Born in my native country the Philippines to Christian missionary parents, Tim Tebow of the NFL Denver Broncos as starting quarterback, stands out in faith, family, football -- and winning! See http://shout.lt/aGfy for a full article as well as The Wall Street Journal, The Review -- "God's Quarterback: The Tim Tebow Phenonmenon," "He has led the Denver Broncos to one improbable victory after another -- defying his critics and revealing the deep-seated anxieties in American society about the intertwining of religion [biblical Christianity] and sports" (December 10-11, 2011)or copy and paste:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203413304577084770973155282.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsTop#
Dec 10, 2011
Why Tim Tebow Keeps Smiling
Why Tim Tebow Keeps Smiling
Guest post: Jennifer Marshall December 7, 2011 of the Heritage Foundation
When Pam Tebow was counseled to abort her baby to save her own life, the doctor referred to him as a “mass of fetal tissue.”
“(M)aybe she just called me that to toughen us up for the names I would be called the first time I played at LSU,” Tim Tebow, who became the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback for the University of Florida, writes in his 2011 book “Through My Eyes.”
Now that Tebow is a Denver Bronco and under intense scrutiny in the role of starting quarterback, his congenital instinct to push through adversity and ignore the naysayers is again at work.
“Polarizing” is the sports commentariat’s typical term to describe national reaction to Tebow since he went pro. The negativity flows in part from his initially rocky performance. But much more seems to be reaction to Tebow’s Christian faith. Critics want him to keep it to himself, a pattern that is increasingly common in American public life.
Of course, there’s already plenty of God-talk in professional football. (Type “Green Bay Packers” into Twitter and see how many players give God a shout out in their profiles.)
Talking is one thing. Walking the talk is another. That’s where Tim Tebow stands out. Born in the Philippines to missionary parents, he not only is outspoken about his faith, referencing it frequently in word and symbol – such as biblical citations in his eye black. He’s also as intense about living out his faith as he is about playing football – and winning.
And he’s done a good bit of winning. For a 24-year-old who’s been, in his words, “the center of so much spilled ink” since his high school days (before graduating he was the subject of a documentary), it’s amazing he’s full of anything other than himself. Instead, he brims over about his faith, family, football and teammates.
While the attention hasn’t gone to his head, it does seem to have gone to his heart.
Tebow takes seriously the burden of his “platform” – a word he uses frequently in his book to refer to his opportunity to influence others for good. Such disciplined, purposeful stewardship of a leadership role is rare in anyone, but particularly someone so young in a field rampant with narcissism and bad behavior.
Even for observers who consider the eye-black evangelism corny or juvenile, it’s simply no comparison to the “youthful indiscretions” that haunt so many public figures for years. And even through jaded eyes, the trademark Tebow kneel to give gratitude to God after a great play hardly can be as obnoxious as others’ on-field (not to mention off-field) antics and outbursts.
“Tebow is just a guy with the good sense to say thanks. Instead of taking his cue, we mock his faith. And that says more about us, none of it good,” writes Jennifer Floyd Engel at Fox Sports.
What the mockery of Tebow’s faith “has revealed about religious discourse in America is ugly,” she says. “And this defense that Tebow invites such scrutiny with his willingness to publicly live as he privately believes calls into question what exactly it is we value.”
Public expression of religious belief is an essential aspect of what has been called America’s first freedom. This nation is founded on the principle that religious individuals and institutions would have the freedom to live out their faith. But in recent decades, policy and social pressures have suggested that faith should be pushed into a private sphere.
Tim Tebow runs right through that line, surprising its defenders – just like he did to the New York Jets on his game-winning, fourth-quarter touchdown.
Did Tebow “ever sit back, smile and admire” the events of November, a reporter asked on the last day of the month? With Tebow starting, the Broncos jumped to 7-5 from a losing record.
“Well, I sit back and smile a lot just ‘cuz … I smile,” Tebow responded, with his reflexive grin. “I continually try to smile a lot.”
It’s true. He’s kept smiling while showing remarkable magnanimity toward critics. One, former Broncos QB Jake Plummer, suggested toning down the religious rhetoric. Tebow responded that if it’s a good idea for a husband to tell his wife he loves her as often as he can, then wouldn’t it be appropriate to do the same when it comes to the most important relationship in his own life?
“If people want to bash me for that, that’s OK. It really won’t bother me. At least they know what I believe.”
