Tim Tebow

Update (19:35 EST, Dec. 18): On Friday, Hammerman apologized for his column at his personal blog site. You can read that in full here.

Update (10:35 EST, Dec. 15): The Jewish Week has completely pulled the Hammerman post.

Update (16:40 EST): Huston has a screen capture that shows the Hammerman post before he scrubbed it of its offensive passage.

One Rabbi Joshua Hammerman, a columnist for The Jewish Week, went off the deep end into a cesspool of anti-Tim Tebow derangement in his December 12 post, "My Tim Tebow" problem.

Former NewsBuster Warner Todd Huston noted the most offensive passage of Hammerman's screed at the website HoosierAccess.com. This paragraph has since been scrubbed from Hammerman's post:

Nightline co-anchor Terry Moran delivered a surprisingly positive assessment of Tim Tebow on Monday night, lauding the Christian quarterback as "inspired," "lifted up" and "strengthened" by "a power beyond his understanding."

Moran also highlighted, "Psychologists are increasingly finding that the very fact that a person has religious faith can help lead to the kind of success Tim Tebow has had." It wasn't all complimentary, however, the program's journalists repeatedly went out of their way to assert just how "controversial" Tebow is.

In a report for Monday's NBC Today, correspondent Peter Alexander described the rise of Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, noting how the NFL player's devout Christian faith has earned him the nickname of "God's Quarterback." Alexander went on to declare: "Many Americans were first introduced to Tebow during this controversial anti-abortion ad that aired during the 2010 Super Bowl."

While Alexander's report only featured a brief clip of the ad, if the full spot had been shown, viewers would have seen for themselves the complete lack of controversy in the commercial. In fact, the ad never even used the word abortion.

Outspoken Christian athlete Tim Tebow, now the starting quarterback for the Denver Broncos, has been widely criticized by many in the media. NFL analysts are starting to admit that criticism, in large part, has been because of his faith.

''Inside the NFL'' analyst and former Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Cris Collinsworth concluded that much of the hatred against Tebow was based on his religious beliefs. Responding to a question from fellow host James 'JB' Brown, Collinsworth showed his disgust for Tebow's treatment: ''It's unbelievable, though, JB, that one of the best kids - just pure kids that's ever come into the NFL - is hated because of his faith, because of his mission work, because of the fact that he wears it on his sleeve, because of the fact that he lives his life that he talks about.''

The 2010 NFL draft showed that it's not enough to be a star football player anymore. Character counts now too.

Tim Tebow, and the Denver Bronco's drafting him as first-round pick, was the big story out of the NFL draft. Despite a phenomenal college career in which he won the Heisman Trophy as a sophomore, led the Florida Gators to two national championships, and lived out his Christian beliefs, many expressed doubts over Tebow's ability to compete on the professional level.

For publicly stating his Christian beliefs, Tebow has been called a "religious fundamentalist, lightning-rod misfit," told he "has a long way to mature from a business perspective," and his family and friends were compared to "Nazis."  

A Boston sports radio host on Friday called Heisman Trophy-winning football star Tim Tebow's "lily white" NFL draft party a "Nazi rally."

For those unfamiliar, 98.5 FM "The Sports Hub" in Boston is home to the NFL's Patriots and the NHL's Bruins.

The morning drive-time program between 6 and 10 AM is called "Toucher and Rich" as it's hosted by Fred “Toucher” Toettcher and Rich Shertenlieb.

According to the Boston Herald, Toucher on Friday stuck his foot in his mouth BIG TIME (h/t NB reader Tony Costine, photo courtesy AP):

Even though, the day after it aired on the Super Bowl broadcast, the consensus on the Focus on the Family advertisement featuring former Florida quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow was that it wasn't as bad as the left had feared, at least one person that isn't going to let it go.

On MSNBC's Feb. 8 "Morning Joe," host Joe Scarborough made the point that the TV spot played during the Feb. 7 game was inoffensive and painted the opponents of it as being upset about nothing.

"One other thing too, talking about the soft touch - Focus on the Family's ad with Tim Tebow was soft, it was subtle and it made all the people who criticized it over the past week look like shrill idiots," Scarborough said. "It was a mom talking about a son she loved - her take with soft music."

The sharp eyes at Powerline caught AP writer Emily Fredrix really messing up on the Tebow ads for Focus on the Family that aired on the Super Bowl last night, which did not discuss abortion:

And a commercial by conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, perhaps the most anticipated ad of the night, hinted at a serious subject although it took a humorous tone too. Heisman winner Tim Tebow and his mother talk about her difficult pregnancy with him and how she was advised to end the pregnancy—implying an antiabortion message—but ended with Tebow tackling his mom and saying the family must be "tough."

John at Powerline wondered: "How can anyone misreport on a 30-second commercial? How many people saw it, 150 million? Is there any explanation for the AP's hallucination other than pro-abortion paranoia on the part of the reporter?"

