The Super Bowl is more than just a huge day for professional football
fans. Part of the game's massive audience is there for the chance to see
how mega-corporations creatively spend millions of dollars for one
Super Bowl commercial. Some Super Bowl ads are brilliant and
successful. Budweiser knows it has hit one out of the park when its ad
is Monday's water-cooler talk.
But never understimate the ability of some people to go too far, where
talent and imagination are rejected for sophistry and shock. Take the ad
geniuses for Doritos and PepsiMax, who posted on YouTube some entrants
in their "Crash the Super Bowl" ad contest. One entry, titled "Feed the Flock," [video]
crassly, deliberately mocked Christianity and the Holy Eucharist.
Instead of offering the Body of Christ, some priests are shown lining up
the faithful to receive Doritos and PepsiMax diet cola. Their church
was sinking in popularity - until Jesus was replaced by a snack chip.
This is appalling to any Christian who celebrates 2,000 years of
reverence for the sacred Lord's Supper. It's especially insulting to
Catholics, whose Catechism teaches that the Eucharist is the "source and
summit of the Christian life." The communion wafer is not a tasteless
snack, in desperate need of Nacho Cheese flavor; it is sharing in the
Way, the Truth, and the Life offered selflessly in the sacrifice of the
Christ. It is the very Body and Blood of Our Lord.
The ad makers just poured moldy garbage on that. Oh, I'm sure they knew
there would be outraged Christians, but there would also be a "free
media" bounce, as in some "buzz" on the Internet. Frito-Lay and PepsiCo
honored this inane mockery by offering it for over 120,000 views on
YouTube - before finally taking it down.
It isn't just offensive, it's a blatant violation of their own contest
rules, which clearly stated any ad submitted "must be suitable for
display and publication on national television (e.g., may not be obscene
or indecent, including but not limited to nudity or profanity): and
"must not contain defamatory statements (including but not limited to
words or symbols that are widely considered offensive to individuals of a
certain race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or socioeconomic group)."
Are they dim-witted? No, these businessmen know what they're doing and
obviously didn't fear an ad that is offensive to Christians. Never in a
million years would they ever countenance the idea of similarly
insulting Muslims. As one wag joked on Twitter: "I'm sure any day now
we'll see a commercial where Muslims turn their prayer mats to point at
the new 2011 Lexus LS."
Our national media, so exquisitely attuned to the monitors of
"homophobia" and "Islamophobia" find no offense whatsoever in this
online "Christophobia." In fact, in the past, they have either ignored
this sacrament-trashing...or enjoyed it.
They ignored the public radio show that joked about Mike Huckabee's
family enjoying "deep-fried" Eucharist; the short-lived NBC sitcom
"Committed" with a half-hour plot centered on accidentally flushing the
Eucharist; or Bill Maher joking how the Catholic Church should "go gay"
and chant "We're here, we're queer, get Eucharist.'" But they enjoyed as
"thrillingly down and dirty" the ridiculous stage production of "Jerry
Springer: The Opera" that mocked the "little biscuit" of a
genital-fondling Jesus character who admitted he was "a little bit gay."
These media hypocrites disgust me. Look at how they twisted themselves
into the shape of a tasty Mister Salty Pretzel at the "controversy"
regarding what quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother Pam were going to
say something in a Super Bowl ad by Focus on the Family against
abortion. And here's the controversy: instead of speaking directly of
how doctors advised her to abort, Pam Tebow talked about her troubled
pregnancy: "I call him my miracle baby. He almost didn't make it into
this world. I remember so many times when I almost lost him." The A-word
was never used.
Still, the media twisted the story to portray the whole pro-life
concept as tasteless. ABC's Dan Harris spoke out for "many sports fans"
who found it "a great shame" that our national unity over football
"could become yet another day where we are divided over politics and the
culture wars."
Where is Dan Harris now? Munching on Doritos while sipping Pepsi, I suppose.
