The Focus on the Family's Super Bowl commercial featuring Tim Tebow tackling his mother is typical of the anti-abortion movement's twisted thinking: Using violence to support their position against using violence to kill nascent life.
It's the same type of twisted thinking that causes right-to-life fanatics to murder doctors who perform abortions to stop them from what these self-appointed moral policemen consider to be the murder of a fetus.
The Tebow commercial was also a symbolic flag bearer for how low and twisted the thinking of television commercial producers, advertising agencies, and CBS have become. The only exception was the brilliantly conceived and executed Google commercial.
If you were not a thirty-something (or younger) chip-eating, beer-swilling, insensitive, immature, macho male, you probably noticed the distinctive misogynistic tone of many of the commercials.
Those commercials that weren't stereotyping and insulting and doing violence to women, gays, dwarves, and the elderly, were over-the top, over-produced, dull, un-funny, illogical messes, most of which were embarrassed to show the name of their product until near the end of the commercial.
The only exception was the Google commercial that showed the product name from the beginning and intelligently demonstrated how to use the product to do something useful, romantic, and uplifting (which included moving to France, which, I suppose, implied getting away from American over-commercialization).
CBS made some counterproductive decisions to group commercials according to some supposedly (and weirdly) related theme. For example, there was an abuse-the-elderly pod in which Betty White and Tim Tebow's mother were violently tackled. Or a no-pants pod with CareerBuilder.com and Dockers commercials in it. Or a magical-places pod with the coupling of Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" film with KISS for Dr. Pepper featuring dwarves rocking out.
The half-time show was the best in years, not because of the aging members of The Who, who played OK (windmill moves and all), but because of the awesome computerized laser light show and mind-blowing, light-revolving stage - an exploding celebration for the eyes, not necessarily for the ears.
In the second half there was an Audi commercial that touted its green, energy-saving car, which was fine to promote, but doing so in a commercial with a cast of perhaps a hundred that must have cost over $1 million to produce wasted more energy to create than a 100 Audi's could save in a month. This is another example of ad agencies reaching into the upper levels of cognitive dissonance to make a point.
If you want to promote green, do like Google did - show a demonstration of the benefits of using the product. It's ironic and symbolic of Google that its commercial was the probably the least expensive to produce, most efficient in the use of resources, and was by far the most effective. It's a lesson of rational and effective advertising - a lesson that probably went over the heads of Focus on the Family and most advertising agencies.
And, oh, by the way, it was a really good football game, which, of course, has become incidental to the over-the-top, materialistic, consumption-gorging culture of commercialism which I am hypocritically honoring by writing about Super Bowl commercials and not about the game.
Follow Charles Warner on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CHWarner
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There was a day when CBS would not take issue advertisin
All the issue ads have the subtlety of a sack of hammers. And then they beat us over the head with the high frequency of airings. Personally
No doubt Les Moonves and his minions at CBS are all about the money, taste and discretion be damned. The good thing is, we can always change the channel or turn off the sound.
Other than the game itself, I thought The Who were great for a band which half the original members were dead and a couple of mid-60's guys demonstrat
Oh, yeah, did anyone connect the dots that the three CSI shows on CBS all have The Who tunes as theme music....n
I find it a disturbing display of left-wing intoleranc
Whatever it is, it is certainly not "pro-choic
A recent poll by CNN regarding the abortion issue has 63% of Americans who believe abortion should be either illegal in all circumstan
I must say after watching ESPN all day yesterday many people agree that Google took 1st place.
I found it funny because I have thought about moving to France after checking out their health care. It is amazing what they do for their people there...It would blow the minds of our Congress and they work 35 hours weekly or less, not counting 6+ weeks of vacation when you start a job!
I missed Tebows' commercial
I was thankful for an excellent football game and a team that seemed to win for their city instead of themselves
Lets remember pro choicers have a history of violence as well. There is a website dedicated to documentin
In the EU most countries have term limits and some have out right bans on the procedure with exceptions for the life of the mother and sometimes rape/inces
The reason for this restrictio
Maybe pro choicers believe something magical happens to the "blob of tissue" after birth.. a stork forms it into a baby perhaps??
This band has been covering Kiss songs for years, I'm sure they are smart enough to know whether or not they're able to be in a commercial if they choose. Do they have the right to choose too? Guess not.
It's hard for me to believe sometimes, the extent that it and all the others have fallen, Nor their willingnes
Luckily for me, I don't watch much teevee anymore. My brain simply cannot stand being lied to, nor bored to death with their inanities.