Tim Tebow’s Divine Mission to Quarterback an NFL Team – and the World
February 3, 2010 by dwil
Tim Tebow is on a mission. Just not the type of mission you might think.
After “des” posted the link to the Tim Tebow-Slate articles on my Timmy T. short note I read those articles and was shaken. Tebow is not a pawn and firmly believes he is a divine driven-by-god Superman who is convinced the message he grew up with, embraced, and now is hell-bent (pun intended) to spread is going to bring about the “Rapture.”
Tebow’s father Bob Tebow is a psychotic missionary who found a woman who is either psychotic herself or bought into into messianic psychosis and together they spread this psychosis to their child. Tebow is as mind-controlled as is the best Manchurian Candidate —– and he is just as dangerous. His insistence that he be provided every opportunity to play quarterback in the National Football League can now be fully contextualized: Timothy Tebow wants to play the league’s glamor position, not for the ardor, but to be constantly in the spotlight for “his god.” As the man with his hands on the ball every offensive play he becomes that much more a prominent spreader of the message; as if he is on a 21st century continuous mission that consumes his every waking moment.
And that message can be disseminated to millions instantaneously with each and every touchdown pass, each interview, each time Tim Tebow’s face crosses the television screen.
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Monday and Tuesday I entered into two conversations about America. The thrusts if these conversations dealt with the seeming paranoia that exists in our everyday lives. The context was myself and the people I was talking with and the fact that, as children, we roamed our neighborhoods at young ages, trusted the older children in our neighborhoods whose parents were friends with our parents to baby sit us, or keep an eye out as we played, that we could walk to the little corner store tucked a few blocks away with very little thought of danger on our parent’s parts. We discussed how, as teens, we all hitch-hiked when we felt it necessary, and sometimes travelled some distances in this mode of travel.
Sure, hitching was more difficult and certainly more dangerous for young women, but for young men, as long as we had our eyes open and our instincts in tact, we were taught to defend ourselves mentally and physically, and felt comfortable in our choices; we never encountered problems.
Today, though, our children cannot do the same. My seven-year old daughter cannot walk the four blocks to our neighborhood grocer’s alone. She will not hitch hike – ever. She is, at our teaching, distrustful at most but always wary of strangers and careful around our associates. Our friend’s treat their children, boys and girls the same way. The subtle, unsaid, but overreaching message is that we live in a country full of dangerous people.
What we wondered is, how did things get this way?
We came to a consensus: the “powers that be” are psychotic. Since they control to some extent at least, nearly every material item in our worlds and too much of the message that informs our worlds, they are manifesting that psychosis to the American population. Since, they, at every turn, are attempting to coerce us to purchase their goods or adhere to their messages, the denizens of American society are manifesting that psychosis.
That would mean U.S. citizens, collectively are exhibiting varying degrees of psychotic behavior.
To be brief, we talked about the proliferation of cults in America; how what were communes became cults or are now begun with the goal of becoming a cult. We came to understand how, through corporations, more value was and is placed on the progress of material goods, especially technology at the expense of valuing the human mind, and therefore, undervaluing the human in an ever-state of being.
Now, that technology is eating us. We are at its mercy and its myriad effects are unknown to us.
But they are known in some circles.
We came to understand that our government walked into a neighborhood in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the 1950s and sprayed carcinogens into the air as an “experiment.” when, years later when nearly all the girls in the neighborhood later in life contracted various cancers, especially cervical cancer, they began to dig for answers. They found out about the “experiment” and found it was the cause of their illnesses.
We understand that, if, in the 1950s our government was capable of something so blatant – and these were White women – the capacity for these people to do evil has no boundaries. W understand that every day similar experiments are taking place – in all probability with the potential to render much more heinous after-effects than we will ever know; that the efforts might today be on such a scale that they have been effectively melded into one constant, on-going experiment.
We also understand that the powers that be are losing control —– of their minds and of the world around them.
They are more fearful than ever. And we know this because, collectively, so are we.
