The Problem With Tim Tebow

If you were watching Saturday night's Patriots-Broncos playoff game, you probably noticed a commercial that CBS aired in the second quarter. A group of young children quoted bible passages. The spot was brought to us by the right wing evangelical group Focus on the Family.

Now if you're like me, you don't want to be bothered with politics and religion while watching football. Unfortunately that barrier has been shattered forever thanks to Tim Tebow.

Tebow, along with Sarah Palin, George W. Bush and numerous right wing republicans support the group which sponsors religious prayer in schools, funds pregnant woman who are considering abortion to to view live sonograms of their developing fetus, and according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, FOTF is one of the "major groups (which) help drive the religious right's anti-gay crusade."

Sports used to be a refuge from the division and hatred which permeates the media nowadays. Not anymore. This all began in 2010 when Tebow and his mother starred in a controversial pro-life commercial sponsored by FOTF during the Super Bowl aired by CBS. What made it so controversial is that CBS had already turned down ads from left-leaning organizations like PETA and MoveOn.org. There was no room for their message on Super Sunday, but just like last night CBS has no problem airing evangelical right wing messages.

Of course the reason the FOTF commercial was aired in the first place was because Tebow was playing in the game. The Tebowization of the NFL will continue in this year's Super Bowl as Randall Terry (Who is running as a conservative Democrat challenging President Obama) plans to air a gruesome commercial featuring aborted fetuses. The Right has found their savior in Tebow and the NFL, which is obviously willing to turn Denver Bronco games into Christian recruiting lovefests.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm sure that Tim Tebow is a nice guy. However when you make the decision to wear your religion on your sleeve, you are pushing your beliefs on people who do not want to hear or see them, especially during an NFL playoff game. I don't begrudge anyone their own personal beliefs. When you push them and use your position as an NFL player as a platform to foist them on the public, that's out of bounds. Tebow also energizes the evangelicals who see him as a vessel to push their political agenda. (Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann have already co-opted the Tebow mystique.)

Thanks to CBS and Tebow's followers, we are headed down a slippery slope. Would it be too much to ask that sports be declared a no-religion zone? Could we have at least three hours of relaxation during a game instead of interrupting it with evangelical in-your-face messaging? Apparently CBS and the NFL agree that progressive and left wing messages have no place in sports. It would be nice if they treated the right wing the same.

True Hollywood Story Number 8: In The Beginning...

The year was 1975. I had just graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and was the only member of my class who actually had a paying job in the field of media. I was working in sales for CBS at the Broadcast Center on 57th St. and 12th Ave.

On October 11th, "Saturday Night Live" premiered. Watching it in my apartment in Queens, I was transfixed. I had found my calling. This is what I wanted to do with my life.

The following Monday I went to the office at CBS and asked my future writing partner who had the desk across from mine if he had seen the show. He had. I said we could do that. He agreed and after work we stayed up all night writing about 200 pages of sketches off the tops of our heads.

Since we both lived in Queens at the time and I was exhausted from the all-night pressure of trying to be funny for money, naturally I decided to drive us both to work in my little Mercury Comet.

We didn't get much work done that morning and when lunch hour arrived, we bolted the CBS building and headed over to Rockefeller Center and NBC. We asked at the security guard where we could find "Saturday Night Live" and he told us the office number and floor (Security was a tad more lax than it is now). We headed up to the sixth floor and entered the offices of "SNL" where we were met by Lorne Michael's assistant sitting at a desk guarding his office door.

Adrenaline overflowing, I told her that we were really funny guys and should be writing for the show and we had stayed up all night writing these sketches. Looking bored, the assistant asked if we had an agent. "What's an agent?" we replied. "Well then, you have two choices" she answered. "You can keep the sketches or you can leave them here with me where I'll drop them in the garbage can after you leave." Not having much use for comedy sketches over at CBS sales, we told her to keep them and with that we took our leave of Rockefeller Center and our dream.

