It says a great deal about the depths to which America’s values have fallen that Tim Tebow–who, once upon a time, would have been the wholesome, women-and-mom-respecting, clean-playing, fresh-faced and faithful Hollywood ideal of a football hero””is the target of such deep derision from so many sources, and in an era of such vaunted “tolerance.”
Although it may seem too easy to some, I blame the baby-boomers””a generation so in love with deconstructing old standards (and so completely neurotic about being perceived as anti-establishment, smart, and most of all, cool) that it only can express full-on admiration for the anti-heroes. Were Tim Tebow using his on-camera time to swagger and preen and lecture the nation on green energy, greedy millionaires, and gun control, his Christ-fixation would not only be permitted, it would be held up as a gaudy rebuke to uncool Christians everywhere, and his pronouncements””as long as he kept his mouth shut on abortion and gay marriage””would never be challenged.
For a non-American it certainly is an eye-opener how such an openly devout Christian, with an apparently unorthodox-but-so-far-highly-effective-when-it-counts-game can be such a lightning rod.
I think Scalia is correct – in an earlier era, Tebow would be a poster boy for all-American, God-fearing wholesomeness. Now people are offended that he’s still a virgin.
And then there’s this: http://nation.foxnews.com/tim-tebow/2011/12/14/columnist-if-tim-tebow-wins-super-bowl-christians-will-be-burning-mosques-bashing-gays-and
which one wonders if someone at foxnews will shortly admit was a hoax, it so parodies the anti-Tebow feeling.
Fox talked about it let night. I initially thought it was a parody, but apparently not. There is enough controversy about it that the Rabbi took out the paragraph about burning Mosques etc.
“Tolerance” had never been about true tolerance. As used it is simply another euphemism about silencing those with whom the left disagrees.
The anti-Tebow sentiment is just a most public manifestation of growing intolerence of Christianity and the destruction of First Amendment rights. Pray in front of an Abortion clinic and you might be arrested. Have a bible study in your home and you might be fined. Trying to start a church and need a worship space? Local bureaucrats refuse to let you use public spaces because of “separation of church and state”.