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February 09, 2012 10:45 AM
Tebowing Comes To the Virginia Legislature
Oh, brother. With the end of football season, I thought Denver Broncos QB Tim Tebow might have a slight chance of reducing his massive over-exposure, and thereby reduce the number of Americans who are driven to irrational hatred at the very mention of his name.
Virginia Del. Robert Bell celebrated his bill passing the state House on Wednesday by taking a knee and Tebowing.
The legislation — dubbed the “Tebow bill” for the Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow — would allow the state’s homeschooled students the chance to play sports at their local high school like the NFL star did in Florida. Bell, a Republican, said he’s pleased the new nickname has brought the legislation more fans. “We’re happy with whatever help there is,” he said.
“The name became a shorthand, and now all the homeschool kids call it that,” he told POLITICO. “After we passed it, I did the Tebow on the floor.”
Now I understand the connection between this bill and Tebow’s autobiography, but I fear this practice will spread to every occasion where a conservative legislator somewhere thinks he or she has done the Lord’s Work. At that point, we may have to seek court injunctions to stop it.
ANOTHER NOTE TO THE HUMOR-IMPAIRED: The reference to “court injunctions” was a joke, as the careful reader might have deduced from the tone of the entire post.
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K in VA on February 09, 2012 10:52 AM:
Another one of those religiosity things that makes me thank god that I'm an atheist.
T2 on February 09, 2012 11:00 AM:
if a kid wants to play on the high school team, he should go to the high school. Not sitting at home listening to FOX News and calling it an education.
Danp on February 09, 2012 11:03 AM:
I like the idea of giving home schooled kids a chance to improve their socialization skills, but why limit it to sports? How about band and other after-school activities? I suspect what Bell did was far more about grandstanding than anything else.
Emile on February 09, 2012 11:07 AM:
"At that point, we may have to seek court injunctions to stop it."
No, that would turn them into heroes or martyrs fighting for religious freedoms from those nasty evil secularists. The way to deal with this is to have people of other religions also demonstrating their faith. So let Muslims face towards Mecca and touching their foreheads to the floor, Hindus doing aartis, Buddhists chanting their hymns. Perhaps even allowing scientologists to jump on couches. That will cause a freakout and expose these people as wanting to impose their religion rather than fighting for religious freedoms
Pollysi on February 09, 2012 11:09 AM:
How about letting them play if they come to school to take the same tests in the same subjects as their peers? If they are academically eligible they can play.
James on February 09, 2012 11:10 AM:
"Perhaps even allowing scientologists to jump on couches."
What am I missing?
R on February 09, 2012 11:12 AM:
@Danp, I agree with you on the socialization thing. But I bet Bell and his ilk also want to slash funding for public schools, and funding levels are computed at least in part based on enrollments. Chances are that home-schooled kid doesn't get counted for purposes of, say, state aid going to the school, money that pays for the facilities and the coaches and the refs...
Wadey on February 09, 2012 11:15 AM:
Dickie Bell is wasting time with this garbage instead of working on attracting businesses to the Commonwealth. What a moron. As a VA resident, its sad to watch our state quickly devolve into another Mississippi thanks to these GOP knuckleheads.
ShadeTail on February 09, 2012 11:17 AM:
"Tebowing". Is it just me, or does that sound like "teabagging"? Let's all remember how *that* phrase turned out for the right-wingers.
Rick A on February 09, 2012 11:20 AM:
@ James, look up "tom cruise on oprah jumping on couch" on YouTube
zandru on February 09, 2012 11:20 AM:
On Seeking Injunctions
I suspect this one will die a natural death from overexposure and public disgust soon enough. Most Xtians - the ones you never hear from - have a quiet revulsion to folks who shout out their self-centered "prayers" in the public square. Jesus of Nazareth even had some harsh words to say about this practice.
It will further make clear the disconnect between the "Christian Right" and "Christianity."
