Get to Know Tim Tebow

Do me a favor: if you're planning to buy a Tim Tebow jersey now that he's pulled up stakes and moved to New York to play next season for the Jets, at least consider giving that money instead to the Human Rights Commission, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), or to Planned Parenthood.

Faced with having to refight the culture wars and defend basic human dignity, these groups need the money more than the Jets or Tebow do. Actually, Tebow is on the list of the narrow-minded people and entities they'll need your money to fight.

I'll leave it for ESPN analysts and high school football coaches to discuss how someone with such limited skills can be said to be ready to compete with Mark Sanchez for the starting job. Yet it should be noted that in the fevered rush to anoint Tebow the next Joe Namath (is this one ever off the mark), we've put aside for the moment criticism of his windmill throwing motion, the wobbly spirals often uncorked off the wrong foot, and the watered down Broncos playbook.

Our focus here is how the news media thus far have looked past Tebow's bigotry in favor of incessant prattle about his marketing prowess, set against a distinct "innocents abroad" backdrop (insert your favorite thinly veiled Sodom and Gomorrah reference here). Before you grab the remote and the chips this fall, consider: Tebow believes that homosexuality is wrong and can be cured. He believes women should be submissive. His father is involved with an organization that works in the Philippines to convert Catholics to its intolerant brand of evangelical Christianity. An organization whose followers believe that not being circumcised is a one-way ticket to hell.

Stop the Lin-Sanity (I couldn't resist...)

Now that the hype about Knicks guard and newly minted star Jeremy Lin has died down a notch or two, it's worth thinking about how fast it built up in the first place.

Sports journalists, never ones to shy away from star-making and burnishing, wrote and spoke about Lin's "meteoric rise" to fame based on his scintillating, if a little reckless and erratic, performance during a recent stretch of games. He continues to play pretty well, even as Knicks fans shift their gaze to the resignation of their coach, Mike D'Antoni, a departure reportedly hastened by a discontented Carmelo Anthony, arguably the team's best player.

Lin's ascendancy caused me to wonder if the media haven't changed the conditions for a "meteoric rise?" Can you "come out of nowhere" faster than you used to? Certainly, the fact that sports news is available every millisecond of every day has something to do with it, as does our ongoing appetite for celebrities. But it sure does seem that we've started to apply the "star" label on someone abruptly, almost without thinking about it.

This is not to say Lin's isn't a compelling story - he's the first Asian-American player in the NBA to rise to prominence. He seems like a nice guy. He went to Harvard. For all I know, he can sing and dance too. And he likely deserves - if anyone actually deserves - the notoriety and its attendant perks.

But fitting him for the fame suit just seemed to take even less time than usual. Of course, this may mean that "flash in the pan" status will be conferred just as quickly (this is where we're are supposed to say, "I hope he saves his money").

But thanks to the media, it all happened so fast.

Rush and the Bounty

Rush Limbaugh deserves every last bit of scorn we can muster for his sexist, misogynist, bullying, nasty, reprehensible comments about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University law student who testified before Congress about the positive impact of President Obama's directive which mandates that companies must offer birth control as part of health insurance coverage.

Heck, he deserves all of that for practically every minute he spends on the air - our air, for you fans of the Communications Act of 1934 out there. On his nationally syndicated radio show last week, Rush called Fluke a "whore" and a "prostitute" who we, the taxpayers, were in effect paying to have sex. He urged Fluke to post videos of her sexual activity so Rush could see what we paying for and shared his complete lack of knowledge about how birth control actually works. I urge anyone who reads this and works at a radio station that carries Rush's show to hector your boss until he or she decides to drop the show. The same plea goes out to employees of Rush's advertisers.

And Gregg Williams, defensive coordinator for the St. Louis Rams (my favorite team, I regret to say) deserves a significant suspension for putting bounties on the heads/bodies of opposing players while he was employed by the 2010 Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints. His defensive players received tidy cash bonuses for, among other things, knocking an opponent out of a game ($1,500) and for causing an opponent to be taken from the field on a cart ($1,000), according to Sports Illustrated's Peter King.

Adding insult to intentional injury, players would roll their rewards over to increase the pot. In the 2010 NFC Championship Game, Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma purportedly offered $10,000 to the teammate who could deliver the knockout blow to then Vikings quarterback and serial retiree Brett Favre.

What really deserves our collective disgust is the overheated (and often manufactured) reaction to these incidents. Conservative stalwarts like George Will and Sen. John McCain have lashed out at Rush. Former players have lined up on sports talk radio and ESPN to criticize the Williams System and disavow involvement in similar antics when they were in the league. 

But before your final gasp of disbelief, ask yourself: are you really shocked at these transgressions? Shocked that highly paid athletes unleashing their macho in an extremely violent game at the direction of win-at-all cost coaches put bounties on the heads of opponents? Shocked that the NFL hadn't "noticed" the problem, much like Major League Baseball's leaders didn't "notice" rampant steroid use while Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were dragging the sport out of the abyss caused by the 1994 players strike?

Does anyone else fantasize about Captain Louis Renault strolling on to ESPN's SportsCenter set to say "I'm shocked, shocked to find that lucrative headhunting and hateful misogynist misinformed ranting are going on in here"?

Cheer Up Sleepy Jean

Since they burst on to the cultural scene in 1966, the Monkees have weathered considerable flack for being little more than a studio concoction. Their most enduring pejorative nickname is the "pre-fab four," a nod to the fact they were our version of the Beatles.

But in the nearly four decades since, we've become quite inured to the "fab" part. Thanks to MTV and shows like American Idol, we expect - nay, we demand - packaging. We will accept no pre-fab artists. On a side note, we no longer feel deceived and rush to the Attorney General's office when performers lip sync.

But Davy Jones, the talented Monkees front man who died February 29 at age 66, was packaged when packaged wasn't cool - or overwrought; when back stage behavior, to use a term coined by the sociologist Erving Goffman, hadn't yet been transformed into another aspect of performance to be judged harshly by the likes of Simon Cowell. When you kept private the behaviors engaged in to improve your image (In my human communication class, I cite this line from Bruce Springsteen's hit Dancin' in the Dark: "I check my look in the mirror/want to change my clothes, my hair, my face").

But more important for our journey, Davy Jones rightfully achieved his fame for being good - not great, not outstanding, but good. Jones was good enough, which is just fine. Critics of pop star Katy Perry and of the prevalence of Auto-tune may disagree, but it seems less likely these days that a solid singer whose greatest gift is the ability to connect with an audience will carve out a career as lengthy as Jones'.

Such is life under the tyranny of perfection, artificially attained or otherwise.

Jones didn't have to sing Daydream Believer with a perfect vibrato and with mock earnestness that suggested he was trying to vanquish Paul McCartney. He didn't feel compelled to sing as though he was trying to find notes with a compass. There was little urgency, little tension, in episodes of The Monkees. No "inside baseball," no vying for the attention of the back of The Voice judges. The song was enough.

No, Jones, Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith (the one in the wool hat), and Peter Tork just came out and entertained - and really well, I might add (I'm a longtime fan). And unlike today's Idols, they made the most of the room to grow as musicians. Today's pre-fab stars have to hit the scene fully realized. Guess there's not a lot of room for the music industry equivalent of the late bloomer.

Let's all raise a glass to Davy Jones, a wonderful entertainer and a devoted husband and father - and a reminder of the time when pre-fab still had its innocence.