I know what you’re all thinking. You’re sitting there on this Monday after the divisional round of the NFL playoffs, and you’re saying to yourself, “You know, there’s been so, SO much Tebow coverage lately. It seems like almost every single, possible angle of his story has been covered. That said, you know what I could really go for? A columnist telling me I’m not allowed to dislike him, and invoking 9/11 in the process. That would be a real treat.”
Well don’t worry, fictional With Leather reader. Stu Bykofsky of the Philadelphia Daily News has you covered:
People of science, who are rational and therefore never wrong, in 1987 told Tim Tebow’s mother, Pam, to abort him because her pregnancy threatened her life, and they expected her son to be stillborn. A woman of faith, and therefore “irrational,” Pam said “no” and carried him to term.
Some 20 years later, Pam and Tim infuriated some people by appearing in an anti-abortion commercial aired during the Super Bowl. That’s where America first heard his story. Pro-choicers went bananas.
Christian conservatives were accused of trying to shove their religion down our throats. Some do, just like hard-left secularists. They also want to shove their “religion” down our throats – and their religion is atheism.
That’s a hard sell in America, the most “believing” industrialized democracy. And those beliefs paved the road to 9/11.
America’s strong Christian beliefs, writes Lawrence Wright in his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower, is what inflamed al Qaeda. Not so much because of America’s actions, as some (Ron Paul) believe, but “because they saw America as the locus of Christian power.”
I think we can all agree that was incredibly necessary and reasonable.
Look, there’s not much I can add to the discussion about why it’s okay to dislike Tim Tebow that wasn’t said more eloquently by Andrew Sharp at SB Nation, but I will say this: if your argument for why I shouldn’t dislike the guy includes “BECAUSE ATHEISM AND CHRISTIANITY AND SO ON. IN CONCLUSION, 9/11,” then you can go jump straight into a lake.
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I’ve been an atheist since vacation bible camp in 1985. (“Do you honestly think this Methuselah guy lived to be over 900 years old? You do? This is obviously bullshit.”)
But I think Tebow is fantastic. I also didn’t watch the Patriots game. How did that go for him?
Was it Life for Youth Ranch in Florida? Because I went there as a kid and I’m happy that I’m not currently fluffing Joel Osteen.
Tebow caused 911?
Is Tebow going to build a ladder to Heaven?
I read that book, and Bykofsky is begging for the author to come over and kick his ass.
Ditto. There’s a continuum of greyness between “stretching the author’s argument a bit” and “outright contradicting what the author contends,” and Bykofsky is just about at the latter. Wright talks more about Qtub’s influences on Al Qaedeh, and the paranoia of the Salafi viewpoint more than America as a “Christian” nation. In fact, I don’t think Christianity is ever brought up as a reason why 9/11 happened–other than America was targeted (as the “Far Enemy,” the source of problems behind corrupt Arab regimes) and happened to be predominantly Christian.
So that guy is an idiot. Like many who blindly support Jebow simply because of his faith.
Pretty much.
Here’s a game to play with your kids. Go to the Amazon page for the book, click “look inside” and do a search for “Christian” and “Christianity.” You’ll get about thirty hits for the entire book.
Which is less than you get for “American military” or “troops.”
Tebow is the best
at being a poor quarterback.
I’m looking forward to everyone putting down their Kool-Aid of whatever flavor–pro and anti-Tebow–and things getting back to normal.
And I’m waiting for Jebow himself to calm things down by addressing his fans, saying something along the lines of, “I hope that everyone understands that as my successes weren’t micromanaged by God, so too was Saturday’s beat-down not a sign of divine intervention.”
Because the kid needs to say that. He needs to tell his religiously-motivated supporters that God isn’t deciding who wins NFL games.* Once people understand that God isn’t, for example, making Marion Barber inexplicably run out of bounds, and once Timmy makes it clear that he isn’t such a dipshit as to think that God wants one team to lose in a ridiculous fashion in order to “reward” believers, then a lot of the hate will go away.
Because I, for one, don’t hate Jebow as much as I hate the fellating and promoting of Jebow by people who simple-mindedly conclude that God is on (only) Jebow’s side.
Oh, and Bykofsky cherry-picked that quote out of context. Wright was talking about why the mujahideen turned on their (Soviet invasion-era) allies. Wright wasn’t stressing how Christian America is/was, he was stressing that America is/was the center of power in the Christian (read: non-Muslim) world. Sure, he mentions Islam & Christianity as being “competitive” religions, but his point is less about the “Christian-ness” of America and more about why the mujahideen (and Al Qa’edeh) would turn on America.
In summary: Bykofsky = idiot.
*obviously, given the blown calls by the refs in the Packers-Giants games, Las Vegas/gamblers are calling the shots.