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The Double Standard at CBS
There are already at least two Christian broadcasting channels, so there is no need for CBS to be a right-wing revival tent for the Super Bowl.
Now, before all the knees start jerking, I want to be clear that this pro-choicer has no problem in the abstract with CBS's decision to air an ad featuring Florida football star Tim Tebow. The ad, funded by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, features the decision by Tebow's mother to reject the advice of doctors to have an abortion when she was very sick while the future Heisman Trophy winner was in her womb. That story is an unqualified, beautiful individual testament to faith and love.
But Focus on the Family wants to twist the free choice of this mother into a political vehicle to eliminate choice for all other women. But not even that ultimately offends me. Where CBS bears false witness is the fact that they accepted that ad while rejecting a Super Bowl ad for a gay dating service. The ad starts with one man in a Green Bay Packers jersey and the other in a Minnesota Vikings shirt cheering against each other. It ends with them making out on the couch.
Taste could not have been a consideration for rejection, especially when Super Bowls ads counsel men on the best drugs for erections (always for women, of course). After the 1993 Super Bowl, where the ads were nonstop promos for movies of mayhem, I wrote, "There were so many guns, fights and limp bodies I thought I was tuning into Bosnia.'' Virtually all the dead, unconscious, mutilated and threatened victims in the promos were women.
Advertising experts speculate that CBS relaxed its prior resistance to well-heeled advocacy ads to compensate for the loss of some traditional Super Bowl industrial advertisers in the recession. All CBS itself could do was speak in tongues about why it rejected the gay ad while accepting the ad from the far right. On the gay ad, CBS said, "After reviewing the ad, which is entirely commercial in nature, our Standards and Practices department decided not to accept this particular spot.'' The same department deemed that the Family on the Focus ad was "responsibly produced.''
It is a double standard that fits a pattern. In 2004, CBS and NBC rejected an ad from the United Church of Christ welcoming gay and lesbian people into its congregations. Back then, CBS said, "Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations, and the fact that the (Bush administration) has recently proposed a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable.''
By accepting the Focus on the Family ad in this context, CBS gives its political blessing to an organization that spends tremendous energy specifically excluding gay couples from full citizenship, and, with its support of conservative Supreme Court nominees, opposes full equality for people of color and women. It is a window to the future under the court's bitterly divided 5-4 ruling that frees corporations to spend unlimited money on political campaigns.
The paranoia of CBS is particularly needless when Americans now overwhelmingly support gay and lesbian rights short of marriage. CBS looks even more ridiculous when Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this week declared that ending "don't ask, don't tell'' to let gay and lesbian soldiers serve openly is "the right thing to do,'' and former Joint Chiefs chairman Colin Powell recanted his 1990s opposition that led to the current "don't ask'' law.
It is particularly ironic when New Orleans Saints linebacker Scott Fujita told reporters this week he had no issue with broadcasting both the Tebow and the gay ad. "It's just me standing up for equal rights,'' Fujita said. He added, "Players are more tolerant than they get credit for.''
That is a lot more than can be said for CBS, where the C now stands for Chicken.
29 Comments so far
Show AllMaybe because Sumner Redstone and his family are majority owners of CBS Corporation (and Viacom, and MTV Networks [MTV,VH1, Nickelodeon, MTV2, Comedy Central, BET, Nick at Nite, Noggin/The N, TV Land, CMT, and Spike TV, Showtime and The Movie Channel], and movie production and distribution Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks movie studios, and are equal partners in MovieTickets.com). And Redstone is a born again conservative, who once was a Democratic contributer but has increasingly given money to Republican candidates and causes.
Gary
“I believe in censorship. After all, I made a fortune out of it.”
-- Mae West
Are you sure Redstone is a fundy Xian? He was born Sumner Rothstein (German for Redstone) to Jewish parents, who anglicised the family name later.
Where did I suggest Sumner was a "fundy Xian?"
I am quite aware of his background.
What I said was he has shown increasingly conservative tendencies in his actions. Leading, I suspect, to a fawning of CBS toward more conservative values. Not wanting to bite the hand that feeds them.
BTW While Sumner is now longer CEO he actually still calls the shots. As his family owns most of the stock.
Gary
“The greatest ignorance is to reject something you know nothing about”
-- unknown
Well, people rarely --if ever, apart from you just now-- refer to even frum Jews as "born again". That term is typically reserved for alleged Xians, or jokingly by analogy.
It's called Irony. Look it up.
Gary
“Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.”
-- Erica Jong
Not really related, but... if/when Tebow gets into the NFL, I imagine his teammates will have something to say about the camera captured footage of him crying like a little girl on the sidelines after the loss of a big game.
Hey rookie: When we lose a big game in the NFL, We look angry, yes. We look downcast, yes. We look shocked, yes. We never, ever cry like little girls on the sidelines for all the world to see.
"cry like little girls"??
Whoever may weep, or for that matter, shout, scream, pout, curse, argue, fight, or whatever, is showing emotions. Adults try to control the expression of strong emotion, but arguably, what you see is honest emotion, not being 'like' somebody else.
And mysogyny lives on. From 'acting like a girl', to 'don't be a p*ssy (oh, excuse me, is that a feline reference?), to 'he's an old woman', to male determination of women's reproductive options, we still have, even in America, pernicious lingering sex/gender prejudices.
Ray Berthiaume
Well put.