We understand that it is time to admit where we are and what we are, and be prepared to fully change the way we live. It is time to prepare to strip ourselves of possessions, not collect more. It is time to take advantage of the fact that we know how to grow crops, that the women among us know how to knit and sew clothes; that the men among us are strong enough and resourceful enough to guide us toward safety at every turn and at all costs.
We understand that there might be factions of people who fully act out their externally-induced psychosis.
Those people might even believe that it is their mission to steer us to Armegeddon so they might lead us to the Rapture.
“Those people” might even look like Bob Tebow and Pam Tebow. And sons Robbie and Peter. And daughters Chrisy and Katie.
And Tim. They might look like Tim.
I can’t post long replies from work, so this’ll be split up. But since your article was as well, I suppose that is ok.
When Dwight Howard came into the NBA he stated he wanted to spread the word of Jesus, and use his status as a platform. I immediately disliked the kid, because I can’t stand holy rollers. Fast forward a few yrs and he has a kid out of wedlock with a dancer.
Now, even though I had issues with his ‘holy roller’ platform, I felt bad that the real world ended up eating Howard (at least to a degree). I respect Tebow’s earnestness, even though I believe he is horribly misguided. How long will it take for the real world to eat him up and twist his morals, like it seems to do to us all?
And on to the children.
I’ve remarked on the same thing myself. My ex wouldn’t let my 10 and 11 yr old walk 100 yds to the neighbors house without wanting to walk them (it was late, but still 100 yds?). This is in a nice middle class hood in a middle sized town. My parents let me walk a mile to kindergarten when I was 4 (Nov B-day) in SD.
We are far more overprotective as parents. And I don’t believe society is anymore dangerous than it was in my youth. How many times as a kid did your mom just tell you to get out of the house, especially in the summer?
And now as parents we are scared to do the same. What kind of adults are we breeding? I think we’re killing the self-reliance of our children.
The Tebow’s sound kinda like those crazy fools that went down to Haiti snatching up little black children all in the name of the Lord. Those numbnuts are nothing more than child predators to me and I hope the Haitian government put their azzes in jail.
gmp -
There was a report done sometime last year that showed only the coverage of bad things had changed since most of our parents were kids. This fed into the collective paranoia of those in our generation that the entire world was dangerous. You have Nancy Grace and those like her constantly talking about all of the dangers out in the world and you get an entire populace thinking that the world is much more dangerous than it is.
Miranda -
co-sign. I saw some of those kids on the news saying that they had parents. You have folks flocking down there to save kids that don’t need saving!
John Travolta is flying his Church of Scientology buddies down there in full force. Pat “They brought this on themselves with their wicked ways” Robertson has his people going down there. While a lot of folks going down there are well meaning, there are too many going down there with the intention of converting the sad Haitians from their “evil” ways.
That’s one of the problems with many religious groups in situations like this. They focus on conversion instead of actually helping those that need to be helped. If they went down there to truly help, they’d probably get more conversions than with the coercive tactics that they currently use.
kos-
Understand the coverage has changed. I just wonder if we aren’t coddling this generation of children and removing a vital element of discovery from their lives.
I tell you, if you based much of your psyche on what you hear on the TV, you’d either build underground bunkers or stowaway on the next international flight. I’ve gone as far as thinking we should trade places with our penal system’s inmates and just fortify the institutions, resembling Judge Dredge’s world…LOL!
I’ll agree that it’s possible the PTB are losing their minds (and base!). See all that hoopla over “Balloon Boy” and “the Underwear Bomber”? That “fear” has crept into me at times. As a college student, I remember taking a bike rides late at night for what seemed to be about 3-4 mile round trips in our large town. I’m hesitant to even do that in broad daylight these days. It’s that boob-tube and tabloid MSM flashing nonsense 24/7 that has me weary of about everyone and everything…and don’t even get into the so-called talking heads. WTF?!
For example, I thought for the longest my car was in need of repair and could easily breakdown at the wrong moment. Know what the problem was? Sound effects from one of the songs I was playing on my stereo (Tha Alkaholiks-”Make Room”)…yeah, that petty! Wound so tight at times, Bishop Tutu could whisper down the hallway and I’d shatter like glass…LMAO!!!
