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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCBS sells another timeslot to Focus on Family during much watched football game (Patriots won 45-10)
Focus on Family, the organization that combined with Tim Tebow to air a commercial during last year's Super Bowl, aired a timely second-quarter commercial during the Broncos-Patriots game.
With Tebow's faith bringing a lot of attention to his favorite Bible verse John 3:16 the organization's ad spliced together several kids reciting the verse, which says:
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gameon/post/2012/01/focus-on-family-has-another-tebow-related-commercial/1
Here is the commercial
malaise
(269,157 posts)and Tebow lost
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)aaaaaa5a
(4,667 posts)My issue is that I don't think they would take a Bill Maher commercial on religion and air it. Regardless of money.
underpants
(182,868 posts)Last year's Super Bowl had the Tim Tebow and Mom ad. All of the networks had consistently denied running ads by partisan political groups but Focus on Family was just fine. They did tone down the ad but everyone knew (thanks to pre-media coverage of the message that Focus on Family wanted to get out of the ad) what the ad was about. NARAL offered to pay for an ad direclty following it that made no direct mention of abortion but CBS wouldn't take their money.
asjr
(10,479 posts)he would receive a spot right in the middle of Pres. Obama's State of the Union speech. I repeat the media are our enemy!
aaaaaa5a
(4,667 posts)onenote
(42,745 posts)NARAL and NOW asked CBS not to run the ad during last year's Super Bowl, but to my knowledge they never tried to purchase an ad themselves.
I agree that NARAL and NOW's complaints probably helped get the ad toned down, but at the same time, as is always the case in these situations, the controversy surrounding the ad brought more attention to it than it would have received otherwise.
edhopper
(33,606 posts)it really ridiculous. God so loved the world that he didn't eliminate disease or famine or war, but gave his only son (which he created just to sacrifice). And all you have to do is believe, like clapping for Tinker Bell. Being a good person is fine, but it won't get you into heaven, just accept this 2000 year old fairy tale and you live forever.
I also found that using children was both repulsive and weirdly appropriate, because you have to have the irrational mind of a child to accept this.
underpants
(182,868 posts)when I saw the ad last night I first thougt - awwww kids - then I heard the message and THEN I saw the Focus on Family logo at the end. I shook my head.
rucky
(35,211 posts)telling that it's one of the most popular verses.
TheOther95Percent
(1,035 posts)I shook my head at the poll that mention 43% of the respondents believe God helps Tebow win football games. This God is quite the prick if he/she/it is more responsive to prayers about a sports game than eliminating disease, hunger and keeping people alive in war zones.
edhopper
(33,606 posts)last night
TheOther95Percent
(1,035 posts)We must allow for all possibilities, doncha know.
aaaaaa5a
(4,667 posts)This is the level of ridiculousness evangelicals force you to play on.
underpants
(182,868 posts)stillwaiting
(3,795 posts)to blindly believe in Christian Fundamentalism from as early an age as possible.
If you are already psychologically structured to believe based on blind faith, to believe NOT based on facts, reason, and logic, then the elite can use this predisposition to their own advantage.
Fundamentalist right wingers' world view is firmly entrenched based on this same blind faith. No facts, reason, or logic can change most of them from their deeply held views. The elite win when critical thinking, logic, and reason are under-emphasized (or just completely ignored) in lieu of beliefs that are strongly held based on faith. For fundamentalist right wingers: That's just the way it is and they KNOW they're right! It is impossible to use reason, logic, or debate with individuals that do not know how to think analytically or do not know how to think critically (and don't even see the value in it many times -> Scientists are evil don't cha know). It is this unfortunate reality that results in many *head-desk* moments.
MANY *head-desk* moments....
pipoman
(16,038 posts)fundamentalism to get people to follow with blind faith..
"The elite win when critical thinking, logic, and reason are under-emphasized (or just completely ignored) in lieu of beliefs that are strongly held based on faith."
The elite have many right here believing in faith based economics which defy critical thinking, logic, and reason on the subject of "free trade"..so many defenders hereabouts of such an obviously flawed policy..
stillwaiting
(3,795 posts)And as far as that goes, getting people to begin to blindly believe based on faith at a young age can set the stage for the elite to protect their interests.
Of course, the elite have many different stages set. They're nothing if not thorough.
The elite's approach to protecting the status-quo and their financial interests, power, and status is multi-pronged. It is relentless, and it has been clearly effective.
I apologize if my post implied that getting Americans to believe in fundamentalist Christianity at a young age was the only way for the elite to get their serfs to believe based on faith. Party politics and cults-of-personality are two more strategies they successfully use. Of course, there are more than just those mentioned as well.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Zorra
(27,670 posts)Since they cannot tolerate gray areas, and basically everything has to be black and white in order to be tolerable for them, blind faith in religious book/religious leaders saves them from having to think. It's basically a matter of comfort and convenience for them.