The FCC should be able to regulate (which it doesn't do well) more than the airwaves, it should be able to regulate cable since the lines are carried underground through public lands (below roadways). The goal of regulation should be competition and access.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard the guardians, watch the watchers, etc?)
Hello Progressive 101,
Where I live the cable lines are above ground and tied to the phone and power poles. It is still on public lands for the most part.
Cable is regulated by Public Utilities. As such, it is less restrictive than broadcast as far as content is concerned.
I do a community access show with the New London Greens (now in our eighth season), and the only restriction the PUC puts on content is that we cannot advertise any commercial product. Language, nudity, whatever, anything goes, there are no Adult-hour limits, nothing. Just don't say: "Now on sale at:...for..."
Community Access is one price that Cable companies pay for having a monopoly on service in a given area, the other is strict price regulation. And the cable companies are not being driven out of business by the regulatory burden, they seem to be thriving, in fact.
There are places where more than one cable company will wire an area, but the cost and waste of multiple overlaying networks makes head to head competition very difficult.
In Groton CT, the local cable company was somehow able to get the PUC to allow them to raise their rates to the point where people were feeling pinched. Since they already had their own municipal water and power systems, they voted to build a competing cable system that is city owned, along with the sewage treatment plant and the reservoir. Now, almost every address is reached by both systems and the Municipal system has driven the commercial carrier to bring their prices down to match the towns around. City Cable hasn't driven out the ComCable, but it has acted as a brake on it's inflation.
You're too kind, Derrick, the "C" stands for Craven.
CBS = Cowardly Bull Shit
Not that it would ever happen but wouldn't it be grand if you could get people to boycott CBS and not watch the Superbowl as well as flooding them with calls during game to state their protest?
Who f-in cares? Like we believe that any of the corporate media have any credibility, public service, or value whatsoever. I don't watch it and I aint gonna watch the BS. It is just part of the bread and circuses diversion. Placate the masses with militaristic macho BS riddled with propaganda commercials.
Caveat Emptor
I think it'll go over people's heads.
I have no intention of watching the Stupid Bowl.
It is perfectly OK with almost all national sports broadcast companies to show ads intended to entice people to kill babies and other people.
Here's my super bowl add: A very effeminate young man praises his mother for not having a abortion when she was informed by a reliable psychic that she (in her early pregnant state) would have a gay son.
After agonizing over an abortion, she as a christian, rejected such and had the son and developed deep and abiding love for him.
She and the rest of her family became so taken with her gay son's mannerisms and life style that they all became overtly "gay" and thoroughly championed this exciting life style.
So there you have it: The touching story about how a pro-life choice lead to homosexual party paradise for a whole family.
Many are the mysterious ways of the Divine.
Love it!! Ha!
When free speech flows in America and is allowed to expose ideologies and concepts both agreeable and offensive, liberating and threating , Americans best interests are served by the Constitutional free thought.
The NFLs push towards war mongering support of military imagery over the last 6 years is offensive to me.
Foot ball is a game, and our troops are not fighting to protect a way of life that supports watching a game.
We are in two wars that we should not be in,our elected leaders did not take the time to think about our safty if we launced two wars.
In football , a good offense is not enough to win a super bowel without a great defense.
So why would taking the war to two foreign country s keep us safer? In fact, there are more terrorists now, because of our illegal occupation.
I am not a well educated man, but the folks that run Washington are , so why dont they act like it.
I dont care about what adds are run at super bowel, dont step on constitutional rights, we have secular laws, the bible does not speak for me.
If you take into account drone bombing in Pakistan and Yemen, I would say it is arguable we are in four wars rather than two.
Forget lifestyle issues like gay marriage. If you really want to see the double standard, try putting a paid, pro-labor or anti-war ad on mainsteram TV or even radio or newspapers.
"If you really want to see the double standard, try putting a paid, pro-labor or anti-war ad on "
You got that right.
It was pointed out somewhere in the past week that the Tebow claim is false. In the Philipines, where she was in the hospital, it was illegal to have or to perform an abortion. They didn't have any loopholes for the life and health of the mother (naturaly). Abortion was NOT an option and would not have been recommended by the Doctors.
Good call, CV. Wikipedia has even cited that fact:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_Philippines
It seems like the Focus on the Family organization only cares about families that fit an extremely narrow criterion.
So I made my own "Focus on the Family" Ad (a 4x6 photo), reminding people that there are many families we conveniently forget about, and lives that we not only don't celebrate, but blithely extinguish.
My “Focus on the Family Ad” was Photoshopped 100% from public domain images (provided by the DoD, no less). I created it, but claim no copyright. Common Dreamers may make as many copies as they'd like.
(The Hi-Res version is designed to be sent to a 1-Hour Photo and printed onto a 4x6 photo print).
Here's a link to the Hi-Res version:
http://imagined.com/images/FOCUS-ON-THE-FAMILY---NON-SUPERBOWL-AD.jpg
Print 'em up and hand 'em out as a contrasting viewpoint to the "Focus on the Family" ad being broadcast today.
"If you really want to see the double standard, try putting a paid, pro-labor or anti-war ad on mainsteram TV or even radio or newspapers."
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!
please tell me why a commercial about a woman's choice is bad? I thought liberals are pro-choice. She choose life. Why all the outrage? Choice is choice, right?
theowl-It's about who funded it more than anything. Focus On The Family is a dangerous organization.
Read...
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/03-4
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/focus-family