Barbara on February 09, 2012 11:20 AM:
As a Virginia resident with kids in public schools, let me explain why I am conflicted on this. First, Virginia does not have (at least not yet) any policy of giving people money to use on-line when they home school. On the other hand, sports and activities are one of the ways that teachers and students create a cohesive public school community that makes public school a lot more rewarding for both teachers and students. So long as the home schooled are a tiny minority, and an even tinier minority who actually would take a school up on this, I feel fairly neutral. In addition, part of me thinks that having the home schooled interact more with those students in public schools will counter some of the negative stereotypes that lead parents to think that home schooling is inevitably better. One of my kids became really friendly with a home schooled girl, and I like to think that is one reason why her family stopped home schooling her during high school. IOW, we should think a little bit more broadly about this issue without compromising the ability of public school students to derive the full benefit from the public school experience.
Peter C on February 09, 2012 11:23 AM:
We have a perfectly effective mechanism to stop sanctimonious self-aggrandizers from making silly disruptive displays of their purported piety; we can stop electing them! Personally, I'm sick of the Republican's perpertual need to establish their religion as the dominant cultural force in our country - I don't think culture wars belong in a government sphere and I find it tiresome and embarrasing. I'll yeild to them the victory in the contest to be the poster-boys of the new 'ugly American', but I won't cede them the right to plaster those posters in every public space here and embassy abroad. We tried that with the Bush Adminsitration with disaterous results.
sick-n-effn-tired. on February 09, 2012 11:25 AM:
I have home schoolers living next to me and I must say that they are some seriously disturbed people.
If I had kids I wouldn't let them go near that crew.
James on February 09, 2012 11:30 AM:
@Rick A,
Ah. Yes. That. Thanks. Yep, right up there with Tebowing.
RepublicanPointOfView on February 09, 2012 11:43 AM:
I look forward to legislation being passed which will allow for home schooled and on-line college students participate in sports at their local university.
SportsFanPointOfView on February 09, 2012 11:48 AM:
This is a great idea! Allowing home schooled students to participate in our important high school sports would help us resolve those pesky problems with our better athletes having trouble maintaining academic eligibility.
TCinLA on February 09, 2012 11:50 AM:
Screw the little homeschooled fundamentalist nitwits. They don't want to participate in the rest of the school, let them go play in the Police Athletic League.
Further proof we should have ethnically cleansed the South when we had the chance.
Sgt. Gym Bunny on February 09, 2012 11:53 AM:
What homeschool kids can't band together and form their own Home School Football League???
I don't begrudge this arrangement, but it puts 'Publicans in the unwittingly awkward position of conceding that those publicly funded, government parasite schools are good for something that the private-sphere job creators evidently aren't providing. Go figure...
mmm on February 09, 2012 11:54 AM:
I'm with Pollysi. Home schoolers should not be exempt from the eligibility requirements that the other kids must meet. Funny how home schoolers want the privileges, not the rules, of a public school.
Ten Bears on February 09, 2012 11:57 AM:
I - an Ardent Atheist and Mad Scientist - am homeschooling my grand-children, and will not allow them to be participant in anything associated with today's indoctrination system. Not even their stupid games.
Ever notice how eerily similar a football game is to Hitler's Nuremberg Rallies?
theAmericanist on February 09, 2012 12:08 PM:
Ed, the arrogance of "we may have to seek court injunctions to stop it" is exceeded only by your utterly clueless politics.
1) Folks, he was talking about a legislator who claimed to have spontaneously taken a knee after passing a bill, to ostentatiously pray in public.
2) You want to explain how a court has any legit business under the separation of powers telling an elected legislator they can't do that? He's not establishing a religion, he's making a fool of himself. If we start having courts regulating legislators doing THAT, there'll be no end to it.
3) If you didn't hate people of faith so much (yeah, yeah, I know... 'some of your best friends...'), if you weren't all about freedom FROM religion rather than freedom OF religion, you'd know the best answer to this (besides ridicule): Matthew 6:6.
DJ on February 09, 2012 12:22 PM:
Ed, the arrogance of "we may have to seek court injunctions to stop it" is exceeded only by your utterly clueless politics.
No, it's also exceeded by your inability to recognize tounge-in-cheek comments in writing.
Tebowing in public places, including the floors of legislatures? It will end when it becomes uncool to mimic someone who will be exposed over time as a mediocre one-dimensional NFL player.
