I’ve been reading a lot of critiques of the Newsroom on Monday mornings, mostly because I can’t afford HBO and it allows me to hate-watch vicariously. In case you actually have things to do on your Sunday nights, allow me to explain. The Newsroom is the latest Aaron Sorkin drama, after the likes of The West Wing and Sports Night. It’s a show set in 2010 about how great white men could have saved the news, a nostalgic and wistful sigh for an earlier time when broadcasts were in black-and-white and people were somehow better.

However, those of us who aren’t older white dudes kind of know that those days weren’t great for everyone. And a couple weeks ago, Cord Jefferson, writing for Gawker, slammed the show hardest of all:

“My father was born in the 1940s, the decade Sorkin says was the last time the United States was great. Yet despite being a big fan of Sorkin’s Sports Night, I don’t think my dad shares his affinity for America’s recent history. Though he doesn’t remember a lot of his early childhood, my dad does remember the first time his mother told him to be careful about how he spoke to white men, lest his tone should provoke them. He remembers reading about Emmett Till, a black boy who was just a bit older than him, who was mutilated and murdered in the South for getting “uppity” with a white woman. He remembers seeing photos of Till and noticing a resemblance—they could have been brothers, he thought.

An old straight white man saying he misses the days when things were simpler is tacitly saying that he misses the time when nobody could say or do anything but he and his golf buddies. And he’s right: Things move much more smoothly when you’re allowed to lock up or beat down whatever stands in your way. The real question is this: Is such simplicity “great”?

In honor of Cord’s greatness, I give you guys my two other favorite Newsroom critiques so far:

Emily Nussbaum (The New Yorker):

Naturally, McAvoy slices through crises by “speaking truth to stupid,” in McHale’s words. But he also seizes credit for “breaking stories”—like the political shenanigans of the Koch brothers—that were broken by actual journalists, all of them working in print or online.

And Sarah Nicole Prickett (The Globe and Mail), who Sorkin, quite rudely, shrugged off as a mindless “Internet Girl”:

I do not want us to stop believing in heroes; only in heroes who think, as Sorkin’s heroes think, they’re truth-raining gods.

Speaking of white male hero worship…

Church groups are now planning pilgrimages for their congregations to see NFL Jets star Tim Tebow at training camp. The evangelical darling has become an icon in Protestant religious circles, for his outspoken commitment to faith on the football field.

Let’s just hope the small city of Cortland, New York, where the Jets are currently training, is ready for the Tebowmania that will ensue.

And speaking of making the news better…

How do we tell good stories when top politicos refuse to speak without near-total message control?

It’s not just Harper’s Conservatives: top U.S .Democrat and Republican strategists have stopped casual interviews with media, now insisting on veto power for every quote, the New York Times reports.

“With a millisecond Twitter news cycle and an unforgiving, gaffe-obsessed media culture, politicians and their advisers are routinely demanding that reporters allow them final editing power over any published quotations,” writes reporter Jeremy Peters. “Quote approval is standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all midlevel aides in Chicago and at the White House — almost anyone other than spokesmen who are paid to be quoted. (And sometimes it applies even to them.)”

It’s worth noting that back in the day before they demanded quote approval, some strategists just wouldn’t talk to media at all. Now, journalists are finally getting the interviews they want—but only if they’re willing to massage the facts and sanitize their source.

Spooky.

Stills from Tim Tebow's Focus on the Family ad that aired during the Super Bowl.

In all the hoopla following the New Orleans Saints’ momentous victory over the Indianapolis Colts in last week’s Super Bowl, an important piece of the biggest day in North American sports seemed to disappear all-too-quickly from the collective consciousness. With the pervasive and nauseating hyperbole around the significance of the Saints’ win in Hurricane Katrina’s wake and the excitement over the start of the Olympics in Vancouver Friday night, the fact that CBS ran a 30-second, blatantly pro-life advertisement funded by Focus on the Family in the middle of the most-watched event in television history appeared completely lost on the sports-loving general public.

The controversial commercial involved Tim Tebow, the former Florida Gator quarterback, Heisman Trophy winner and staunch evangelical Christian, alongside his mother Pam, speaking out against abortion. Ostensibly, though, the ad is just a mother and son sharing their story. Pam stares into the camera and laments that little Timmy “almost didn’t make it into this world,” holding up a picture of her “miracle baby” with a football cradled between his legs. The bit ends with Tebow tackling his mother and the pair posing for a heartfelt hug as Focus on the Family’s website is splashed across the screen.

The spot seems relatively innocuous―until it’s taken in context. First, Focus on the Family is a frightening organization. According to People for the American Way, it’s “anti-choice, anti-gay and against sex education curricula that are not strictly abstinence-only.” And, if that’s not enough, its president is the ultra right-wing nut-job James Dobson, who infamously said, in speaking of Roe v. Wade, that “the biggest Holocaust in world history came out of the Supreme Court.” Also, when the details of the Tebows tale are taken into account, the ad’s content becomes unavoidably political. As the story goes, Pam became pregnant with her fifth child while on a missionary trip to the Philippines. She was gravely ill at the time and doctors warned that giving berth would likely kill her. But she ignored her physician’s advice, choosing instead to stay true to her pro-life beliefs and―voila!―an All-American football player was born. The real message is obvious: Have an abortion and kill the next great college quarterback!

But as odious and ignorant as that position is, that’s the price we gladly pay for free speech. Tebow is inserting himself into a conversation that goes beyond the Xs and Os of the playing field, something too few athletes do. Fair enough. Good for him. The real problems with the ad are how utterly hypocritical and irresponsible CBS was in airing it and the absolutely ridiculous conversation it produced in the sports pages of North American newspapers.

CBS has had a longstanding policy against airing so-called “advocacy ads” during the Super Bowl, even those that implicitly endorse one side of a public debate. Though Focus on the Family is quick to point out that there was no mention of either abortion or pro-life ideology in the ad, the tacit anti-abortion stance is unmistakable. The organization’s contention that the spot simply supports its “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life” tagline―whatever that means―is as laughable as it is insulting. Shelling out millions of dollars for a Super Bowl promo just to remind everybody that family is gosh darn great? Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

CBS has also repeatedly used the policy to reject overtures from other advocacy groups―including PETA, the United Church of Christ and MoveOn.org. According to EdgeofSports.com’s David Zirin, this year the network even turned away an ad from a gay online dating service called mancrunch.com because, presumably, its “implied endorsement” was just too strong. Given that the Super Bowl is the largest sports event in North America and a hugely influential cultural force, that CBS would contravene its own policy and give precious airtime to―so it seems―radically right-wing political institutions only is deeply troubling.

Unfortunately, this point was largely missed by the mainstream sports media, who were too busy complaining about the intrusion of politics on their beloved pasttime or slobbering all over Tebow for his supposedly courageous stand. Of course, Tebow is welcome to use the platform sport provides to express his convictions. Too often sport’s reach is wasted and its political implications ignored because athletes are expected to “shut up and play.” But to act as if Tebow is a social crusader and locate him in the tradition of athlete activists like Muhammad Ali, John Carlos and Tommy Smith, as some commentators did, is embarrassing. Tebow is now the face of a rich and powerful American political organziation; Ali was sentenced to a five-year prison term. Tebow has been roundly treated as a hero for publicizing his views;  Carlos and Smith were demonized by their country after raising their fists at the ’68 Olympics. The young quarterback gave up nothing for his beliefs; the other three men sacrificed everything.

Even putting ideology aside, it’s a shame that when a prime-time athlete like Tebow finally does stand up and speak out, the resultant conversation so egregiously misses the point.