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
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Jennifer Marshall, Heritage Foundation blog
Showing posts with label faithful spouse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faithful spouse. Show all posts
Dec 10, 2011
Oct 8, 2008
Paglia: Pro-Obama, pro-Palin
I was so impressed with segments of pro-feminist academic and cultural icon, Camille Paglia's comments defendng Sarah Palin that I decided to do a first, import a generous portion of her Salon.com article.
Nobody's dummy
Liberals underestimate Sarah Palin's vitality and -- yes -- smarts at their own peril. Plus: Obama's presidential air, Biden's condescending mugging, feminism's lost sisters.
By Camille Paglia
Although nothing will sway my vote for Obama, I continue to enjoy Sarah Palin's performance on the national stage. During her vice-presidential debate last week with Joe Biden (whose conspiratorial smiles with moderator Gwen Ifill were outrageous and condescending toward his opponent), I laughed heartily at Palin's digs and slams and marveled at the way she slowly took over the entire event. I was sorry when it ended! But Biden wasn't -- judging by his Gore-like sighs and his slow sinking like a punctured blimp. Of course Biden won on points, but TV (a visual medium) never cares about that.
The mountain of rubbish poured out about Palin over the past month would rival Everest. What a disgrace for our jabbering army of liberal journalists and commentators, too many of whom behaved like snippy jackasses. The bourgeois conventionalism and rank snobbery of these alleged humanitarians stank up the place. As for Palin's brutally edited interviews with Charlie Gibson and that viper, Katie Couric, don't we all know that the best bits ended up on the cutting-room floor? Something has gone seriously wrong with Democratic ideology, which seems to have become a candied set of holier-than-thou bromides attached like tutti-frutti to a quivering green Jell-O mold of adolescent sentimentality.
And where is all that lurid sexual fantasy coming from? When I watch Sarah Palin, I don't think sex -- I think Amazon warrior! I admire her competitive spirit and her exuberant vitality, which borders on the supernormal. The question that keeps popping up for me is whether Palin, who was born in Idaho, could possibly be part Native American (as we know her husband is), which sometimes seems suggested by her strong facial contours. I have felt that same extraordinary energy and hyper-alertness billowing out from other women with Native American ancestry -- including two overpowering celebrity icons with whom I have worked.
One of the most idiotic allegations batting around out there among urban media insiders is that Palin is "dumb." Are they kidding? What level of stupidity is now par for the course in those musty circles? (The value of Ivy League degrees, like sub-prime mortgages, has certainly been plummeting. As a Yale Ph.D., I have a perfect right to my scorn.) People who can't see how smart Palin is are trapped in their own narrow parochialism -- the tedious, hackneyed forms of their upper-middle-class syntax and vocabulary.
As someone whose first seven years were spent among Italian-American immigrants (I never met an elderly person who spoke English until we moved from Endicott to rural Oxford, New York, when I was in first grade), I am very used to understanding meaning through what might seem to others to be outlandish or fractured variations on standard English. Furthermore, I have spent virtually my entire teaching career (nearly four decades) in arts colleges, where the expressiveness of highly talented students in dance, music and the visual arts takes a hundred different forms. Finally, as a lover of poetry (my last book was about that), I savor every kind of experimentation with standard English -- beginning with Shakespeare, who was the greatest improviser of them all at a time when there were no grammar rules.
Many others listening to Sarah Palin at her debate went into conniptions about what they assailed as her incoherence or incompetence. But I was never in doubt about what she intended at any given moment. On the contrary, I was admiring not only her always shapely and syncopated syllables but the innate structures of her discourse -- which did seem to fly by in fragments at times but are plainly ready to be filled with deeper policy knowledge, as she gains it (hopefully over the next eight years of the Obama presidencies). This is a tremendously talented politician whose moment has not yet come. That she holds views completely opposed to mine is irrelevant.
The hysterical emotionalism and eruptions of amoral malice at the arrival of Sarah Palin exposed the weaknesses and limitations of current feminism. But I am convinced that Palin's bracing mix of male and female voices, as well as her grounding in frontier grit and audacity, will prove to be a galvanizing influence on aspiring Democratic women politicians too, from the municipal level on up. Palin has shown a brand-new way of defining female ambition -- without losing femininity, spontaneity or humor. She's no pre-programmed wonk of the backstage Hillary Clinton school; she's pugnacious and self-created, the product of no educational or political elite -- which is why her outsider style has been so hard for media lemmings to comprehend. And by the way, I think Tina Fey's witty impersonations of Palin have been fabulous. But while Fey has nailed Palin's cadences and charm, she can't capture the energy, which is a force of nature.