June on February 09, 2012 12:29 PM:
I admit, I don't know anything about "Tebow" or what "Tebowing" is - mostly because I don't care. But I've already thoroughly tired of reading his name in seeming hundreds of headlines every day. And if the current crop of Republicans are crazy for him, I suspect he's probably someone I won't much care for.
creature on February 09, 2012 1:00 PM:
I see no reason for home-schooled kids to benefit from public school activities. Didn't home-schooling mean eschewing all the 'entanglements' of the evil-secular-public-school-indoctrination? The idea that they should form their own league (team?) and fund their own activities makes for a real committment on their part.
My ex-wife home-schooled our child (after we divorced), she complained that the majority of the materials available were religiously-oriented. She, as a pagan, really had to search for quality educational materials. Real science, real philosophy, real logic, itmes lacking in the quasi-religious curriculum.
I, also, thank god I'm an atheist.
exlibra on February 09, 2012 1:04 PM:
No, it's also exceeded by your inability to recognize tongue-in-cheek comments in writing. -- DJ, @12:22 PM (replying to theAmericanist)
How was The Great LOLlard supposed to have known it was a joke, when Ed didn't indicate it in any way that a Repub can understand? Ed, make sure that, in the future, there's "a peppering of LOLs in every post".
liam foote on February 09, 2012 1:17 PM:
The entire Tebow ruckus is little more than Fox, et al, seeing a devote Christian athlete who wears his religion on his sleeve and suggesting, "Aha ... the liberal, secular, left wing will hate this guy." I haven't seen any indication that Tim Tebow is hated by anyone, though he certainly was mocked by his opponents from Detroit, but this could have been simply a Christians vs Lions thing.
It seems remarkably similar to the famous "War on Christmas" also raised exclusively on Fox. It gives their anchors something to howl about and stir things up amongst viewers. The reaction of sensible people to all this should be bemusement, not rancor. The high school officials, for example, who suspended several guys for Tebowing in the hall, simply don't understand this and add fuel to this frivolous fire.
John in TX on February 09, 2012 1:35 PM:
The GOP only likes Tebow because he's yet another in a long line of massively irritating godbotherers who can't keep his religion to himself in public. I'm just waiting for the 80 foot high statue of him (on bended knee praying) to be constructed in front of some Baptist megachurch here in Texas. It's only a matter of time.
Sgt. Gym Bunny on February 09, 2012 2:08 PM:
Yeah, I hate how the far-right interprets Tebow-hating as lefty-librul anti-Christ furor.
I don't hate Tebow. Tim Tebow and his teabowing is more equivalent to Justin Bieber and his bowl-cut hairdo. I'm sure he's a swell guy, I just hate seeing his ass on the evening news every damn night.
MCA1 on February 09, 2012 3:16 PM:
I got a kick out of theAmericanist, the troll most boisterously and unjustifiably convinced of his own brilliance ever seen on this blog, laying out the evidence for us. Lighten up, Francis.
@Sgt. Gym Bunny - good point, and funny you mention the opportunity homeschooled kids have to form their own sports teams, as, in fact, there is just such a thing already in existence in Virginia. If that's not good enough or competitive enough for them, then they can still play in all the AAU and other non-school sponsored sports and leagues they want. With the sole exception of football, there's plenty of opportunity for high level competition and even college recruitment there. Heck, in a lot of sports in 2012, and all the individual sports, the high school team's not even where you get noticed anymore.
Ideally, kids would actually participate in the community of the public schools in a robust manner in order to be eligible to reap the benefits. What really annoys me most about this legislation is that it allows homeschooling parents to push for an a la carte approach. Sorry; you chose not to participate in the public schools. That means you don't participate in the public schools, on your own terms or otherwise.
What's next - homeschooled kids get to go to the prom, too? How about access to all the after school academic and arts programs, as well? Just everything other than the imposition of exposing their kids to the horrors of having multiple instructors, with different styles and life experiences, teaching them in an interactive environment surrounded by other students with different viewpoints, right?
MR Bill on February 09, 2012 4:31 PM:
I suppose it is banal to note that some leftist hippie or other said "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward."
Republican Christianity is about worshiping particular interpretations of the Bible while ignoring some of its plain teachings..