country, that they would be deservedly ridiculed for their overdependence upon propaganda and rhetoric and that we would begin to see a move in this country back to ideas and principles guiding our political parties instead of cult of personality and talking points.  

More than anything, though, I hope Gabrielle Giffords and the other people who were injured in this shooting recover and are able to live full lives again.  I’ve gone on and on in this space about lambasting both sides for their negligence and only paying lip service to changing the tone in the past.  But all of that takes a back seat to the fact that human lives hang in the balance right now.  I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach watching the news on Saturday.  It was made even worse when at one point I read an erroneous report that Rep. Giffords had passed away.  I was very relieved that they announced she was critical but stable after surgery and was responding to commands.  I was saddened to hear that a federal judge had lost his life, and sickened to hear that one of the victims was a nine year-old girl. 

One thing that has been used as a talking point in this country is that people don’t have a respect for life.  People against abortion use it, as do people against the death penalty.  But when things like this happen, it drives me up a wall that not enough people have a respect for life.  It goes beyond abortion or the death penalty.  It has to do with any murder, rape, or violent crime.  I’ve never been able to wrap my head around the concept that some people think that they have an apparently inherent right to take the life of someone else, sometimes for the most inconsequential of things.  Or that their life is more important or valuable than that of the people they kill.  It’s something I struggle with in trying to understand humanity.  You can debate the reasons for why the conditions have come about for tragedies like this to happen, but until we take the necessary individual steps to change these conditions, in homes and in schools and in how we conduct ourselves publicly and privately, the change will not occur.  I hope we do it.  Now is not a time for knee-jerk reactions, but a time for introspection.

~Moose

The “Ground Zero” Mosque Farce

In service to the 24-hour news cycle, the latest hullabaloo is over the proposed building of a mosque in New York City just a few blocks away from where the Twin Towers used to stand.  There has been a large, vehement public outcry that the location is too close to Ground Zero and that it disparages the hallowed ground of the where the Towers used to stand and the memories of the people who died on 9/11.  I fail to see the big deal in all of this.  In fact, I find it rather disgusting that it is becoming such a hotly divisive issue that people are using to exploit for their own political gain. 

This country is founded on certain principles and inalienable rights.  One of those is religious freedom.  President Obama was correct in stating this and reaffirming this.  There are plenty of things going on in the world to get righteously outraged about, but this is not one of them.  How close is too close for a mosque being built near Ground Zero?  What is a comfortable, acceptable distance for those who oppose this mosque being built on private property? 

As a conservative who feels abandoned by the party he once proudly supported, one of the things that I have noticed in the last few years in the Republican Party is a severe lack of nuance in the way Republicans look at the world around us.  Its leaders and most vocal adherents have painted everything in a stark black and white contrast that has only deepened the culture wars that have engulfed this country.  We need to remember that it is not the religion of Islam that took over planes and flew them into building on September 11, 2002.  It is not the religion of Islam that we are at war with in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The people who inflicted those horrors visited upon us were radicalized extremists of a religion. 

If you were to make a Venn Diagram of Islam and terrorists, there would certainly be some overlap.  But do you know who else would overlap into the terrorist circle?  Christianity, American citizens, basically any generic group of people you could think of, because terrorists come in all shapes and sizes and from all walks of life.  If we continue to lump all the whole of Islam with the nut jobs in their ranks who make up a fraction of their number, then we reinforce the ugly stereotypes that the terrorists insist is true about us.  That we think they are all the same.  That we are actually fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan because we are fighting Islam.

I realize that it can be hard to set aside feelings of anger and hurt that can crop up for some people because of what happened to them and their families on 9/11.  The entire country was impacted by that day and it left an indelible mark on our collective psyche.  But it is precisely because it is hard that we must do it.  We must always embrace our Constitution and promote the constitutional rights of everyone in this country, even when it may feel like the hardest thing and what we least want to do.  We should not settle for allowing these important matters to become boilerplate fodder that will be politicized and exploited and finessed to fit a 30 second campaign ad. 

~Moose