It's additionally mysterious since Fredrix filed a whole story on the Tebow ad and its aftermath, which more accurately described the commercial.

UPDATE AT END OF POST: Second one doesn't mention abortion either.

The first of the two Pro-Life Super Bowl ads featuring college football's Tim Tebow and his mother has been made available on the Internet, and it doesn't even mention or refer to abortion.

Steven Ertelt of LifeNews.com posted it a few hours ago; makes you wonder what all the fuss was about.

As you watch, keep in mind that this was the one CBS rejected for airing during the actual game, and will only be shown during pre-game festivities (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Hot Air):

The Left and their media minions may not have enough time to fully express their anger before it happens, but a second ad featuring Pro-Life advocate and college football star Tim Tebow is now scheduled to air during the Super Bowl pre-game show.

Adding insult to injury, this one's supposed to run four times.

Try to feel the liberal media's anger as you read USA Today's article on this subject:

CNN’s Carol Costello bizarrely claimed on Friday’s American Morning that the upcoming Super Bowl ad featuring Tim Tebow and his mother is the “culmination of a brilliant marketing strategy by the anti-abortion movement... [which] has quietly found a way to rebrand itself as hip...and feminist.” Costello also misrepresented pro-lifers as people who regularly call women who abort “baby-killers.”

The correspondent made her claim at the beginning of her report: “Have you heard? Tim Tebow is doing an ad that will run in the Super Bowl. This morning, I’d like to actually step back from the issue itself and break it down another way. Some say this is the culmination of a brilliant marketing strategy by the anti-abortion movement. It has quietly found a way to rebrand itself as hip, modern, and- yes, feminist.”

After playing two clips from Gary Schneeberger from Focus on the Family, which paid for the Tebow ad, Costello noted that “[a]lthough the ad has inflamed some women’s groups, it’s a far different message than in years past, back when the politically-powerful Reverend James Dobson was Focus on the Family’s face.” The CNN correspondent singled-out a 2008 sound bite from Dobson, where he expressed his grief over the human toll of abortion: “It just grieves me greatly of how the blood of maybe 46, 48 million babies who have been aborted cries out to God from the ground.”

There has been a lot of controversy over the Super Bowl ad featuring Tim Tebow and his mother discussing how she chose life for her son.

The ad is a simple sincere look at a personal story. Yet the left and the "feminists" have gone nuts over it.

23 years ago, The American Life League, one of the largest Catholic Pro-Life organizations, produced a short featuring members of the Super Bowl winning New York Giants.

As you watch former superstars Phil Simms -- the game's MVP and current sportscaster for CBS! -- Mark Bavaro, Jim Burt, Chris Godfrey, George Martin, and Phil McConkey speak out against abortion, try to imagine what the reaction would be to this film if it was made today.

The roar from the left would be heard from outerspace (video embedded below the fold):

Forget six more weeks of winter. It's possible Hell has frozen over.

In the Groundhog Day edition of the Washington Post, liberal, pro-choice sports columnist Sally Jenkins took direct aim at the National Organization for Women (NOW) for its campaign to keep a pro-life ad featuring Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother from airing during Sunday's Super Bowl.

Jenkins slammed NOW, mocking it as one of the few "Dwindling Organizations of Ladies in Lockstep" (DOLL) that is coming off more "pro-abortion" than pro-choice with its anti-Tebow crusade (emphasis mine):

CBS on Friday rejected an ad submitted by a gay dating website to air during next Sunday's Super Bowl

"The network shot down the commercial Friday in a letter to the site -- ManCrunch.com -- saying the 'creative is not within the Network's Broadcast Standards for Super Bowl Sunday,'" reported Jason Hibberd at The Live Feed.

Hibberd cited a letter from CBS in which the network expressed concern the site didn't have the money to pay for the ad (video of ad embedded below the fold):

The Super Bowl is a cultural phenomenon. It’s not only watched by godzillions of people worldwide, it’s the only televised broadcast where the audience tunes in not just for the game, but for the commercials. The top-dollar, high-profile advertising space has led to some unforgettable commercials over the years.

Sometimes the ad is so remarkable it becomes a word-of-mouth sensation before it even airs, before anyone has even seen it. It’s happened again this year.

CBS has decided to accept an ad from a politically involved group and caused a firestorm with the radical Left because that group is proudly Christian.

The conservative Christian group Focus on the Family plans to air a commercial featuring Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam, who will tell the story of how doctors told her she should have an abortion, and she refused that exercise of "choice." Pam Tebow was a missionary in the Philippines and had contracted dysentery, and the medicine had a chance of causing birth defects.

