CBS's right-wing partisanship hurts Super Bowl

In America, it’s usually only acceptable for sports and politics to mix once a particular player decides to retire and enter the arena of politics, such as our own Heath Shuler.

CBS’s decision to run an ad titled “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life,” that conservative Christian group Focus on the Family funded, may alter the fate of Super Bowl advertising.

The ad, featuring former University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother Pam, was rumored to be overtly anti-abortion in nature, but the message was apparently toned down for the final cut. Many women’s groups, including the National Organization for Women, wrote to CBS and requested the ad be pulled.

While CBS, or any broadcast network airing the Super Bowl, can decide which ads to run and which ads to keep off viewers’ television screens, the decision should include both precedent and common decency.

After Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction,” CBS has played it safe when it comes to supplementary Super Bowl content, including rejecting advertisements from liberal organizations.

In 2004, they rejected a MoveOn.org ad featuring children working in a factory asking the question, “Guess who’s going to pay off President Bush’s $1 trillion deficit?” They also rejected a pro-vegetarianism advertisement by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

They did not, however, reject the advertisement from the militantly anti-gay and anti-abortion group, Focus on the Family. What prompted these decisions on what advertisements are acceptable to air during America’s most watched telecast of the year?

The “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life” ad was much tamer than many originally thought, but it does not change the fact that the spot advertised a highly political and highly controversial organization.

Does this mean that even the Super Bowl, a historically politics-free haven, can now become the friendly confines for wildly political organizations and their more mild- mannered advertisements?

There is no place for a political agenda, and CBS made a monumental mistake by airing the ad. CBS rejected ads by both GoDaddy.com and the gay dating Web site ManCrunch.com because they “Had the potential to offend a significant number of people.”

It is hard to imagine how an effeminate former football player who now sells lingerie online (GoDaddy.com) or two friends kissing as a third looks on in horror (ManCrunch.com) could be considered more offensive than an ad by a group whose founder, James Dobson, said part of why Sept. 11 happened was because, “God is displeased with America for its pride and arrogance, for killing 40 million unborn babies, for the universality of profanity and for other forms of immorality.”

CBS and other corporations have the right to choose which ads they air. If they feel ads featuring even the slightest homosexuality might be too offensive to their viewers, perhaps they should re-evaluate just who is watching.

As for the politicization of Super Bowl ads, there should be none.

Sports remains one of the few institutions left in this country that politics and religion has yet to poison. Unfortunately, CBS took a step towards changing that Sunday night.

http://www.thebluebanner.net/cbs-s-right-wing-partisanship-hurts-super-bowl-1.1123409