In no mood to go back to work at the Broadcast Center, we stopped off at the Cordial, a bar next to the Ed Sullivan Theater, which we frequented with regularity during our page corps days and got roaring drunk. I had taken my chance and come up empty. My life was now set. I'd stay at CBS for life, probably end up working in network sports, get married, move to the suburbs, have 2.3 kids and have a heart attack by the time I turned thirty.

After about two hours of feeling sorry for ourselves, we wobbled back to CBS. Unfortunately we had taken a very long lunch and were in no condition to return to work and get yelled at so naturally I decided that I should drive both of us back to Queens.

We got into my Comet and started the drive cross-town on 57th. Thankfully it was slow because I'm not a big drinker and was drunk and nauseous behind the wheel, the perfect blend to drive in midtown Manhattan traffic.

We got to the corner of 57th and Seventh Ave and stopped for a red light, one car off the intersection. Suddenly right in front of my car walks Dan Ackroyd, John Belushi and Garrett Morris. The three of them get into a cab next to me. Now remember, they weren't stars yet, the show had just aired once but we recognized them immediately. We both panicked and my partner yelled, "Follow that cab!" as the light changed green.

Now it's hard enough to follow one particular cab in heavy Manhattan traffic let alone doing it while drunk but I somehow managed, assuming that they were headed over to NBC. As the three got out of their cab at 30 Rock, my car screeched to a halt right behind them. I turned to my partner (Who was six foot four with a heavy beard) and told him if he was ever going to make an impression on anybody do it now.

As traffic cop started banging on my hood (You can't just stop your car on 5th Avenue and hang) my partner jumped out of the passenger seat and rushed the three as I started circling Rockefeller Center. He ran up to the actors and blurted out the only thing he could think of; "Stop! I'm not going to hurt you!" Belushi threw himself against the cab, Morris ran away and Ackroyd got ready to slug him. My partner dropped to his knees and began babbling that we were just up in your offices and we're really funny guys and they're going to throw our work in the garbage and we really want to write for the show and we need a break...

Ackroyd and Belushi said nothing as they hurriedly headed into the sanctuary of NBC. I finally caught up with my partner on my third lap around the block and asked him how it went. He was too drunk and distraught to give me a coherent answer, mumbling that he begged them to read our material. Well, that's the end of that I thought as we drove silently over the 59th St. Bridge and back to Queens. Hello CBS Sports. However...

That night my partner got a call from Dan Ackroyd. (Our phone numbers were on the sketches.) Yes the assistant had thrown them into the garbage where Ackroyd found them. A lot of them stink he told my partner, but some of them are okay. Why don't the two of us come up to the office and hang out for a while...

And that's how my career started. We hung around the offices and set of SNL that first year and watched history being made. Since we weren't getting paid, Ackroyd told us to go over to the National Lampoon magazine offices and use his name to get a meeting, which we did. Having the Lampoon credit got us an agent and we were off to the races.

Thank goodness for drinking. If we hadn't stopped at the Cordial Bar and get too wasted for work, I wouldn't have had a wonderful career.

Sometimes it pays to be lucky. Sometimes it pays to be opportunistic. Sometimes it pays to be drunk. And if you're all three, you're unstoppable.

True Hollywood Story Number Seven: New York Edition

I just read a survey listing the greatest actors and actresses of the 20th century. Coming in at number five was someone who tried to become my mother-in law. Let me explain:

In 1976 I was a page at CBS in New York. 1976 being the bicentennial of the United States, CBS decided to produce a series of one-minute American history pieces called "Bicentennial Minutes." A major celebrity would host each minute and one for each day of the year was produced. Being a page, I got to meet (or escort) a lot of huge names in show business, politics and sports as they taped their "Minute" at the Broadcast Center in Manhattan.

One day I was among the pages on duty when the head of the subsection of the division of the wing under which the page corps fell, entered the room and asked us to line up. After we did, she asked us if any of us were Bette Davis fans. Now I knew who Bette Davis was but had never seen a Bette Davis movie, so I didn't really qualify as a fan. All the other pages raised their hands except me.