"Why do I exist? Because the Grand Wazoo in the sky, or whatever the deity du jour is, made me, and sent me this book, or golden tablets, or a magical duck, whatever, to tell me what is true, so I don't really need to think about it anymore. So don't stress me out with all those disturbing questions about life, existence, truth, or the validity of authority. All my answers are right here in this book, and this book trumps all reason and logic, because the Grand Wazoo in the sky told us so, because it says so right here in this book. All scripture comes from the Grand Wazoo. And things really do go better with Coca-Cola."
I'm not saying that there is not a Creator, Love, Light, Life, Universe, what have you, I'm just saying few or no conservatives can really grasp this concept because a being of this nature would be basically too unknowable and scary to think about for a conservative, and therefore would create ambiguity. So they would prefer to believe in a book, because all they ever need is right there, down in black and white. That's why there is so much bible and koran , etc, worship going around.
Belief in and worship of a book helps quell the overwhelming, crippling, devastating fear of the unknown that exists in the consciousness of every RW conservative fundy. Consequently, the PTB preys on and perpetuates the fear in the conservative so that they will never break free and use their imagination to try to discern truth. Again, because they already have the "truth". All they ever really need to know is what is in their book. And it's questionable if they can even understand the real meaning of their own book, when the words in the book are processed through the darkened glass of their fear.
Conservatives are scared shitless of everything that is different, everything that they can't understand or control. Everything they do arises from fear. Rational, logical thinking by nature leads to using imagination to explore what is not known. So conservatives just don't go there. They don't need to. Everything has already been thought out for them. It says so right there in the book, and the book is the ultimate unquestionable truth. Amen.
I totally agree, stillwaiting. The PTB knows this, and uses religion as a mass opiate for controlling conservatives, and subsequently, uses their enslaved conservatives to control us. The non-logic, non-reason of the regressive conservative counters the logic and and reason of the progressive liberal. The PTB knows how to use this ancient formula to gain, maintain, and create a status quo of their power and control over others. It's how democracies are consistently prevented from existing and evolving. It's how they convince people that claim to believe in a peace preaching Jesus to mindlessly go to war for them in order to make them wealthier and more powerful. It's the philosophy of Caesar's, Machiavelli's, Leo Strauss's, etc. They all have the smug sense of privilege, righteousness of their greed, and belief in their superiority over others, that only an insatiable overinflated ego stoked by conscienceless sociopathy can bestow.
This is where the spontaneous arisal of Occupy and Anonymous comes in. The ancient struggle of the progressive/liberal to overcome the authoritarian PTB and create a wide sense of human community has evolved in mass consciousness as a way to overcome the control of the PTB. The ideas of a growing and evolving collective will and consciousness cannot be controlled or destroyed by the aggressions of the PTB and their flying monkeys, and this consciousness is at this moment in process of removing them from all relevance as a block on human evolution and the spread of reason, kindness, compassion, and love.
Religious conservatism and political conservatism naturally go hand in hand. The same boundary and motivator that regulates the thoughts and actions of the political conservative also regulates the thoughts and actions of the religious conservative.
Overwhelming, paralyzing fear.
Researchers help define what makes a political conservative
BERKELEY Politically conservative agendas may range from supporting the Vietnam War to upholding traditional moral and religious values to opposing welfare. But are there consistent underlying motivations?
Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:
Fear and aggression
Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
Uncertainty avoidance
Need for cognitive closure
Terror management
"From our perspective, these psychological factors are capable of contributing to the adoption of conservative ideological contents, either independently or in combination," the researchers wrote in an article, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition," recently published in the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin.
http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/22_politics.shtml
customerserviceguy
(25,183 posts)of a faith tradition that more and more of us are abandoning as the quaint anachronism that it is.
They wouldn't have felt the need to run this a few decades ago. They're getting desperate now that the generation representing the baby boomers' parents is dying off.
pipoman
(16,038 posts)does anyone actually watch commercials anymore? We always delay our viewing of network programming for 15 or 20 minutes so we have plenty of fast forward. Do commercials actually bother anyone? I guess my wife hates the humane society/ASPCA commercials, but as I said, we usually are fast forwarding through them..
edhopper
(33,606 posts)madmom
(9,681 posts)47of74
(18,470 posts)aaaaaa5a
(4,667 posts)That commercial has us discussing it here.
And this morning, focus on the family was still the 7th most popular search on Google.
Yes... a lot of people watched the commercial. And I think focus on the family is getting its money's worth with regard to getting their message out.
Advertising with the NFL gives you the largest and most diverse audience in the Country. There were a lot of people introduced to focus on the family last night.
customerserviceguy
(25,183 posts)I'm sure that fundies were Googling up that commercial to either watch it again, or worse, forward it on to their children and 'heathen' friends.
It was a Rorscharch test, that's all.
randr
(12,414 posts)customerserviceguy
(25,183 posts)why we need to educate these brainwashed ones when they get to college.
hack89
(39,171 posts)everyone in my family was impressed. Had no impact on their views of religion but thought it was well done.
Crankie Avalon
(5,261 posts)(smash two beer cans together, chug both at same time)