HT: Christianity Today Liveblog
CatholicVote.com produced a commercial to be aired during the Super Bowl using Obama’s life story as a rhetorical chip in the high stakes game of fighting for the rights of the unborn.
You can read the story at the Washington Post here: NBC nixes pro-life ad featuring Obama.
Below the fold is the video and my comments:
This move by CatholicVote.com is exactly the type of thing that we should be doing for advocacy. As I mentioned in a previous post, Christians should be a voice of dissent in our world and that voice should be proclaimed not by cheap half-baked methods but through the highest quality media available in our world today. Christ has empowered his Body with men and women of Spirit-filled power and talent who are able to use these skills to proclaim truth.
Now, I have one quibble with this ad. Obama is going to be used as by every writer under the sun as a piece of rhetorical short hand for “change” or “hope” or “anyone can rise to the top.” That’s fine to a point. But I agree in the instance with NBC in refusing to air the ad. It is overtly political. And it is exploitative of the life story of our President. NBC is in the business of making money by selling ads and those ads are almost always of a commercial nature. I guess I need to think about it more. Didn’t the Mormon church do Super Bowl ads a few years back?
Well, ‘nuff said. Here’s the ad. Tell me what you think.
P.S. The video is called “Spot 1″ so I can only imagine that more ads are planned. It’s heartening to see that the video has had more than a million views. But I expect the majority of those are by advocates for the unborn.
Great ad! Shame about what the Super Bowl viewers, or some of them, actually got to see, according to this story.
I believe this advertisement was produced NOT to be shown, since the networks have consistently declined to allow advertisements advocating right-to-life views.
As another example of an advertisement that was produced NOT to be shown from the other end of the spectrum, I can refer you to the PETA ad which shows women in lingerie caressing vegetables. (A widely-noted Victoria’s Secret advertisement aired last year, so it was not the lingerie factor at work here.)
By producing advertisements designed not be shown, these groups can save $3 million and gain wide publicity for their cause. Expect more such advertisements in the future.