I just saw a “Focus on the Family” anti-abortion group’s TV ad during the Patriots and Denver NFL playoff game. I don’t know if it’s just me but that ad almost felt like something slithering out of the TV screen and into me totally unexpected. It kind of gave me a sensation of swallowing something runny and unsavory/unholy (though I’m not religious) even though the entire ad consisted of all cute children making “statements”…
I guess they are placing their ads during all Denver Broncos (Tim Tebow; He’s been on their ads) games and Super Bowl?
How do you feel about it?
(If this issue had been discussed before please let this thread slither into the SDMB oblivion. Danke. )
It’s a free country, and we’re all going to see ads that are counter to our political beliefs.
Did you feel bad when you saw the Crying Indian ads back in the day? Would you feel bad if you saw a gay couple, with well adjusted kids, making a plea for SSM?
I muted the ad in the middle, but it seemed like it was just small children squeaking the words to John 3:16. Was there an overt anti-abortion message? I haven’t seen anything like this in other games, but I assume FOTF took out the ad because it’s a primetime game featuring Tebow. As it turns out, this is going to be Denver’s last game because they’re getting massacred, so I wouldn’t expect FOTF to do this during other games.
Neither of those are messages of hatred. The anti-abortion movement on the other hand is all about the hatred of women, and the desire to torment & oppress women.
So, it’s like the “Crying Indian” ad was funded by “The National Association to Kill All White People”, or the SSM ad was arguing that same sex marriage should be made mandatory.
Yes it is. Everything they do is calculated to harm women as much as possible, while at the same time they show little interest in actually reducing the number of abortions. The anti-abortion movement is just as anti-woman as the KKK is anti-black.
Forget it, John. It’s Trihstown.
I haven’t seen this particular ad, but I do recall an interesting one from a while back, from the “Life; it’s a beautiful choice.” A woman walks around, and her voiceover describes the feeling of loss she has because the kid she aborted would now be eight and running around a playground, or some such thing. The woman clearly regretted her abortion and addresses the viewer along the lines of: “If you think abortion is an easy choice, it’s not” or something.
Thing is, the ad is ultimately ambiguous. One of the standard pro-life images is of a woman capriciously and irresponsibly aborting her fetus, with no more regard than getting a manicure. This ad actually undercuts this, suggesting the pro-choicers not view women this way, that for them the decision can be quite hard and deserving of sympathy.
Or at least that how I saw it. I honesty wasn’t sure if I’d just watched a pro-life or pro-choice PSA. I’ll see if I can find a copy.
This ad was pretty much just John 3:16 and how awesome it was that God loved the whole big world SOOOOO much that he gave his only son to save it. It wasn’t really anti-abortion, except in subtext, I guess.
My emotions were very mixed at the time, I remember, as I didn’t know whether I should feel bad about the declining American beauty or the Indians as even the darn ad couldn’t hire a real Indian and mock them.
BTW who was counter to the “Keep America Beautiful” idea?
Plenty. Anti-woman groups tend to have plenty of women; women have a long history of being anti-woman. It’s the sort of thing that happens when you are raised from birth to regard yourself as inferior & evil; look at all the anti-homosexual activists who turn out to be secretly homosexual.
Sounds like the same thing as the Tebow Super Bowl ad: if the anti-abortion “message” is so subtle that you can easily watch the commercial without seeing it and have to squint to conclude that it’s there at all, then either it’s not about abortion or the ad is a failure.
I don’t know much about Focus on the Family, other than that they are part of the religious right, so maybe it was about all the “family values” issues they rally around-- anti-abortion, anti-SSM, pro-prayer in schools, pro-governemnt money for religious organization, etc.
You make a lot of assertions with absolutely no evidence to back them up. Hence, we can safely reject them out of hand. When come back, bring data, not opinion.