THE Prophet Jonah was sent to Nineveh. St. Paul was sent to Athens, Macedonia, Rome. And now Tim Tebow has been sent to New York City...Babylon-upon-the-Hudson.
O ye of little faith. Did you think that the Lord God of Hosts, having raised Tebow up as a Gideon of the gridiron, would pass up the opportunity to put his faithful servant to the test? Did you think that the angelic screenwriters responsible for scripting last year’s succession of Tebow-related improbabilities had nodded off after the Broncos were dispatched in the A.F.C. playoffs? Did you think that the archons and demiurges who preside over America’s culture war would be content to let Tebow fade into obscurity — some red-state-friendly endorsement deals, a few 6-10 finishes, and then early retirement and a lifetime of under-the-radar charity work? ...
No, this was where the Tebow story was always destined to end up. Denver was his Galilee; New York will be the Roman Colosseum.
Did he really say that on the op-ed page of the New York Times? Yes, he did. I can only assume that the NYT is following the WaPo into "they'll print anything" territory.
After that, his column abandons 'totally over the top' for more standard stupidity:
Why is Tim Tebow such a fascinating and polarizing figure? Not just because he claims to be religious; that claim is commonplace among football stars and ordinary Americans alike. Rather, it’s because his conduct — kind, charitable, chaste, guileless — seems to actually vindicate his claim to be in possession of a life-altering truth.
Nothing discredits religion quite like the gap that often yawns between what believers profess and how they live. With Tebow, that gap seems so narrow as to be invisible....He fascinates, in part, because he behaves — at least in public, and at least for now — the way one would expect more Christians to behave if their faith were really true.
Tebow’s religion doesn’t just promise a path to personal transformation. It claims that every human life is actually a story with an Author, and that a genuinely Christian life should make that divine Authorship manifest.
Shorter Douthat: while practically all the people who get to define Christianity in our popular discourse are charlatans and mountebanks, hey looky here, I've found one who may not be! So that shows the whole thing is really true!
If we statisticians had a name for this, it would be something like "proof by outlier." The bulk of my data says X, but I've managed to find one data point that says Y instead - so my conclusion is Y. Because that's the conclusion I was going to come up with, no matter what the data said.
What a moron.