We were informed that Ms. Davis was scheduled to arrive at the Center in an hour to tape her "Bicentennial Minutes" gig. Naturally since I was the only one who wasn't a fan, I was picked to escort her for the day. The other pages did nothing to mask their disappointment as I shrugged and headed downstairs to wait for Ms. Davis's limo to arrive.

Apparently there are stars and there are stars. CBS in New York had seen just about everybody who was anybody walk its halls without anyone giving it much thought. However this was different. There was a crowd (Including Walter Cronkite) waiting in the 524 lobby to get a glimpse of Bette Davis. To me she was just another celebrity but to the twenty or so waiting to see her she was a Goddess, or something like that.

The excitement built as the limo arrived and a frail looking woman stepped out of backseat, accompanied by her daughter. I went out to help her up the stairs into the building. Flashbulbs popped as we went inside the lobby where she was mobbed by her fans. After pushing through the crowd we reached the sanctuary of the elevator and my first minutes alone with the Hollywood legend.

Bette was a very nice woman. She introduced herself and her daughter (Who said not a word) to me and asked me my name. The rest of the afternoon she called me Stuart instead of "Page" or "Hey You" which was most of the others usually called us when they weren't ignoring us. In fact, Ms. Davis was being downright friendly toward me. As we approached her dressing room, I told her that she could order lunch through me. She ordered three salads.

I went down to the cafeteria and picked them up. As I waited online I was asked by all who had seen me in the lobby "what's she like?" and "Is this Bette Davis's food?" I guess I had underestimated the greatness of her celebrity as I brushed off the questions and hurried upstairs to deliver the food and then go on a break while she ate.

I knocked on her dressing room door and she told me to enter. She was sitting on a couch with her daughter waiting for me. I put the tray down on a table and turned to leave. "Where do you think you're going, Stuart?" she asked. I told her since she wasn't due in the studio for another two hours; I was going on a lunch break. "Nonsense, you're going to stay here with us and have lunch. That why I ordered you a salad." Her daughter smiled shyly at me and remained silent.

Well, what could I do? I stayed. Since I had never seen any of her movies and only knew of her as a superstar movie actress, I really didn't have anything in common with her to talk about. No mater. Ms. Davis started giving me the third degree about myself. Where did I grow up? Where did I go to school? Did I have any siblings? The entire conversation was about me and to be honest, it was pretty uncomfortable. The lunch was more like a job interview.

Now I had noticed that the entire time they were with me, the daughter had her eyes fixed on me while she held a magazine tightly in her hands, constantly twisting it. Something didn't seem right, but I kept a smile on my face and my mouth shut.

Ms. Davis then started telling me how much I had in common with her daughter, who was sitting with us, still not saying a word and twisting the magazine. It was becoming obvious that there was something wrong with her. Although she was my age, she seemed to act like a pre-teen. Suddenly it dawned on me what was happening. Bette Davis was trying to fix me up with her. Her daughter remained silent as the grilling continued. Thankfully a production assistant finally knocked on the door telling us it was time for make-up.

We entered studio 41, the largest soundstage in the building and the crew erupted in applause. Ms. Davis politely acknowledged it and whispered to me what a pain it was to be so revered wherever she went. I walked them over to their director's chairs and Bette said loud enough for everyone to hear "Now Stuart, sit here next to my daughter and you two get to know each other."

All eyes were on me as I sat down. I knew most of the crew and most of them "ooohed" and laughed as I turned bright red. I tried to make small talk with her daughter but all she did was smile at me, staying silent. Finally after about twenty minutes she said her first and only words to me: "You know my mother is a very famous actress." "I know" is smiled uncomfortably as the boom man made the universal "finger in the hole" gesture, laughing silently while Ms. Davis taped her minute.

She finally finished and received another round of applause from the crew and the fifty or so onlookers who had entered the studio to catch a glimpse of the legend. As we walked back to her dressing room, Ms. Davis asked how the two of us had gotten along. She didn't ask her daughter but asked me. Being the polite guy that I am, I said that things went fine. Bette was obviously delighted. "That's wonderful! We're going to be seeing a lot more of you soon, Stuart!" "Huh?" I muttered. The she took out a notepad and asked me for my phone number. Again I smiled politely and gave her a number that I made up on the spot, which she wrote down. I felt like a jerk.