Americans express appropriate indignation when a public figure is discovered to lack integrity. How ironic that one who shows consistent virtue should meet with consternation.
Posted in Family and Religion, Featured
Print This Post
Jennifer Marshall, Heritage Foundation blog
Guest post: Jennifer Marshall December 7, 2011 of the Heritage Foundation
When Pam Tebow was counseled to abort her baby to save her own life, the doctor referred to him as a “mass of fetal tissue.”
“(M)aybe she just called me that to toughen us up for the names I would be called the first time I played at LSU,” Tim Tebow, who became the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback for the University of Florida, writes in his 2011 book “Through My Eyes.”
Now that Tebow is a Denver Bronco and under intense scrutiny in the role of starting quarterback, his congenital instinct to push through adversity and ignore the naysayers is again at work.
“Polarizing” is the sports commentariat’s typical term to describe national reaction to Tebow since he went pro. The negativity flows in part from his initially rocky performance. But much more seems to be reaction to Tebow’s Christian faith. Critics want him to keep it to himself, a pattern that is increasingly common in American public life.
Of course, there’s already plenty of God-talk in professional football. (Type “Green Bay Packers” into Twitter and see how many players give God a shout out in their profiles.)
Talking is one thing. Walking the talk is another. That’s where Tim Tebow stands out. Born in the Philippines to missionary parents, he not only is outspoken about his faith, referencing it frequently in word and symbol – such as biblical citations in his eye black. He’s also as intense about living out his faith as he is about playing football – and winning.
And he’s done a good bit of winning. For a 24-year-old who’s been, in his words, “the center of so much spilled ink” since his high school days (before graduating he was the subject of a documentary), it’s amazing he’s full of anything other than himself. Instead, he brims over about his faith, family, football and teammates.
While the attention hasn’t gone to his head, it does seem to have gone to his heart.
Tebow takes seriously the burden of his “platform” – a word he uses frequently in his book to refer to his opportunity to influence others for good. Such disciplined, purposeful stewardship of a leadership role is rare in anyone, but particularly someone so young in a field rampant with narcissism and bad behavior.
Even for observers who consider the eye-black evangelism corny or juvenile, it’s simply no comparison to the “youthful indiscretions” that haunt so many public figures for years. And even through jaded eyes, the trademark Tebow kneel to give gratitude to God after a great play hardly can be as obnoxious as others’ on-field (not to mention off-field) antics and outbursts.
“Tebow is just a guy with the good sense to say thanks. Instead of taking his cue, we mock his faith. And that says more about us, none of it good,” writes Jennifer Floyd Engel at Fox Sports.
What the mockery of Tebow’s faith “has revealed about religious discourse in America is ugly,” she says. “And this defense that Tebow invites such scrutiny with his willingness to publicly live as he privately believes calls into question what exactly it is we value.”
Public expression of religious belief is an essential aspect of what has been called America’s first freedom. This nation is founded on the principle that religious individuals and institutions would have the freedom to live out their faith. But in recent decades, policy and social pressures have suggested that faith should be pushed into a private sphere.
Tim Tebow runs right through that line, surprising its defenders – just like he did to the New York Jets on his game-winning, fourth-quarter touchdown.
Did Tebow “ever sit back, smile and admire” the events of November, a reporter asked on the last day of the month? With Tebow starting, the Broncos jumped to 7-5 from a losing record.
“Well, I sit back and smile a lot just ‘cuz … I smile,” Tebow responded, with his reflexive grin. “I continually try to smile a lot.”
It’s true. He’s kept smiling while showing remarkable magnanimity toward critics. One, former Broncos QB Jake Plummer, suggested toning down the religious rhetoric. Tebow responded that if it’s a good idea for a husband to tell his wife he loves her as often as he can, then wouldn’t it be appropriate to do the same when it comes to the most important relationship in his own life?
“If people want to bash me for that, that’s OK. It really won’t bother me. At least they know what I believe.”
Americans express appropriate indignation when a public figure is discovered to lack integrity. How ironic that one who shows consistent virtue should meet with consternation.
Posted in Family and Religion, Featured
Print This Post
Jennifer Marshall, Heritage Foundation blog
Sep 4, 2011
Captain America: The movie--Watch it!
Captain America and the good American
If you have not seen the movie Captain America, then watch it to regain the world's traditional view of Americans as good for the world, righteous for its people, responsible enemies of evil. As an immigrant, I join other Americans in this Labor Day Weekend holiday, and declare "America, America, God shed His grace on Thee!"