Discounting the pro-life argument of a planned Focus on the Family Super Bowl ad featuring Tim Tebow's mother, Joy Behar told the audience of the January 26 "View" that the Florida quarterback just as easily could have been a "rapist pedophile." [audio available here]

"What are people flippin' out about," bewildered moderator Whoopi Goldberg -- herself an ardent pro-choice activist -- asked.

"The only argument against any of it is, that, you know, he could just as easily become some kind of a rapist pedophile. I mean, you don't know what someone's going to be," Behar answered, adding:

Media Research Center President Brent Bozell called on the CBS television network to stay the course in planning to air a life-affirming Super Bowl commercial featuring Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and his mother, who was pressured to abort him during her pregnancy, after a bout of opposition has arisen among left-wing activist groups:

Radical leftist groups like the National Organization for Women have the gall to claim that this life-affirming ad is "extraordinarily offensive and demeaning." I have to wonder, what is so offensive about celebrating the decision of a mother to have her baby?

Bozell added that "CBS has the opportunity to make this a game-changer for network television," an "opportunity to show balance and fairness -- and simple decency" and "to stand against liberal liberal political censorship."

Told ya so. When reports first surfaced a few weeks ago that Focus on the Family was planning to run a pro-life ad during the Super Bowl broadcast featuring University of Florida quarter back Tim Tebow, the Culture & Media Institute predicted liberals would be upset.

Like clockwork, an article in the Huffington Post on Jan. 25 reported that "a national coalition of women's groups" that includes the National Organization for Women and the Feminist Majority is demanding that CBS reconsider its plans to run the ad.

Tebow, a Heisman Trophy winner who led the Gators to an NCAA championship, is a famously outspoken Christian noted for wearing Bible verses on his game day eye-black. He is also a walking pro-life story: the Super Bowl ad will relate how Tim's mother, against the advice of doctors, carried him to term in a dangerous pregnancy while on a church mission to the Philippines.

The story behind Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow's arrival into this world is remarkable.

So-called "women's groups" would seem to prefer that as many Americans as possible not know the story about the courageous and faith-based decision Tebow's mother made to carry her pregnancy to term. That's the only plausible reason why they are opposing a 30-second Focus on the Family (FOTF) ad scheduled to air during the Super Bowl. So far, it seems that CBS, which will air the Super Bowl on February 7, seems disinclined to buckle.

David Crary's coverage of the story at the Associated Press (from which the photo at the top right was obtained) labels FOTF "conservative," but does not apply any descriptive label to the "women's groups" objecting to the ad.

As you'll see in the final excerpted paragraph, Crary's coverage included an over-the-top statement from the objectors:

Americans love to talk sports. Polite Americans don't talk religion. So when those two things meet, the news media has no idea what to make of it.

Unfortunately for journalists, sports and religion - Christianity in particular - seem to be publicly mingling more often these days. Some star athletes are more outspoken in their faith, while many others regularly find themselves in need of spiritual, if not legal, redemption.

Liberals in the media don't understand religion and religious people, so when they surface on the playing field, the resulting coverage veers wildly from awkwardly respectful to clueless to downright contemptuous.

Fox's Brit Hume caused a firestorm by suggesting on air that Tiger Woods could find "forgiveness and redemption" in Christianity, rather than the casual Buddhism the golfer has said he practices. Woods, whose marriage and career are in melt-down because of his serial infidelities, should "turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world," Hume said. And in doing so, the former anchorman committed several mortal sins in modern secular America.

Winning is part of sports and often God is praised by athletes when that happens. Rarer though, is the athlete who praises God even in the midst of crushing disappointment.

But Colt McCoy, quarterback for the University of Texas Longhorns, took the opportunity to speak about his faith last night when ABC's Lisa Salters asked him how it felt to watch the BCS Championship game against Alabama from the sidelines.

"I always give God the glory. I never question why things happen the way they do. God is in control of my life. And I know that if nothing else, I'm standing on the Rock," McCoy stated.

McCoy had every reason to express frustration and disappointment last night. The senior took a hit that damaged his shoulder during his team's opening drive, ended his college career and, if it didn't doom Texas to defeat, it certainly had a hand in the team's 37 - 21 loss to Alabama.

With his unconventional pass delivery and a physical style that seems just as comfortable running the ball anyway, some wonder if University of Florida star quarterback Tim Tebow will achieve NFL glory. But football fans just may get to see the story of the Heisman Trophy winner and unapologetic Christian impact the pro sport's biggest game of the year.

Colorado-based conservative group Focus on the Family reportedly may buy a Super Bowl spot for an ad about how Tebow’s mother carried him to term despite a difficult and dangerous pregnancy.

If true, it would be just another example of Tebow annoying the secular left. The quarterback is as famous for wearing Bible passage citations on his game-day eye black as for winning an NCAA championship. As NewsBusters has detailed, that practice – and the faith it symbolizes – is irksome to some commentators.