Bang! Zoom! Sally Jenkins goes off!

Last updated on: March 10, 2017 at 10:22 pm by Elizabeth Scalia

Bang! Zoom! Sally Jenkins goes off! 2017-03-10T22:22:19+00:00 Elizabeth Scalia

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It’s one thing for a nobody-former-Dem-former-feminist-blogger like me to say this sort of stuff; for a mainstream journalist writing in the Washington Post, a defense of Tim Tebow and a pro-life ad during Super Bowl time is truly noteworthy.

This is dynamic truth-speaking to a stagnant and hypocritical establishment. This is someone who claims to be liberal actually writing like a liberal –as liberalism used to be defined; it is someone secure enough in her own abilities to reason that she is not afraid to allow others their right to their own opinion.

This is someone who is drawing a line in the sand and saying, “that’s enough, what is wrong with you people; do you even know what freedom is, or how un-free you have made yourselves and your little worlds?”

You have to read it all. It’s so good it’s hard to excerpt but here is a bit:

As statements at Super Bowls go, I prefer the idea of Tebow’s pro-life ad to, say, Jim McMahon dropping his pants, as the former Chicago Bears quarterback once did in response to a question. We’re always harping on athletes to be more responsible and engaged in the issues of their day, and less concerned with just cashing checks. It therefore seems more than a little hypocritical to insist on it only if it means criticizing sneaker companies, and to stifle them when they take a stance that might make us uncomfortable.

I’m pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I’ve heard in the past week, I’ll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the “National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time.” For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow’s 30-second ad hasn’t even run yet, but it already has provoked “The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us” to reveal something important about themselves: They aren’t actually “pro-choice” so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.

Now that is one righteous rant! Kudos and much appreciation to Sally Jenkins, who remains her own woman and manages to repudiate the soft-fascism that says “conform or be destroyed,” the side of incessant spin and double-talk. Good for her. Good for us. Perhaps other women who have long ceased to see their views represented in the rhetoric of the “officially sanctioned women” will have the courage to follow Jenkins’ example and speak up. Hurrah! I’m going to file this under “remaking America!” H/T Li’l Bro Thom.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey has more thoughts:

When groups like NOW want to silence people like the Tebows, they’re doing so to protect their own turf. The ad asks people to choose life, not to ban abortion. If NOW really was pro-choice, they’d see nothing invalid about showing the end result of one choice and the faith that carried the Tebows from that terrifying diagnosis to the pinnacle of athletic and scholarly success. Tebow represents hope in the midst of hopelessness. NOW doesn’t want people to have hope; they want women to buy abortions, and this ugly response has made that crystal clear.

Joseph Bottum has a few thoughts of his own, too

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