If you have not seen the movie Captain America, then watch it to regain the world's traditional view of Americans as good for the world, righteous for its people, responsible enemies of evil. As an immigrant, I join other Americans in this Labor Day Weekend holiday, and declare "America, America, God shed His grace on Thee!"
Jan 26, 2011
Lady Gaga: End of an Era
Lady Gaga and the death of sex
An erotic breaker of taboos or an asexual copycat? Camille Paglia, America's foremost cultural critic, demolishes an icon
Camille Paglia
Published: 12 September 2010
* Recommend (7532)
* Comment (1)
* Print
American singer Lady Gaga, born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (Francois Berthier)American singer Lady Gaga, born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (Francois Berthier)
Lady Gaga is the first major star of the digital age. Since her rise, she has remained almost continually on tour. Hence, she is a moving target who has escaped serious scrutiny. She is often pictured tottering down the street in some outlandish get-up and fright wig. Most of what she has said about herself has not been independently corroborated… “Music is a lie”, “Art is a lie”, “Gaga is a lie”, and “I profusely lie” have been among Gaga’s pronouncements, but her fans swallow her line whole…
She constantly touts her symbiotic bond with her fans, the “little monsters”, who she inspires to “love themselves” as if they are damaged goods in need of her therapeutic repair. “You’re a superstar, no matter who you are!” She earnestly tells them from the stage, while their cash ends up in her pockets. She told a magazine with messianic fervour: “I love my fans more than any artist who has ever lived.” She claims to have changed the lives of the disabled, thrilled by her jewelled parody crutches in the Paparazzi video.
Although she presents herself as the clarion voice of all the freaks and misfits of life, there is little evidence that she ever was one. Her upbringing was comfortable and eventually affluent, and she attended the same upscale Manhattan private school as Paris and Nicky Hilton. There is a monumental disconnect between Gaga’s melodramatic self-portrayal as a lonely, rebellious, marginalised artist and the powerful corporate apparatus that bankrolled her makeover and has steamrollered her songs into heavy rotation on radio stations everywhere.
For two years, I have spent an irritating amount of time trying to avoid Gaga’s catchy but depthless hits Lady Gaga is a manufactured personality, and a recent one at that. Photos of Stefani Germanotta just a few years ago show a bubbly brunette with a glowing complexion. The Gaga of world fame, however, with her heavy wigs and giant sunglasses (rudely worn during interviews) looks either simperingly doll-like or ghoulish, without a trace of spontaneity. Every public appearance, even absurdly at airports where most celebrities want to pass incognito, has been lavishly scripted in advance with a flamboyant outfit and bizarre hairdo assembled by an invisible company of elves.
Furthermore, despite showing acres of pallid flesh in the fetish-bondage garb of urban prostitution, Gaga isn’t sexy at all – she’s like a gangly marionette or plasticised android. How could a figure so calculated and artificial, so clinical and strangely antiseptic, so stripped of genuine eroticism have become the icon of her generation? Can it be that Gaga represents the exhausted end of the sexual revolution? In Gaga’s manic miming of persona after persona, over-conceptualised and claustrophobic, we may have reached the limit of an era…
Gaga has borrowed so heavily from Madonna (as in her latest video-Alejandro) that it must be asked, at what point does homage become theft? However, the main point is that the young Madonna was on fire. She was indeed the imperious Marlene Dietrich’s true heir. For Gaga, sex is mainly decor and surface; she’s like a laminated piece of ersatz rococo furniture. Alarmingly, Generation Gaga can’t tell the difference. Is it the death of sex? Perhaps the symbolic status that sex had for a century has gone kaput; that blazing trajectory is over…
Gaga seems comet-like, a stimulating burst of novelty, even though she is a ruthless recycler of other people’s work. She is the diva of déjà vu. Gaga has glibly appropriated from performers like Cher, Jane Fonda as Barbarella, Gwen Stefani and Pink, as well as from fashion muses like Isabella Blow and Daphne Guinness. Drag queens, whom Gaga professes to admire, are usually far sexier in many of her over-the-top outfits than she is.