I don’t know jack about Tebow. But I saw clips from that game played this weekend and looked at his delivery. Dude has absolutely zero chance of being an NFL QB.
gmp, kos, CDF-
I read that report and, for awhile, said, oh that’s what “it” is. But as I continue to watch people, listen to people, look at our society, and think about all of this, I do not trust the report for a second.
I realize that more fear-based news is being reported each day. At the same time, we live separate from each other – I’m talking with you all and vice versa on a computer, not on a phone. When I stress to people that I rather talk with them on the phone, some people actually get offended that I don’t want to e-mail them or “chat” online… it’s sad.
The less contact people have with each other the harder it is to connect with society, as a whole. When people are more and more isolated and deal directly with fewer and fewer people, it allows for testing sets and subset to easily be derived by people who want to constantly lab rat us.
When you are largely isolated and inundated by technologies beyond the mind’s ability to handle them, you have the perfect equation for creating toxic humans; people with more and more physical and psychological diseases.
I actually feel that particular report and others like it are meant to make us think everything is just as it always was, when it actually is not at all cool. Our society is changing before our very eyes, and it’s happening quickly – and much of it, though good in the long run, can make for an uncomfortable, very, very contentious near future. Americans are known for turning a blind eye to trouble that isn’t laid out for us by perceived authorities.
With all that said, (and then toss in a huge jump in population from 30-40 years ago, plus an influx of people from outside the U.S.), it’s difficult for me to believe that civility or sanity-wise, we are the same people as we were 20 or 30 or 40 years ago.
Interesting thesis, and one that is growing in popularity cross political lines. I think it’s interesting that Tebow can basically dictate that he won’t play in the League if he doesn’t play quarterback. I can imagine that if he fails, he’ll say that the problem was that the Godless liberals didn’t want to give him a fair shot because he wanted to talk about God.
Also, I thought that it was interesting in that Slate article how the author admitted to being skittish about asking Tebow questions about his faith and its impact. I wonder if he displays that same behavior when asked to confront black athletes about their pasts and beliefs.
kos said:
“That’s one of the problems with many religious groups in situations like this. They focus on conversion instead of actually helping those that need to be helped. If they went down there to truly help, they’d probably get more conversions than with the coercive tactics that they currently use.”
As someone who lives in an area that was swamped by religious groups after a natural disaster, I can honestly say that most of the folks, white folks, seemed concerned with providing assistance moreso than converting sinners. Now, that could have been because the black folks they were helping were already Christians for the most part, or it could have been that they talked bad about black folks behind their backs, but it didn’t seem like that. I think this is a case of the bad apples getting more play than those folks doing some good. Not saying it’s not valid because it is since these bad apples are the most vocal, but I would caution against painting all Christians with the same broad brush.
From what I saw, many religious groups put their teachings on the line when it came to helping out here in New Orleans after Katrina. They made mistakes, but they were trying to help.
KevDog -
He lowers the ball to his hip when he gets ready to throw. Then, he has a long delivery. And on top of it all, he doesn’t get much velocity on this throws. Lowering the ball low is a formula for it to be stripped by defenders. The long delivery and the slow velocity means that astute DB’s will be able to read him and intercept him or defend the receivers easier. That doesn’t even count the fact that he has trouble getting the ball from the center b/c he played in a system that kept him in the shotgun most of the time. As far as him running like he did in college, not a good idea when you have 260+ lbs. linemen that can run faster than him.
D-
As far as isolating ourselves, I do believe technology has a lot to do with it. Early at one of my old jobs, they actually encouraged us to use IM instead of calling or seeing other people face to face to collaborate. When you need help for something technology related these days, more often than not, they would rather you do a real-time chat than call. If you call, you’ll be waiting 15-20 minutes, but your call is important to them.
Don’t get me wrong, technology is a wonderful thing. But, it can be taken too far. The kids coming up today get too much of it, and not enough of live interaction. Compound that with the fact that a lot of older folks want their kids more into technology than real life because they believe it gives them a leg up.
