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USANews版 - Three Ugly Truths Exposed by the Tebow Assault
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l****z
发帖数: 29846
1
By Timothy Gordon
The ongoing imbroglio with Denver Bronco quarterback Tim Tebow has made
plain three really unflattering facts about the secular-progressive ("sec-
prog") movement in this country. Tebow's straightforward and unapologetic
Christianity has been received by NFL mensae magnae (contradiction in terms?
) as a type of threat. These folks have responded by building upon the
previously gathered strength of the anti-Christian movement in this nation.
Such a movement, by the way, is far more prevalent than it formerly
appeared.
First truth: the sec-progs have meatier game in sight than we used to think.
That is, when sec-progs start out declaring that they aim merely to set a
plain whereupon all religions can fairly "coexist," they really contemplate
an end-game where religions fade permanently out of view. Have a look at
the emergent history of the jurisprudence: "No federal religion" became "no
state religions"; this became "no government entanglement with religion";
this became "no governmental support for religion"; this became "no
governmental mention of religion"; this led to the phase that the Tebow
debacle currently evinces: "no popular mention of religion in any public
sphere, including private affairs which get viewed on TV." One can easily
imagine the last few steps in this phenomenology of disappearance.
Coming back to Tebow, let's remember that his comparatively subtle
iconographic decorum has managed to stir up the hornets' nest to a startling
degree: recent betrayals by active (Lions players Stephen Tulloch and Tony
Scheffler) and especially retired (Merrill Hodge and Jake Plummer) players
lack all response-to-stimulus proportionality and sound more like personal
defensive responses to some governmental actor threatening the players' own
religious liberty. That is, all such ugliness over Tebow taking to his own
knee in thanks, or occasionally mentioning the J-word after a game, exposes
a fetid, rotten sort of secularism at the heart of what most popular
accounts -- derivative largely of the accounts by complete outsiders to the
sports world, the sacerdotal order of pale, effeminate, urban-dwelling media
-poseurs -- name "America's game."
This leads one to the second ugly truth exposed by all this Tebow noise:
football -- especially the NFL -- has gone soft. This ugly truth might also
be called "the Heartland fallacy," because it modifies not only football
players, but also fans (i.e., average Americans) and the culture. (Recall
how very briskly the NFL ended their association with Hank Williams, Jr.
over what amounted to a bizarre yet harmless drunken screed functionally
unrelated to his easily dismissible role as Monday Night Football's twangy
bard.) By virtue of the fact that so many league-dwellers and viewers agree
that Tebow is "out of bounds" for announcing his unapologetic Christianity,
one rightly detects that football is no longer the happy sanctum of "
Heartland values," or whatever.
In fact, compared to the NBA -- by popular accounts, a much less "
traditionalist" league -- the NFL's treatment of its vocal Christian players
plain stinks. For example, the NBA's Kevin Durant has mentioned Christ in
thanks after every nationally televised win for four years running (as an
OKC fan, I know). Dwayne Wade, who like Tebow spends much of his off-court
time with children with cancer, talks openly about the Holy Trinity having
motivated his choice of jersey number (3). During last season's playoffs,
league commentators repeatedly flashed a picture of a college-aged Kendrick
Perkins serving Catholic Mass as a nearly grown-up altar boy, without a hint
of derisive commentary (and the topic even became an issue mentioned
innocuously and with constructive interest throughout the series). All of
these instances witnessed not a single carbuncle of anti-Christian sentiment
. Could it be that the NFL is just the more secular-progressive, without
being the more pandering, league?
Nope: the very zeitgeist of nearly-2012 aligns anti-religiosity with
populism. I don't know quite how to explain the lack of Christian-derision
in the NBA, given the general veracity of the previous sentence, though it
seems to have something to do with a given league's degree of attention to
marketability: the NBA cares about this, being a business, but the NFL seems
to live and breathe by such a criterion, obsessing over it. To me, this
means plainly that the NBA is simply a better-run league, less expected to
kowtow to the superfluous expectations placed upon it by the hoi polloi (
aside from the expectation that they will avoid lockouts at all cost!).
Add to all these charges college football (which I've never watched)'s
crisis with Jerry Sandusky, and a generalized sense of the conformist
culture (entailed by football's hierarchies across the nation's middle
schools, high schools, and colleges) which arguably produced the Sandusky
cover-up and the clannish defense of him afterward...and you've got a full-
on midlife crisis for football.
While loving the game itself, I've simply been driven to the brink. Take
the absolutely mandated pink NFL jerseys for the entire month of October;
the cinematographic acrobatics ordered by the league to avoid camera shots
of even the tiniest dustup on the field; the politically correct
commentators; the hyper-conservative play-calling embraced as a simple "
tradition" of the game (another doctrinal offense by Tebow); and now Tebow
receiving harsher treatment than past players who have raped, sold drugs,
drowned dogs, etc.
In other words, the league's oddball values (i.e., mainstream ones) have
finally been exposed to an unforgiving light. It's the same wan, greenish
light that characterizes all of the urban-poseur values of the sec-progs (
usually reserved to their own sportless sphere of influence). It's readily
visible if we select a view of a slightly bigger picture: the sec-progs
advocate teaching kindergartners how to wear condoms but are offended by the
concept that sometimes grown men fight with their fists. Or to put an even
finer point upon it: they want to teach kindergartners how to wear condoms
and (not "but") are offended by Tim Tebow's open chastity. The point is
that in watching the NFL, there remains no longer any distinction between "
urban values" and "rural values," for which the NFL used to surrogate. And
as ever, these values remain at cross-purposes. Soon now, we the people
will be put to a choice.
This second truth looms so large as to bleed over into the third: that our
entire culture evinces a general trend whereby the popular sensibilities
become thinner-skinned as the popular mores demand an ever stronger and
stronger stomach. The average commercial shown during an NFL game threatens
to corrupt the mind of the youth in far more pernicious ways than a few
skirmishes by players during the game ever could. And yet the liberals who
have long masterminded the realization of such a bizarre world with a
thousand subtle nuances -- having effectually blinded the masses -- can
simply shrug in feigned innocent perplexity.
The moment, which I believe has just passed us, wherein Tim Tebow's prayers
and sexual chastity get formally denounced as dangerous needs to be a "
moment of clarity," en masse, whereupon we can all reassess the paltry
values that we have thoughtlessly embraced as a people. While, happily, it
seems that enough folks have awoken to the economic blights of leftism for
the 2012 election, such a realization -- in order to bear any meaningful
change -- must be met with a concomitant moral reawakening. This is my New
Year's wish. And God bless Tim Tebow.
l****z
发帖数: 29846
2
这下我终于知道我support的football team是哪一个了.
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