Paglia above exposes the vulnerability and consequence of feminism, and the positive effects of an authentic woman in Sarah Palin and a secure husband and loving father in Todd Palin, faithful spouses both. Breath of fresh air, is it not?
Nobody's dummy
Liberals underestimate Sarah Palin's vitality and -- yes -- smarts at their own peril. Plus: Obama's presidential air, Biden's condescending mugging, feminism's lost sisters.
By Camille Paglia
Although nothing will sway my vote for Obama, I continue to enjoy Sarah Palin's performance on the national stage. During her vice-presidential debate last week with Joe Biden (whose conspiratorial smiles with moderator Gwen Ifill were outrageous and condescending toward his opponent), I laughed heartily at Palin's digs and slams and marveled at the way she slowly took over the entire event. I was sorry when it ended! But Biden wasn't -- judging by his Gore-like sighs and his slow sinking like a punctured blimp. Of course Biden won on points, but TV (a visual medium) never cares about that.
The mountain of rubbish poured out about Palin over the past month would rival Everest. What a disgrace for our jabbering army of liberal journalists and commentators, too many of whom behaved like snippy jackasses. The bourgeois conventionalism and rank snobbery of these alleged humanitarians stank up the place. As for Palin's brutally edited interviews with Charlie Gibson and that viper, Katie Couric, don't we all know that the best bits ended up on the cutting-room floor? Something has gone seriously wrong with Democratic ideology, which seems to have become a candied set of holier-than-thou bromides attached like tutti-frutti to a quivering green Jell-O mold of adolescent sentimentality.
And where is all that lurid sexual fantasy coming from? When I watch Sarah Palin, I don't think sex -- I think Amazon warrior! I admire her competitive spirit and her exuberant vitality, which borders on the supernormal. The question that keeps popping up for me is whether Palin, who was born in Idaho, could possibly be part Native American (as we know her husband is), which sometimes seems suggested by her strong facial contours. I have felt that same extraordinary energy and hyper-alertness billowing out from other women with Native American ancestry -- including two overpowering celebrity icons with whom I have worked.
One of the most idiotic allegations batting around out there among urban media insiders is that Palin is "dumb." Are they kidding? What level of stupidity is now par for the course in those musty circles? (The value of Ivy League degrees, like sub-prime mortgages, has certainly been plummeting. As a Yale Ph.D., I have a perfect right to my scorn.) People who can't see how smart Palin is are trapped in their own narrow parochialism -- the tedious, hackneyed forms of their upper-middle-class syntax and vocabulary.
As someone whose first seven years were spent among Italian-American immigrants (I never met an elderly person who spoke English until we moved from Endicott to rural Oxford, New York, when I was in first grade), I am very used to understanding meaning through what might seem to others to be outlandish or fractured variations on standard English. Furthermore, I have spent virtually my entire teaching career (nearly four decades) in arts colleges, where the expressiveness of highly talented students in dance, music and the visual arts takes a hundred different forms. Finally, as a lover of poetry (my last book was about that), I savor every kind of experimentation with standard English -- beginning with Shakespeare, who was the greatest improviser of them all at a time when there were no grammar rules.
Many others listening to Sarah Palin at her debate went into conniptions about what they assailed as her incoherence or incompetence. But I was never in doubt about what she intended at any given moment. On the contrary, I was admiring not only her always shapely and syncopated syllables but the innate structures of her discourse -- which did seem to fly by in fragments at times but are plainly ready to be filled with deeper policy knowledge, as she gains it (hopefully over the next eight years of the Obama presidencies). This is a tremendously talented politician whose moment has not yet come. That she holds views completely opposed to mine is irrelevant.
The hysterical emotionalism and eruptions of amoral malice at the arrival of Sarah Palin exposed the weaknesses and limitations of current feminism. But I am convinced that Palin's bracing mix of male and female voices, as well as her grounding in frontier grit and audacity, will prove to be a galvanizing influence on aspiring Democratic women politicians too, from the municipal level on up. Palin has shown a brand-new way of defining female ambition -- without losing femininity, spontaneity or humor. She's no pre-programmed wonk of the backstage Hillary Clinton school; she's pugnacious and self-created, the product of no educational or political elite -- which is why her outsider style has been so hard for media lemmings to comprehend. And by the way, I think Tina Fey's witty impersonations of Palin have been fabulous. But while Fey has nailed Palin's cadences and charm, she can't capture the energy, which is a force of nature.
Paglia above exposes the vulnerability and consequence of feminism, and the positive effects of an authentic woman in Sarah Palin and a secure husband and loving father in Todd Palin, faithful spouses both. Breath of fresh air, is it not?
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