The three of us entered the elevator for the trip down to the lobby. Bette turned to her daughter and asked "Don't you have a present for Stuart?" I smiled nervously and said I didn't really need a present but Ms. Davis persisted. Finally (and just as the elevator doors to the lobby opened) her daughter handed me the magazine that she had been clutching the entire time. As everyone in the mobbed lobby strained to see us, I took the magazine and unraveled it. It was a tattered copy of the old "Sport" magazine. I smiled professionally and thanked her and then the three of us pushed our way through the lobby.

However before we exited, Bette Davis turned to me and said in a loud booming voice "Now don't forget Stuart. We'll be calling you!" There were audible gasps and murmurs as I led them down the stairs to their limo. I waved goodbye and turned to re-enter the lobby. Everybody (Including Walter Cronkite) wanted to know what it was like to spend the day with Bette Davis. To be honest, I was just too wierded out to give a coherent answer. A member of the art department who saw the magazine handoff asked I he could have it. I said sure and handed it to him. When he unfurled it and saw it as a copy of Sport, he didn't know what to think. I shrugged and headed back to the sanctuary of the page corps room.

That night I called my parents to tell them the story. My mother was a huge Bette Davis fan and told me that her daughter did indeed suffered from some brain damage. I suddenly felt guilty that I had given her the wrong number, that she was only looking for someone to befriend her daughter. I never heard from them again. However everyone who was in studio 41 that afternoon never let me forget what had happened. I became a legend of sorts at the Broadcast Center.

I finally got to see a Bette Davis movie on television. Obviously she was a great actress, but the movie was not exactly to my taste. I did get a laugh when singer Kim Carnes came out with her song a few years later "Bette Davis Eyes." I really hadn't noticed her eyes since she wore sunglasses most of the time I was with her.

I'm glad I wasn't a fan because if I were, I certainly wouldn't have been picked to spend an afternoon with a legend. And to be honest... I'm glad I did.

How I Got Into Politics

I have a long history in Presidential politics. When I was a kid, I was sitting in the back seat of the family car while my Dad drove home from Manhattan to Long Island. Not too much traffic because it was a Saturday. Suddenly my Dad said, "Look out the window! It's President Eisenhower!" Now this was after Eisenhower had left office but he was still a President although at my age at the time I had no conception of what a President was.

My Dad pulled along side a black limo and I looked out the window. Yep, there was Ike. He looked at me, smiled and waved. Seizing the moment, I quickly ducked down out of sight, frightened because a stranger was waving at me. My Dad told me to stop acting like a jerk, get up and wave back. I got up slowly and peered thru the window. Ike was still looking for me. He laughed and waved as I appeared and I freaked out and ducked down again. Finally I got up enough nerve to sit up, look out the window and wave. He laughed, waved back and then his limo sped off.

A few years later my parents took me to a rally in Atlantic Beach to see the Democratic candidate for the Senate, Robert Kennedy. There was a huge crowd as Kennedy stood on a flatbed truck and made a speech. What I remember most was not what he said because I was too young to understand, but his long hair. He looked like one of the Beatles. Plus he was JFK's brother. The crowd was in awe. I did manage to take a few pictures with my Kodak Brownie camera. I still have them and was glad I got the chance to be in his presence. A true highlight of my life.

I was on vacation from college, staying home with my family in Long Island during the Gerald Ford / Jimmy Carter campaign. The election was days away and an announcement in Newsday said that Ford would hold his final campaign rally on Long Island at the Nassau Coliseum. Tickets could be obtained at local Republican campaign headquarters.

No way I'm going to pass this up. I went in to the local Republican storefront, which was enemy territory to me and asked for tickets to the rally. I have to admit, I was nervous, least they find out that I had spent time licking envelopes for Carter. I meekly asked for tickets to the rally, thinking I'd have to pass some kind of loyalty test in order to get them. All my sweating and stress was for naught as the person at the front desk didn't even look up and handed me a ticket. Great, I'm in.

