Charles P. Pierce on Tim Tebow and religion in the public square. →

Tim Tebow became “compelling” because he became a character in the great national dumbshow that is our culture war. And we should be very clear about one thing — he wasn’t dragooned into this. Nobody drafted him. He walked into this role with his eyes open. Before he ever took a snap in the NFL, he appeared in an anti-choice television ad with his mother that was sponsored by Focus on the Family, an influential anti-choice, anti-gay-rights organization founded by the Rev. James Dobson. He knew what he was doing. […]

Which made a lot of the chin-stroking about Tebow’s religion over the past weeks pretty much beside the point. It has been argued paradoxically that his faith is both vital to his success and off-limits to criticism. This is, of course, nonsense. He put his business in the street that way, and he did so by allying himself with the softer side of a movement that contains other organizations that the Southern Poverty Law Center, which knows about this stuff, recently designated as hate groups.

I still write a column for CultureMap about sports, American culture, and politics (go read it!) but I am trying to limit the number of them that are about Tim Tebow, even though he really is a beautifully-wrapped Christmas gift for someone who writes about how those three topics all go together.

So I’m glad that Charles P. Pierce, writing at Grantland, gets at some things that are very important in this discussion here. The notion of whether or not Tebow’s religion is “fair game” for his critics is a huge debate.

One of the prime talking points in the debate is this: “If there were a Muslim player openly displaying his religion on the field, would mocking his faith still be okay?” If you read sports media, some jackass poses his ultimate gotcha question and settles in for checkmate. We’re too PC for that!

It’s a fucking stupid point, though, because there are Muslim players in the NFL and they don’t do that. The fact is that Tebow performing his faith is an act of extreme privilege in America. “Imagine if [non-Muslim players] mockingly bowed toward Mecca, too, after tackling him for a loss or scoring a touchdown,” the Fox link up there posits, but there’s no opportunity for it, because when Muhammad Wilkerson scored a safety by sacking Luke McCown in the end zone when the Jets played the Jaguars, he didn’t perform an overt religious display.

If he had? Holy shit, guys. Can you imagine the freakout that would follow? Can you imagine the bullshit organizations with the word family in their name protesting the Jets organization like they did Lowe’s?

Muhammad Wilkerson may want to honor his god when he plays well, but if he were anywhere near as overt about it as Tebow is, it would be a huge controversy. It would not be the subject of some good-natured ribbing from players who most likely identify as Christian themselves (most at least offer lip service that direction). And Muslim players in the NFL aren’t stupid — they are aware that they don’t share Tebow’s privileges. (Here’s a quick editorial from idiot Debbie Schlussel about the “special treatment” that Vikings safety Hussein Abdullah got because he was excused for a day from training camp to attend a Ramadan celebration at the friggin’ White House.)

In short — there isn’t a Muslim player who performs his faith the way that Tebow does, at least partly because we do not live in a culture that accepts Muslims the way that we do Christians. the fact that Tebow is in a position to have his faith mocked is a result of how overwhelmingly privileged Christians in America are.

And I like Tebow. I like watching him play, anyway. He’s neat. That touchdown against the Patriots in the first quarter yesterday, where he uses his body as a battering ram to get into the end zone over a whole bunch of New England defenders? That was awesome.

But I also donated $10 for each of Tebow’s touchdowns to the Lilith Fund, an Austin non-profit that funds abortions for women who need them but can’t afford them. He has his privileges, and part of exercising them is that other people get to respond to them. That can be with criticism, mockery, or with support of causes that Tebow or his supporters oppose. Maybe next week I’ll donate to the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. This is what comes with being a political figure in America, and as Pierce points out so effectively, that’s a role that Tebow has embraced.