Leave To Tebow What is Tebow’s: Pundits Should Leave The Player Out Of Politics

Many will argue that Tebow’s mother’s Focus on the Family ad unleashed the deluge of both positive and negative political attention on him. The ad highlighted the story of how Tebow’s mother, Pam, chose to risk her life to have her baby when doctors recommended she abort. It passed no moral judgment, promoted no legislation or court action and, aside from what is inherent in even mentioning that abortions exist, was not what one would call overtly political. The ad was so uncontroversial, in fact, that rather than object to it on pro-choice grounds, NOW took issue with the playful tackle Tebow uses on his mom. This is how little of a case they had against it as a political statement. But that, coupled with Tebow’s proclivity for wearing Bible verses on his eyeblack, began an avalanche of political media attention that makes little sense in any empirical grounds.

Yes, Tebow has been on Fox News. But he’s been on MSNBC, too, and The Daily Show, to promote his book. And he made some statements beyond sports, like (to Sean Hannity) “When you have success on the football field, people are going to look up to you– it’s more than a platform, I have a responsibility.” How that translates into politics, however, is vague. When directly asked about politics– namely, his preferences in the 2012 race– he admitted only that he had been asked to endorse some Republican candidates, but that “I think you have to have so much trust in who you support, just from product endorsements to endorsing a candidate because if that person or company does something (bad), it reflects on you.”

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Is it even clear that Tebow is conservative? Sure, he leads a publicly conservative life, insofar as he claims to be saving himself for marriage and abstaining from vice. He once approved of his own birth in a commercial, too. But Tebow also spends much of his time on things like aiding orphans and, well, doing interviews about aiding orphans. He is very public about helping the underprivileged. He hasn’t gone so far as to say the government should be working on further aiding the underprivileged, but would it be much of a surprise that someone that wants his legacy to be his work with the poor and sick may have some liberal views about social programs? Has anyone considered that, when Tebow says he believes student athletes should be paid, it may hint to a private desire to see some sort of unionization make that happen? There isn’t any evidence to prove that, but there really isn’t any evidence to the contrary, either.

What the synthetic attempts to evolve Tebow from cultural to political icon prove is a simple point: people in the real world are vastly more complicated than those who run for office or host shows about politics or write newspaper columns or blog posts– which is why labels like “conservative” and “liberal” only work to the extent that they do on the caricatures that candidates and pundits make themselves out to be. Normal folks like Tebow, who probably does not spend much time thinking about politics, don’t fit as easily onto labels and don’t uniformly take sides. Even the two ambiguously political tidbits the public knows about how Tebow views the world– that he avoids “temptation” loosely defined and conducts charity operations– can be each attributed to a different side of the political spectrum. And yet in the eyes of people who both attack and defend him, there cannot be doubt on whose team he belongs, else the entire structure that makes him relevant to political media collapses onto itself.

Yes, as a creature of cultural significance, “Tim Tebow” the icon is fully up for grabs to use in comedy sketches, jack-o-lanterns, and remakes of 80s hits that no one asked for. Sure, bash his weak passing abilities, turn him into David Bowie, or try to use his name to rehabilitate yours if you’re a widely disliked athlete. But keep him out of your campaign ads, your criticisms of North Korea, and, please, don’t compare the poor kid to Sarah Palin.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.