Some of my friends from college would rather me be on facebook and chat than talk to them on the phone, for no other reason than it’s “easier”. I’ve basically been connected to the ‘net since ’94, and still have never thought it was easier to talk to someone online than on the phone. I know that you get more misunderstandings with online chat because you can’t “read” folks on the ‘net like you can when you hear their voice.
Big Man -
My bad. I should have said something about whenever they go to foreign countries that are Non-Christian or don’t practice Christianity the way that they believe it should be practiced.
kos – ‘I know that you get more misunderstandings with online chat….’
I had a boss I only communicated with through IM. She hated me just for that reason. My humor is dry and I refuse to use emotes, she just didn’t get it. ‘Til I finally made a trip back to Cali and met her face to face, got easier after that.
TO ALL-
Miranda just dropped this on me. PLEASE READ!
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?page=hill/100202
Um… this seems a little wrong, can’t place why, perhaps somebody will tell me why…
‘Tebow’s decision to appear in this ad should be considered just as courageous as Muhammad Ali’s decision to not enter the draft, or Tommie Smith’s and John Carlos’ black power salute at the 1968 summer Olympics.’
Jemele Hill made me gag with that comment.
Really son? REALLY!
What’s the worse that could happen to Tebow if he came out as Pro-Life while trying to work in a conservative organization like the NFL? He could get a medal?
That is so freaking illogical it makes me want to vomit. Ali, Smith and Carlos risked their very careers and livelihoods to take stands. There is nothing in their situations that compares to Tebow and he is facing nowhere near the same danger.
GTHOH with that.
JH was off-base for that “comparison” because Ali lost two peak years, tons of money, and when he returned, wasn’t as quick, had to go rope-a-dope, which led to too many hits to the head. Smith and Carlos couldn’t capitalize off their success the way they should’ve and endured endless harassment from the FBI and others, with local police departments just laughing every time they filed a complaint. Carlos’ first wife committed suicide under the pressure. I doubt Tebow will suffer similar consequences. If and when he does, JH can compare him to them all she wants. Until then, its a phony comparison.
By the way, to assume that Tebow has plenty to lose by going holy like this is to assume that he’s going to have a great career and plenty of money right off the bat, if only he’d play it safe. He probably won’t even be a 1st round pick, and his play at the senior bowl did not convince scouts that he’s NFL-ready as a QB. I’m curious to see how far TT will fall in the draft-especially if he refuses to play another position. I say 4th round.
How transparent that Ms. Hill is trying to gain some points by sticking up for the new Great White Hype. I didn’t have to read the article once I saw the headline to know that she’s just pandering. No one I’ve spoke with or read has said Tebow doesn’t have the right to voice his opinions only that he’s opening up a can of controversy. If he’s up for it good for him but I myself doesn’t have to agree with him and I can certainly call BS on Ms. Hill for equating Tebow’s big mouth with what Mssrs. Smith, Carlos, Ali, and uncounted others endured was many times worse than anything he will experience. If he washes out in the NFL it will be because he didn’t have the ability to thrive in that environment not because of his beliefs. Ms. Hill knows that as clearly as anyone who has any amount of savvy.
Wow, either I’m getting smarter or the MSM’s tricks are getting more and more obvious.
I really cant believe Jemele went there…….that is so insulting, really it is…that’s an insult to everyone with common sense.
even if Tebow wasn’t genuine, this is a good move for him. It’s not like they’re going to put his face on the next video game or gatorade commercial. Tebow is a Christian Athlete; that is his brand, and he’s taking his views all the way to the bank. Other athletes that have faded from the limelight have also entered this enterprise (e.g. Deion Sanders), and it’s a profitable one.
I am more surprised that people are surprised by this.
Of course Jemele Hill has to stand up for Tebow’s stand. She makes it just another ‘multicultural moment,’ so that what Tebow does is the same as what Ali, Smith, and Carlos did, and the same as what Jemele Hill herself does. They are just ‘expressing themselves,’ showing their identities to contribute to our multiculture.