Peeping dourly through all that tat is Gaga’s limited range of facial expressions. Her videos repeatedly thrust that blank, lugubrious face at the camera and us; it’s creepy and coercive. Marlene and Madonna gave the impression, true or false, of being pansexual. Gaga, for all her writhing and posturing, is asexual. Going off to the gym in broad daylight, as Gaga recently did, dressed in a black bustier, fishnet stockings and stiletto heels isn’t sexy – it’s sexually dysfunctional.
Compare Gaga’s insipid songs, with their nursery-rhyme nonsense syllables, to the title and hypnotic refrain of the first Madonna song and video to bring her attention on MTV, Burning Up, with its elemental fire imagery and its then-shocking offer of fellatio. In place of Madonna’s valiant life force, what we find in Gaga is a disturbing trend towards mutilation and death…
Gaga is in way over her head with her avant-garde pretensions… She wants to have it both ways – to be hip and avant-garde and yet popular and universal, a practitioner of gung-ho “show biz”. Most of her worshippers seem to have had little or no contact with such powerful performers as Tina Turner or Janis Joplin, with their huge personalities and deep wells of passion.
Generation Gaga doesn’t identify with powerful vocal styles because their own voices have atrophied: they communicate mutely via a constant stream of atomised, telegraphic text messages. Gaga’s flat affect doesn’t bother them because they’re not attuned to facial expressions.
Gaga's fans are marooned in a global technocracy of fancy gadgets but emotional poverty. Borderlines have been blurred between public and private: reality TV shows multiply, cell phone conversations blare everywhere; secrets are heedlessly blabbed on Facebook and Twitter. Hence, Gaga gratuitously natters on about her vagina…
To read the rest of this explosive profile, including Paglia's debunking of comparisons to Madonna, David Bowie, Elton John and Andy Warhol, and to view a slideshow of photographs, visit the thesundaytimes.co.uk/magazine now
An erotic breaker of taboos or an asexual copycat? Camille Paglia, America's foremost cultural critic, demolishes an icon
Camille Paglia
Published: 12 September 2010
* Recommend (7532)
* Comment (1)
American singer Lady Gaga, born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (Francois Berthier)American singer Lady Gaga, born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (Francois Berthier)
Lady Gaga is the first major star of the digital age. Since her rise, she has remained almost continually on tour. Hence, she is a moving target who has escaped serious scrutiny. She is often pictured tottering down the street in some outlandish get-up and fright wig. Most of what she has said about herself has not been independently corroborated… “Music is a lie”, “Art is a lie”, “Gaga is a lie”, and “I profusely lie” have been among Gaga’s pronouncements, but her fans swallow her line whole…
She constantly touts her symbiotic bond with her fans, the “little monsters”, who she inspires to “love themselves” as if they are damaged goods in need of her therapeutic repair. “You’re a superstar, no matter who you are!” She earnestly tells them from the stage, while their cash ends up in her pockets. She told a magazine with messianic fervour: “I love my fans more than any artist who has ever lived.” She claims to have changed the lives of the disabled, thrilled by her jewelled parody crutches in the Paparazzi video.
Although she presents herself as the clarion voice of all the freaks and misfits of life, there is little evidence that she ever was one. Her upbringing was comfortable and eventually affluent, and she attended the same upscale Manhattan private school as Paris and Nicky Hilton. There is a monumental disconnect between Gaga’s melodramatic self-portrayal as a lonely, rebellious, marginalised artist and the powerful corporate apparatus that bankrolled her makeover and has steamrollered her songs into heavy rotation on radio stations everywhere.
For two years, I have spent an irritating amount of time trying to avoid Gaga’s catchy but depthless hits Lady Gaga is a manufactured personality, and a recent one at that. Photos of Stefani Germanotta just a few years ago show a bubbly brunette with a glowing complexion. The Gaga of world fame, however, with her heavy wigs and giant sunglasses (rudely worn during interviews) looks either simperingly doll-like or ghoulish, without a trace of spontaneity. Every public appearance, even absurdly at airports where most celebrities want to pass incognito, has been lavishly scripted in advance with a flamboyant outfit and bizarre hairdo assembled by an invisible company of elves.
