Religions without Super Bowl ads
Jesus didn’t pay for these messages
Jeffrey Denny
“The comedy of liberals hating Super Bowl’s ‘Jesus’ ads,” sneers a Fox News headline.
The “Jesus: He Gets Us” ads surely did rile my fellow lefties.
“Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez huffed.
The ad also irked conservatives as being “woke” because it depicted people respecting people who were different from them.
I had a different, maybe naïve take: It was an important message for militant right-wing Christians to hear and heed, that loving Trump and the hate and division he spews and spreads betrays their Jesus not unlike Judas did.
Trump certainly would never wash the feet of the poor, sick, downtrodden, marginalized, people of color, LGBTQ+ or — heaven forefend — immigrants. Or even the barking dogs of his MAGA rallygoers for heiling him into power. Trump expects everyone to kneel before him at his golden throne to metaphorically wash his feet.
Where’s the picture of Jesus washing Trump’s feet that will confuse or maybe cheer his most devilish Christian MAGAs?
And what about the non-Christian religions?
Where are the Super Bowl ads for Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and other officially recognized, organized faiths followed by millions around the world?
While we’re at it, why not represent the countless unofficially recognized, unorganized religions that still give millions a source of comfort, guidance, belief and behavior? To name a few:
Footbathism
You pray for complete strangers to wash your disgusting feet and maybe massage them a bit with a salt scrub because it’s healthy for mind and body and you can’t afford spa treatments.
Since that’s not happening, you religiously soak every night in your HoMedics Bubble Mate Foot Spa, Toe Touch Controlled Foot Bath with Invigorating Bubbles and Splash Proof, Raised Massage Nodes and Removable Pumice Stone.
Noneism
Are you among the growing number of Americans who describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” when asked by Pew Research about your religious identity? Then existential angst may be right for you. Try Sartrezor® for being and nothingness.
Seinfeldism
What’s the deal with millions of followers still devoted to a sitcom that ended 25 years ago? And still saying yadda yadda yadda, no soup for you, that’s gold, Jerry? Is Seinfeld a god? Or just a Latter Day Saint of comedy club open-mike night losers with material that doesn’t kill? Will you tell me people?!?!
Curbism
Sorry, final season. Jesus rose again but Larry David says, uh, no thanks. Go ahead with the weeping, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. To quote Our One True Lord and Savior (who by the way is still Jewish), “prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay good.”
Cubism
You challenge traditional religious art with its single-viewpoint perspective and stress abstract structure at the expense of other pictorial elements, especially by displaying several aspects of the same object simultaneously and by fragmenting the form of depicted objects.
Like witnesses to Jehovah, you’re inspired to spread to the word to cultural infidels who have no earthly clue what you’re talking about and pray you would take that insane crap somewhere else.
Pickling
No, we’re not talking about the court game that’s taking the nation by Sturmabteilung and delights snooty tennis players when lifelong couch potatoes get out there and twist, turn and lunge at a plastic ball in a pathetic need for meaningless victory and further enrichment of orthopedists.
We’re talking about cucumber pedophiles who religiously brine and sell cuke babies and children at farmer’s markets as locavore artisan cornichons and kosher petite dills.
Veganism
If looking skeletally amazing like David Byrne in his big suit while dying inside from protein deficiency because you care deeply about animals, the planet, and shaming inferior humans, then try denying the basic pleasure of dining enjoyably.
You won’t make a bit of difference but you’ll look and feel terrible. Aren’t self-sacrifice and martyrdom central to most religions? Wasn’t Jesus a vegan? Sure looks like He was.
Bikeism
Like the utmost religiously pious, you believe that pain and suffering are the consequences of sin and necessary to prove one worthy of salvation.
You don’t mean you. You mean the stupid, fat and typically poorer and less white and privileged climate-destroying drivers who are startled by your God-given right of way as they try to avoid hitting you as you blithely slalom through traffic on your $9,000 carbon-fiber Cervelo.
Gunism
Sorry, can’t even.
Exquinoxism
Devotees are ripped like Jesus but suffer more from too much money and ego to exercise at normie gyms with the same machines and weights.
Extremism
Do you feel a sense of victimhood, grievance, resentment and injustice against you, even though you’re the overwhelming majority? That your personal, group and national identity, even your masculinity, is under attack? And elite, shadowy, evil liberal forces control government, society and culture and keep you down?
Help is on the way.
If you believe in the rule of God over the rule of law … if you want a strong man and regime chosen by God to rule the country with an iron fist and punish enemies against the state … if you want to take the country back to traditional times when women knew their place and discrimination was legal … but you don’t care for Talibanism, then try Trumpism. (Side effects may include loss of freedom.)
Beerism
Oh, wait — this religion is well represented in Super Bowl ads.
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