Obviously, what Hill misses is that Tebow and herself are not acting prophetically but instead acting profitably. Having multiple “cultures” only testifies to the reality that we are stuck with a global colonial culture that has become slick enough to recognize not just European ‘cultures’ (which are considered humanism rather than culture) but any ‘culture’ that articulates itself in a way that engenders complicity or acquiescence to the colonial empire.
Writing white copy for ESPN is how Jemele Hill affirms her postmodern, postcolonial blackness – that is, a blackness that is a lie and a fabrication, produced through Condoleezas, Baracks, Henry Louises, and the like. The folks living in prison and on the streets have to pay the price for these hucksters, since their anticolonial blackness makes them targets for all-out assault through the coordination of violence, miseducation, and refusal to provide spaces and places.
The technology ties it all together. Our human biology created the most powerful technology there is 50,000 years ago in Africa. The face, the throat, the tongue evolved so that humans could meet each other in loving recognition. Love between humans could produce adaptation not only biologically through genetic mutation over many generations, but through concern for our others within generations that allowed for the networking of experiences through language, Africa’s undeniable gift to all of humanity. Language, far from being a collection of words oriented through grammar, was inseparable from symbolic systems: cave paintings, smiles, carvings, on and on.
The means of human adaptation were born in Africa millennia before the Roman empire invented it as “Africa,” millennia before the trans-Christian empire invaded it to steal and control its resources – the resources of the earth as well as its most valuable resource, the people, who brought with them not just the technologies to work the fields but the technologies to survive domination, to live on in the face of murder.
But the technologies of Europe grew faster than any technology in human history, for two reasons that are but different sides of the same coin: they encountered myriad ways of being in the world, which they could appropriate and reconfigure to serve their own needs (and act as if the wheel, metallurgy, gunpowder, printing press, paper, mathematics, scientific method, etc. were European inventions rather than thefts redefined and rehistoricized to serve colonial designs); they also encountered myriad ways of resisting their attempts to control, dominate, steal, and kill. The existential drive to improve the technologies stolen from all over the globe was the same existential drive that fueled the replacement of these technologies with European impostors – systems of thought and being were evangelized away on the grounds that they praised untrue gods, sites of manufacture were demolished to be replaced with plantation fields run by MNC’s and manned by vicious ex-cons.
But Europe had to develop a technology for foreclosing thought, for keeping its violence out of mind, out of sight. Colonization was Godly, Christian; nation-states were the only way to organize societies; natural scarcity meant the only valid human being is the breadwinner, and all others are to serve him. Trinkets and medicines had to be invented to dazzle the mind. Coffee, tea, sugar, and tobacco were grown by the dark, dehumanized peoples and shipped to keep the European workers amped up and European thinkers stimulated. The university replaced the monastery, the school radically complemented the church. The novel replaced orature, and the cinema and television would consolidate all of these through a mechanism for the central control of memory, language, cognition, perception, and semiotics.
European technology is seen as progress precisely because it progressively consolidates power and allows for the exercise of power to be rapid and far-ranging. These are the goals to be expected of anything produced by European/EuroAmerican culture.
The impact of these technologies for controlling memory has grown stronger and stronger over their short lifespan since Edison invented the means for memorializing the “real” sounds and sights of human beings. These developments have been coextensive with the manufacture and use of the atom bomb and the mass production and distribution of firearms, automobiles, and telecommunications. If the media is, more and more, reporting on our fears and exacerbating them, this is in part because the technological means of instilling terror have become stronger and stronger. A kidnapper rapist has access to a great number of technologies to kidnap and rape more efficiently than ever – vans, cell phones, GPS, guns. The paradox is that all of these technologies have been invented, so we are told, to contain the evil, to be used by the police, the military, the consumer to protect all of us.
