CBS to air ANTI-ABORTION ad during the SUPERBOWL

Super Bowl Sunday is a week away.... I can already smell the fusion of microwave nachos and Keystone Light. Year after year the Super Bowl is an American tradition for football fans and non-football fans alike to get together on a Sunday afternoon and get their cheap-beer-buzz on. It is cultural phenomena and a media frenzy. The going rate for a 20 second commercial is $1 million, $2 million for a 30 second commercial, and the rates go up from there.

One of the clients that has purchased a 30 second commercial was Focus on Family foundation, a Christian based "family support" organization is sponsoring an ad about the miracle of child birth. Below is a clip from the O'Reily Factor featuring Jehmu Greene, the president of the Women's Media Center.

I know for a liberal democrat or just a simply open minded person, The O'Reily Factor is as easy to stomach watching as Rush Limbaugh is to listen to- However, focus on what Greene has to say about the Christian agenda.

If Bill O'Reily doesn't enrage the feminist inside of you, you need an exorcist.

Below that is another clip of a debate between Greene and the head of the FOF (Focus on Family) Jim Daly.

FOF head, Daly, claims that this ad celebrates life, yet does not argue against pushing a Christian agenda

Okay so I've been relatively calm up to this point.... now it's time to say what I really think:

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME CBS?!?!

Since when is it appropriate to even address controversial issues like abortion on prime-time television? Whether you are pro-choice or anti-choice, Christian or not, it is not right to air a commercial that pushes moral values on the public. At least that is what I think (so if you do, please disagree with me and explain yourself....)

Secondly, this isn't an award show or the season finale of Jersey Shore (which has a reported 4.8 million viewers....gross) this is the Super Bowl....THE Super Bowl. The mecca for commercials, the host of fabulously awesome half-time shows, and overall media madness! February 7th, 2010, when the Saints and the Colts will battle to the death (whoo! Go Saints!) half the people who will watch the Super Bowl will not be football fans. They watch the Super Bowl because it is a fun, social gathering and (to them) an excuse to get drunk on a Sunday afternoon. It's fun! Clients of ad agencies know this about the audiences who will tune in and so does the host network, CBS. To air a commercial that manipulatively pushes the agenda of marginalized values, especially targeting to women, is just fucked up.

And thirdly... let's think about this. Okay so I don't watch football on a regular basis, but I do follow my favorite teams and catch up with what is going on in the NFL. For me the Super Bowl is not the only time I watch/enjoy football. However, as I said before, there are tons of people out there who watch the Super Bowl because they want to hang out with friends, because their favorite artist is performing at the half-time show, and because they just don't want to feel left out being the only non-hung-over person the following Monday.
But riddle me this fellow femmes..... how many times has someone said to you: "Yeah I only watch the Super Bowl for the halftime show and the awesome commercials." For the awesome, funniest, most talked about, most revenue making, most YouTube'ed commercials of the year... this is why most people (non-football fans) watch the Super Bowl, for the commercials. The entertainment addicted, consumer cycle of advertising works its spell on that special Sunday.
My point is, however, when non-football fans respond to watching the Super Bowl for the commercials...how many of those people are women? Let's be real here: more men follow football than women. I'm not being gender insensitive and I do not have stats to back this up but I think I'm pretty on target with that claim. So when tuning in on Super Bowl Sunday, ladies, will you be watching the commercials more than the game? Probably. The bottom line is that the FOF, Jim Daly, and the CBS network are fully aware of the gendered social paradigm surrounding the Super Bowl. This was a perfect opportunity for them to push an agenda on the people who will be concentrating more on the ads than on the game.

If you want to argue, agree, discuss, or share anything else....by all means.