Sports Illustrated: The Book of Tebow

I put some of that answer even being published on Poynter. An "excellence project" should put a premium on appropriate responses to critics, not whatever pops up in an email.

Between the time this thread popped and the Q&A appeared, I read the whole story again. It's not a bad story. It has some strong snapshots of Tebow's life. I suppose I wonder why Lake or SI thought it was important to look two years into the past, only to rehash, let's face it, the same stuff Skip Bayless has said about Tebow as a football player. It's not more profound because Lake is eloquent and Bayless is bombastic. It's the same argument.

The "Tebow Machine" stuff interests me more, but that's less about Tebow and more about a Christian establishment who'd rather screw around courting celebrities to their cause than mowing the disabled neighbor's lawn. Tebow's treated like some traveling prophet by a consumer-driven Christian culture looking more a fun family night in the pews -- with cookies on the back table.

 

Speaking of irrelevant ad-hominem attacks...

 

Really?

I think that would be a great story. Tebow enabled the religious right to check off all of these boxes. Homeschooled. Check. Missionary. Check. Heisman winner. Check. Virginal. Check. National champion. Check.

So close, right? But they needed two more things from him. They needed him to be a good NFL quarterback, or at least an exciting one, or at least a starter, over multiple seasons. And they needed him to be an articulate representative of their values. He turned out to be neither, and I think it took a very long time for his followers to concede any of that. I'm not sure that Thomas Lake has yet.

 

And we know that they are doing this while they neglect the overrun lawn of the imaginary disabled neighbor how?

 

Well, that's just standard-issue Alma. But in fairness, the Pope - and I understand that he's the avowed enemy of a lot of Tebow lovers, but, like it or not, they share some values - himself chided his flock to stop obsessing about morality in the abstract and start helping thy neighbor a little bit more.

 

Regarding that Q&A, not in love with Lake's answer, but that is a weak and tired question in the first place. Deadspin deserves no more credit as a critiquer than does the guy in the bar. Which means the "some people say this sucks, how do you respond" question is nonsense.

He could have just said "I don't find that particular site a worthy basis to discuss journalism" and it would have been a home run. Poynter was trolling there.

 

Not protect. Challenge. I would think it'd be Poynter's job to challenge journalists a little bit. Poynter would, after all, advocate journalists do that to their sources.

See, since the rest of the interview is nothing but unqualified praise or neutral inquiries into Lake's process, you could give journalists -- especially the young ones -- the wrong idea about the appropriateness of Lake's response. It's inappropriate.

 

Do you agree with LTL's proposed response?

 

Starting with the moral majority, Christian cultural trends in the broader evangelical church (from which Tebow springs) moved sharply away from social/pietistic concerns and sharply toward influencing institutions as a means of spreading a Gospel centered on one's personal relationship with Jesus. This individualistic focus in turn created the mega, big-box church -- not a community you could know so much as a giant entertainment/enlightenment hall of vaguely Biblical ideas -- and millions of consumers. These would be the churches, legions of these, that spent more time praying for Supreme Court judges and George W. Bush than they did for people struggling to make ends meet. These churches still do their share of good. The word, as they say, never goes out empty. But a counter-movement, roughly 8-10 years old, of the "deconstructed" church has great momentum among millenials.

Tebow's missionary background steers wide of at least some of this. He and his family put the time in on the ground. I take him at his word: I think Tebow just wants be a big, football-playing Scripture-fueled Santa who grants wishes and inspires people and loves on everyone. It's a little naive, but whatever. Tebow's spiritual gift is faith.

But the larger evangelical movement around him has been, at least in recent decades, unsatisfied with mere service and testimony by doing. Serve at the mission? Nah. They want to run the mission. Reflect Christ in the public schools? Nah. They want to rewrite bylaws to favor the Christian worldview. They want transformational change, and latched onto America's largest institutions - one of which is football -- to accomplish that. So, to some extent, Tebow's been grafted in by conservative Christian leaders who want him to be a face for whatever their pet vision is.

Do I agree with some of those pet visions? Sure. But I don't let my agreement get in the way of seeing the methodology at hand.

I concede that this kind of story on Tebow is probably not nearly as interesting to a broader audience. But the sheer length of the piece insists, by its length, that this is no crowd-pleasing Tebow patter, but Real Depth.

 

Sure. I'd just address the criticism, but sure.

 

Yeah, and Al Gore wants to fly in private planes and live in a mansion, that's heated and cooled to a comfortable temperature.

While Mother Theresa did the tough work, on the ground, it's not suited for everyone.

We need people to run the mission. We need people to inspire others.

You don't necessarily accomplish more by doing the little things. Barack Obama could have remained a community organizer. Would he have accomplished as mush?

If you start a business, and employ people, is that better or worse than simply providing charity, or working with the poor?

 

I don't think that his response was that different, just a little preachier. I agree with him. If the critique is him avoiding the question, he does that with the shot at Deadspin too. I think you just don't like the preachiness.