Now we’ve got “humanitarian aid” in Haiti to act as if the US ever gave a damn about these people that it has spent two centuries terrorizing for having the gall to rebel against French slavemasters. We are supposed to donate to the power complex that facilitated the Haitian coups under our last two, “racial” Presidents (they had to be racial, right, since our current one is post-racial?), and we are supposed to rationalize every act of empire independent of the others as if there were no connection between Honduras, Iraq, Afghanistan, Puerto Rico, Newark. Our technologies enable us to divide these issues, treat them as separate and requiring independent responses. Donate to THIS cause to help this problem, THAT cause for the other problem, and DON’T donate to the other one because it will only make things worse. Vote for this candidate to make a change.
All of our technologies mythologize our daily actions so that they are viewed in terms of progress vs. not progress vs. regress. As if humans were nothing more than algebraic functions on a two-dimensional graph. But what makes us human is not our ability to progress but rather our ability to adapt. All of our “progress” is only an adaptation to a cultural code premised on progress – a cultural code created because its inventors believed themselves to be the embodiments of human progress, a belief supposedly ratified by the simple fact that other humans were not like them.
Humans will not “progress” by aggregating their cultures through the institutions the elites consent to provide. Being able to “choose freely” from the viewpoints of Tebow, Hill, Limbaugh, Kruger, Zakaria, Mandela, Fukuyama is not the means for humans to liberate themselves from pain. Rather, it is the source of pain, the imposition of a way of being that demands us to choose among evils, because all of our technologies are designed to deliver a myriad of evil to our doorsteps, eyes, fingers, brains.
I was obsessed with football and baseball throughout my childhood. The TV images and the backyard games were tied together in one symbolic process. Life was sports, and sports improved life. The technology, the miseducation, all allowed me to understand myself through these distant images and sounds, through these words – toughness, competition, opportunity, chance, luck, struggle, thrill, defeat. I experienced all of these as the timeless reality of what it is to be myself. It didn’t occur to me to think of baseball as a game that originated during the shift from a chattel slavery system of life to an economic system of life, to think of the rules of the game as being an offshoot of the new rules of the game in the US and the world where everyone has an “opportunity,” a chance at bat, but where the batting order, the positions in the field, and who is on the bench are all still determined from above, from hierarchy. It didn’t occur to me to think of football as a game that emerged in the epoch of eugenics, that went professional after the US “proved” it could kick ass all over the world, conquering and penetrating opponents by being bigger, faster, smarter, that exploded during the “Cold War” as the US fought for every last inch of territory, fought to impose a playbook on the rest of the globe (including, of course, the “rest” inside its own borders, fighting to integrate rather than liberate, fighting for field position instead of touchdowns) so that it could anticipate the opposition at every step.
I followed it obsessively, on the TV, radio, internet; I talked about it at school, used sports to make friends. I went off to university and started to try to “solve” the problems of sports, to ask why batting average and wins were celebrated and OBP and strikeouts misunderstood. I fell in with that crowd that uses the technology to figure out the eternal, universal truths, who use all the metrics and aggregates to find the Truth, to find which phenomena were “real” and which were deceptive. It would only be after years of this that I stepped back to ask, Are the reasons we believe these “untruths” related to the reasons we believe untruths in other areas of life?
It used to be I would read website after website, blog after blog, figuring out what was going on in sports. Monday, the blog I probably read the most of, all time, “Dodger Thoughts,” moved onto ESPN. The choice was obvious – I am never reading it again. Now, 95% of my sports reading is right here at SOMM, because it is the place to find the truth, unwedded to the technomassacre I must liberate myself from. Thanks for this great post, dwil.
fifth-
Damn…. Thank you so much… for the props and the comment.
Haiti is said to have a huge oil reserve beneath and around it and now we’re poised to take it over. Random earthquake… hmmmmm.
Humans will not “progress” by aggregating their cultures through the institutions the elites consent to provide. Being able to “choose freely” from the viewpoints of Tebow, Hill, Limbaugh, Kruger, Zakaria, Mandela, Fukuyama is not the means for humans to liberate themselves from pain. Rather, it is the source of pain, the imposition of a way of being that demands us to choose among evils, because all of our technologies are designed to deliver a myriad of evil to our doorsteps, eyes, fingers, brains.
Beautiful. For real.