He Gets Us

If you were one of the many viewers of the Super Bowl playing a drinking game to take a shot every time Taylor Swift was shown, then you probably got hammered depending on your alcohol of choice. If you were ONLY drinking each time she was shown and your shot was one of those weak green tea shots (a local bartender here gives them away), then you probably got pretty buzzed. If you were shooting tequila, then you probably woke up in your neighbor’s doghouse with a tramp stamp stating “juicy.” I hate when that happens.

Taylor was shown 11 times during the game so 11 tequila shots may have also sent you to the emergency room, but she was only shown for 55 seconds during the game. We’re not counting after the game when she was shown for a prolonged period making out with Travis Kelce. But maybe next year’s drinking game should be for each time a religious commercial is played.

There was a commercial for Hallow, an app for a Catholic group that featured Mark Wahlberg. Man, that guy’s in everything. There was an ad for the creepy Scientologist cult who will now be watching me (Tom Cruise sucks). And there was an ad for He Gets Us. It was the He Gets Us commercials that have garnered controversy, even more so than the Dunkin’ commercial with Ben Affleck rapping. That was weird.

The He Gets Us commercials were about loving your neighbors, even across ideological divides. Multiple scenes showed people of different races, classes, and genders having their feet washed. One scene showed a woman getting her feet washed outside a Planned Parenthood clinic. Republicans expressed outrage at the “wokeness” of the ads. How dare they tell people to love and accept people they should hate.

A spokesperson for the campaign said, “Our goal is to really show that Jesus loved and cared for anyone and everyone.” The “He” in the commercials is Jesus and washing feet is a sign of acceptance and humility.

What’s weird is that the group behind the ads is Come Near, which is new to the campaign. The campaign has been around for a few years and also placed two commercials in last year’s Super Bowl. Last year, the campaign was a subsidiary of the Servant Foundation, which has also donated millions to a Christian legal group called the Alliance Defending Freedom. We already know that anytime a conservative group uses the word “freedom,” they mean the opposite, like when MAGAts use “patriot,” what they really mean is they want a tramp stamp stating “I love Putin.”

Alliance Defending Freedom has been involved in many fights to suppress LGBTQ rights in state legislatures and kill non-discrimination legislation in the Supreme Court, where one of the members has a tramp stamp stating, “Property of Harlan Crow.” One of the big funders of this is the co-founder of Hobby Lobby, David Green (who has a tramp stamp stating, “This is an off-ramp only”). His eldest son (who has a tramp stamp stating, “I love Mike Pence”) is on the board of Come Near. The ADF has argued before courts that Christianity is a license to discriminate. They’re defending their freedom to kill other people’s freedom, such as the right to marry and to get an abortion. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies Alliance Defending Freedom as a hate group.

So why are hate groups and bigots spending $20 million to run “woke” commercials during the Super Bowl? You don’t see commercials for Chick-fil-A during Will & Grace. I think it’s a rope-a-dope.

The commercials have made references to “cancel culture,” which is a Republican narrative. We think the commercials are saying, “Don’t cancel the people Jesus loves, like LGBTQ people and women seeking abortion,” but I expect them to turn around and state, “Don’t cancel our hate.” Their hate is freedom and your love is discrimination upon their hate.

Am I being a conspiracy theorist? I don’t think so because these Jesus commercials are funded by hate groups.

What would Jesus do? He probably wouldn’t spend $20 million of hate money on Super Bowl commercials. He gets you? Yeah, I don’t think so. He can turn water into wine but he’s probably not going to cure that tequila-induced “juicy” tramp stamp.

Music note: I listened to The Vaselines.

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