CBS Will Air “Focus on Family” Ad
by: Nancy Vedder-Shults on February 4th, 2010 | 8 Comments »
I guess I would have missed it altogether. I never watch the Super Bowl. I never watch TV. I don’t subject myself to its violence and idiocy. I get my information by reading, whether on the internet (more and more) or through print media.
But I’m on the NARAL list, so now I know that CBS is going to subject 100 million viewers to an ad from Focus on Family during the Super Bowl. Supposedly CBS has an advocacy ad policy, but when it comes to “the family,” they don’t seem to be abiding by it. If you don’t know about Focus on Family, they’re a right-wing, anti-choice, anti-birth-control, anti-sex-education, anti-gay organization. They’re against pretty much everything I stand for.
The only thing that made me smile about all of this is the following Youtube video from the Raging Grannies:
If you want to sign a petition protesting the Focus on Family ad, you can go to NARAL.
Sadly, it gets worse from there… CBS allegedly has helped FOTF write the script. At the root is that the Tebow tale is pure fiction exploiting sentimentality by misrepresentation of fact. Abortion was illegal in the Phillipines at the time she was pregnant with Timmay and it was illegal for an OBGYN to advise any female patient about abortion let alone advise her to have one. She never made any “choice” at all. Purely gross propaganda playing on people’s sentimentality. The added insult is CBS’ apparent violation of it’s stated policy, and according to some, if they air the FOTF/Tebow agit-prop, a violation of FCC rules.
Come Monday a.m. there’d better be as many complaints to the FCC about CBS’ propaganda action as are on the petition or our protest isn’t worth the electrons. Legal action and pressure MUST be applied against CBS or this is going to get far far worse.
Planned Parenthood has a nice counter ad… which of course CBS would presumably decline to air (I don’t know if PP tried or not). No need for balance when the corporate person’s all one wing, right?
I’ll be officiating football (soccer) games Sunday as I have zero interest in pointy-ball. I’ve avoided the misfortune of watching large males standing about for two hours interspersed with merely ten seconds of a violent set-piece. Complete waste of space time and energy for not much of a game, IMHO. I plan to spend my Sunday evening trying not to let my son plunder all my pirate ships in a few hands of “Loot.”
I hope to watch the Superbowl and hope to hell I don’t have to watch a pro-life anti everything ad, thanks.
I *have* to watch the Super Bowl — my grandson lives with me and is a huge NO Saints fan — and I am thoroughly disgusted by the fact that we will be subjected to FotF’s lying propaganda. How do I explain this to my grandson? He’s is Autistic and still trusts people to be honest and straight-forward. Explaining to him that people lie and do bad things has been so hard on both of us. Explaining to him that advertisers only want him to spend money or do something else that he would not do if he thought about it carefully was bad enough.
All of the living and several of the deceased women in my family have had abortions. If these reactionary theocrats ever come to power, we will be imprisoned at best. Theocrats of whatever religion are a clear and present danger to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of the rest of us. I fear them.
How old is your grandson? My autistic son is almost twenty-one and was a Denver Bronco fan until he got older. Perhaps he just wanted to fit in. I am an ex-football fan. Money destroyed the game for me. Professional athletes used to be middle class. I realized the game was just one corporation competing against another corporation. What if they played the Super Bowl and nobody watched? That would change the world.
Nancy, I DO watch TV. I like classic movies on Turner Classic Movies and must confess I watch “Desperate Housewives” on Lifetime.
Sorry that I did not see this sooner, Jim. My grandson is 20 and still sports-obsessed. Many Autistics have obsession; for my grandson it’s sports. My little buddy loves to game online with his Wii, and if it’s not a sports game it’s Rock Band or Guitar Hero. We watched the game, and of course he was ecstaic over the Saints’ win. We did our traditional high-10-low-10-hip-bump of victory for his team. I hope that this win helps NOLA get the additional attention that it still needs.
As for what destroys a game, the emphasis on specialization has destroyed the enjoyment that I used to have. I am old enough to remember when players had to be able to multitask: play more than just one position, play both offense and defence, etc. One just doesn’t see the verssatility in the players anymore (sigh). My mother was a football fan all her life, and she hated the influx of specialization in the professional sport but continued to watch college ball until her death.
I enjoy our local high school games. I have seen more heart and determination on the local high school fields in one game than in an entire NFL season. We watched our local working-class school underdog team hold off the better-rated opposing school with a goal line stand through 3 plays that changed the momentum of the game. We saw our boys defeat a school from a more ‘high rent’ area at their homecoming; it was sheer bliss. My grandson’s English teacher that year was also the coach for the JV cheer squad, and all of the girls were so sweet to him. When I was in high school, the cheerleaders did not sit in the cafeteria with the special ed kids or the ‘odd’ kids, but those girls made my grandson feel that he was just as good, just as worthy as anyone else in ways that I never could and for which I will always be grateful. It may explain why he is still sports-obsessed and why football remains a favorite. When you are ‘different’, you never forget the first popular person/people who treat you well or the things that you associate with them.
And fortuneately the FotF ad was s close to innocuous as it could get, so that was not a major issue at least. I agree with Nancy: if many of us hadn’t pitched a major fit, I do believe that the ad would have been much more blatant in its anti-choice agenda.
Thanks for all your comments. I’m sure there are very good reasons for watching television. It’s just not for me. I hope the right team won (let me know). But most importantly, let me know if the anti-abortion ad was aired. (I guess NARAL will notify me)
I didn’t watch the game (as usual). An ex-football player said the Colts were the most right wing team in the NFL. They lost. So, from that perspective the right team won. If you go with red state vs. blue state, the blue state team (from Indiana) lost.
Jim,
I like your analogies concerning the “right team.” I was responding ironically (that’s hard to tell in print) to the desires of several of the responses above.
About the Focus on the Family ad — I guess I was one of the people who was USED by Focus to create a media frenzy. As they say, all pr is good pr, and Focus on Family received 40 times its usual volume of traffic for about 24 hours (Whew!) But I don’t think I would do it any differently. It appears that they would have aired a much less benign ad if you go to their site and see the “rest of the story.” So perhaps our intervention stopped a worse scenario.