My plan was simple, to sit as far back in the upper deck as possible and watch the whole spectacle of a presidential campaign unfold in front of me. I headed to the Nassau Coliseum wearing what I always wear, a sweatshirt and jeans. I went to one of the main gates and handed in my ticket.

Suddenly the ticket taker told me to stop. Damn! I got busted as a Democrat! Or so I thought. The guy told me I couldn't come in this entrance. I have to go down the tunnel underneath the Coliseum. Why? I asked. He shrugged and pointed me towards the tunnel. So I strolled down the ramp into the bowels of the arena.

Suddenly a kid with a snarl on his face and a straw "Ford for President" hat on his head grabbed me and demanded to know where my jacket and tie were. I looked around and saw that I was surrounded by a hoard of young Republicans all dressed to the nines wearing straw boaters and holding up campaign signs. I started to answer the thug that I was just here for the rally when he interrupted and told me I'm lucky a lot of their people didn't show up. He told me to grab a hat and a sign and get in line with the others.

I did what I was told, although everyone else looked at me like I had cooties because I was wearing a sweatshirt. Suddenly one of the organizers starting yelling at us through a bullhorn. "When you walk onstage, hold your signs high and keep smiling. Do not stop smiling! And no talking!

The next thing I knew, we were ushered up a ramp and onto the stage where Ford was going to speak. Amazing! I was now and official member of "Youth For Ford." All I had wanted to do was sit upstairs and watch and now I was onstage! I smiled brightly with the others in front of a crowd of about ten thousand. Suddenly the announcement was made that President Ford had arrived. The noise was deafening. A band struck up "Hail To The Chief"; the crowd went wild as Ford with his wife Betty entered the stage.

Ford started working the line of Young Republicans, shaking hands and pointing at the signs. When he got to me, his smile faded as he looked at my sweatshirt and jeans. His eyes said "What's wrong with you? Don't you know how to dress for a President?" but he shook my hand and continued down the line. Although I wasn't going to vote for him, I was pretty damn impressed being in the eye of presidential politics.

I was hooked. Although I didn't go into politics, I went into show biz. There's really no difference except the women are much prettier and you can wear a sweatshirt and jeans to work. I was finally in my element.

The Next Great TV Drama

There is a great new show that premiered on Starz last week. Kelsey Grammer plays the Mayor of Chicago in the new series "Boss." Not since "The West Wing" have I seen a better portrayal of politics on the small screen. It's an excellent show and well worth your time.

The reviews were mostly positive, some glowing. However in this age of instant analysis, the comments following the reviews were curious to say the least. A large portion of the comments had to do with Grammer's own political beliefs (He's a Conservative) as opposed to the quality of the show itself.

A lot of the readers automatically assumed that because Grammer was the star and the show was about a fictional mayor, it was a right wing hit job. Others speculated that the reason the show was about the Mayor of Chicago was to somehow smear President Obama. Nonsense.

The show is about politics and power. The political party is never identified because the plot and actions can apply to either side of the political spectrum. Why Chicago? Well, my guess is when you want to do a series about someone who rules a major city with an iron fist you usually think of Chicago first, not Salt Lake City.

As for Grammer's participation, he's the star because he's an excellent actor. (He is also one of the producers of the series) This just in: There are a lot of conservatives working in the entertainment industry and as with liberals, their political beliefs are not brought to the sets or influence the product. In fact Grammer recently stared on Broadway in "La Cage aux Folles" the musical of which the movie "The Birdcage" was based. Not exactly playing to his base.

If you can't separate political beliefs from the opposing side's acting, writing or directing ability then you're missing out on a lot of great entertainment. If you can only see the finished product through the political prism then it's your loss.

"Boss" airs Fridays at 10pm on Starz movie network. In my opinion it's the next great political drama. It would be a pity if your prejudices caused you to miss it.