This… whatever the fuck this thing is supposed to be has been causing rather a stir since it premiered at some sporting event… Superbowel? Is that the name? Something like that. Anyway, the real attraction of Superbowl is the musical interlude and the ads that debut at the event cos who gives a shit about the actual game, and this was… well, this certainly was. This is not the first time He Gets Us has played at Superbowl, but I think the grotesqueness of this year’s video has made it stand out; I actually watched the thing in an incognito window cos my Youtube recommendations are bad enough without this thing polluting them further.
So what’s the deal?
Green has elaborated on the message behind the commercials in the past, telling “The Lifestyle Podcast” in 2023 that he want to change the perception that Christians are “beginning to be known as haters”
“We are people that have the very, very best love story ever written, and we need to tell that love story,” Green explained.
“He Gets Us” ads are intended to appeal to viewers who don’t consider themselves religious or at least aren’t heavily interested in religion. The commercials intend to modernize Jesus and his message by connecting him to current world events such as racial injustice and immigration.
“We hope to remind everyone, including ourselves, that Jesus’ teachings are a warm embrace, not a cold shoulder,” the ad campaign’s website says.
This Green fellow is David Green, co-founder of Hobby Lobby, an arts & crafts company run by super-conservative Christians who run the business on “Biblical” lines, including refusing to let one of their own employees, a transgender woman, use the women’s bathroom at her place of work (leading to a legal battle that lasted over a decade which they eventually lost), denying their employees contraception, and more. If Green is concerned about Christians being perceived as haters, maybe he could, you know, not contribute to that perception.
Now, He Gets Us is a separate entity from Hobby Lobby, but not completely unconnected; it was operated by something called the Servant Foundation, which in turn is/was part of the far-right Christian legal org Alliance Defending Freedom, which is/was itself at least part-funded by something called the National Christian Foundation, which is/was in turn partly funded by something called the Illuminations Foundation that just so happened to have David Green’s son on its board. And, somewhat more directly, Green junior is also part of Come Near, the organisation that is now operating He Gets Us.
It is, accordingly, rather strange, n’est-ce pas, that such dreadful individuals should be putting so much money into this campaign that’s all about improving Jesus’ public image; and they need to have plenty of money too cos Superbowl ad slots don’t come cheap, something like seven million dollars for 30 seconds… which is why it’s odd that the video looks like it cost about seven cents to make, with these visual gibberish AI pictures strung together in a probably free video editor and synced up to a fairly bad cover of “Never Tear Us Apart” (hope INXS are satisfied with the paycheque). It’s… as dreadful as the people funding it, if aesthetically rather than politically. Mind you, the real objection to the whole thing is the fact that the campaign has a hundred million dollars behind it and this is what they’re spending it on… as opposed to, you know, actually doing good things for the poor, the have-nots, the homeless, etc. Things that could actually REALLY improve Christianity’s image.
Of course, there had to be someone attacking it from the opposite direction (via the Puzzle in a Thunderstorm FB group):
Now, though I haven’t read the entire Bible, I have read all of the New Testament more than once, and if there’s one thing I don’t recall it ever specifically mentioning, it’s abortion clinics. Consequently, I would not use the Bible as evidence for any position I might take regarding what Jesus would or would not do outside of one.
Oh, and for those interested in the actual game, Tay Tay’s team won. Which means the MAGAtrons going off about Swift being a Democrat psyop or something will be going into hyperdrive as a result.
Book #6 for 2024. (Bit of a turnaround from Tarzan?) I’ve always been intrigued by the ways in which occult thought and politics have intertwined over the centuries, and this give a reasonably good if brief overview of how medieval millenarian and heretic movements developed through the Renaissance, eventually blossoming into Freemasonry, and the book looks at how Weishaupt’s Illuminati took that into a political and revolutionary direction and inspired umpteen other groups in the nineteenth century to follow the Masonic pattern and use Masonry to further themselves. Theosophy was apparently big among anarchists in the later 1800s. I was kind of amused to see the famous A in a circle logo actually first appeared as a compass and level in the shape of a letter A, and to see that such figure as Proudhon and Bakunin were actual Masons (the latter espousing a Spinoza-esque sort of pantheism).
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