Furthermore, despite showing acres of pallid flesh in the fetish-bondage garb of urban prostitution, Gaga isn’t sexy at all – she’s like a gangly marionette or plasticised android. How could a figure so calculated and artificial, so clinical and strangely antiseptic, so stripped of genuine eroticism have become the icon of her generation? Can it be that Gaga represents the exhausted end of the sexual revolution? In Gaga’s manic miming of persona after persona, over-conceptualised and claustrophobic, we may have reached the limit of an era…
Gaga has borrowed so heavily from Madonna (as in her latest video-Alejandro) that it must be asked, at what point does homage become theft? However, the main point is that the young Madonna was on fire. She was indeed the imperious Marlene Dietrich’s true heir. For Gaga, sex is mainly decor and surface; she’s like a laminated piece of ersatz rococo furniture. Alarmingly, Generation Gaga can’t tell the difference. Is it the death of sex? Perhaps the symbolic status that sex had for a century has gone kaput; that blazing trajectory is over…
Gaga seems comet-like, a stimulating burst of novelty, even though she is a ruthless recycler of other people’s work. She is the diva of déjà vu. Gaga has glibly appropriated from performers like Cher, Jane Fonda as Barbarella, Gwen Stefani and Pink, as well as from fashion muses like Isabella Blow and Daphne Guinness. Drag queens, whom Gaga professes to admire, are usually far sexier in many of her over-the-top outfits than she is.
Peeping dourly through all that tat is Gaga’s limited range of facial expressions. Her videos repeatedly thrust that blank, lugubrious face at the camera and us; it’s creepy and coercive. Marlene and Madonna gave the impression, true or false, of being pansexual. Gaga, for all her writhing and posturing, is asexual. Going off to the gym in broad daylight, as Gaga recently did, dressed in a black bustier, fishnet stockings and stiletto heels isn’t sexy – it’s sexually dysfunctional.
Compare Gaga’s insipid songs, with their nursery-rhyme nonsense syllables, to the title and hypnotic refrain of the first Madonna song and video to bring her attention on MTV, Burning Up, with its elemental fire imagery and its then-shocking offer of fellatio. In place of Madonna’s valiant life force, what we find in Gaga is a disturbing trend towards mutilation and death…
Gaga is in way over her head with her avant-garde pretensions… She wants to have it both ways – to be hip and avant-garde and yet popular and universal, a practitioner of gung-ho “show biz”. Most of her worshippers seem to have had little or no contact with such powerful performers as Tina Turner or Janis Joplin, with their huge personalities and deep wells of passion.
Generation Gaga doesn’t identify with powerful vocal styles because their own voices have atrophied: they communicate mutely via a constant stream of atomised, telegraphic text messages. Gaga’s flat affect doesn’t bother them because they’re not attuned to facial expressions.
Gaga's fans are marooned in a global technocracy of fancy gadgets but emotional poverty. Borderlines have been blurred between public and private: reality TV shows multiply, cell phone conversations blare everywhere; secrets are heedlessly blabbed on Facebook and Twitter. Hence, Gaga gratuitously natters on about her vagina…
To read the rest of this explosive profile, including Paglia's debunking of comparisons to Madonna, David Bowie, Elton John and Andy Warhol, and to view a slideshow of photographs, visit the thesundaytimes.co.uk/magazine now
Jan 1, 2011
New Year Greetings!
May you have a Blessed New Year!
From my distant relatives from the Philippines:
"We are around the corner to a brand New Year! It is our desire that this new year be a very blessed 2011. May our Creator bring much joy, dream fulfillments, much health, a closer walk with Him, and not only material and monetary success, but much Spiritual Riches from His Riches in Glory, which "neither moth nor rust destroys" !!! (Mat 6:19-20)
"Miriam and I hope this will be a year when new goals are set; new dreams fulfilled; a year when the Love of God be even more real in our lives; a year in that we may get closer and closer to our Beloved Maker; a year when our efforts and values may make a great difference in our neighbor's life and to those who do not know the way to Life!!
"From the very bottom of our Hearts, we wish you all a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year!!"
From Márcio n Miriam de Souza
From my distant relatives from the Philippines:
"We are around the corner to a brand New Year! It is our desire that this new year be a very blessed 2011. May our Creator bring much joy, dream fulfillments, much health, a closer walk with Him, and not only material and monetary success, but much Spiritual Riches from His Riches in Glory, which "neither moth nor rust destroys" !!! (Mat 6:19-20)
"Miriam and I hope this will be a year when new goals are set; new dreams fulfilled; a year when the Love of God be even more real in our lives; a year in that we may get closer and closer to our Beloved Maker; a year when our efforts and values may make a great difference in our neighbor's life and to those who do not know the way to Life!!
"From the very bottom of our Hearts, we wish you all a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year!!"
From Márcio n Miriam de Souza
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