Dear America,

"If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values -- that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control."

Martin Luther King

Life in America is chock full of contradictions these days.

One minute you hear a president beseech the value of living within our means, putting a freeze on spending, and reducing the national debt under the framework and appeal of the State of the Union Address -- the next day, or the day after that, we get the 2011 budget unveiled; 3.83TRILLION dollars, which creates a 1.6 TRILLION dollar deficit in one year, where 1/3 of the budget is just to cover the interest on the debt we already have, where it is projected to bring the National Debt to a mind-numbing 21TRILLION by 2020 (and doesn't even include trips to the moon).

How does that e-trade baby do it?
 "I wanna show you something...
it's my shocked face..huuhhh!"

G loves the e-baby -- and if I had money to invest, I would go to e-trade in a heart beat; what is there not to love about the creative brilliance combining the wisdom out of the mouth of babes with making grown-ups look like dumbsh*** all in good fun?

I little search around the web says that e-trade's upcoming Super Bowl ad is true to form as well and I can hardly wait.  Of course, the other ad I am dying to see is the one featuring Tim Tebow.

You had to know G feels the need to chime in on this one, so let us just table the 2011 Budget disconnections and contradictions for now and move right into one of the greatest modern world hypocrisy's on display these days -- the right to choose and the freedom of speech.

Granted, nobody has seen it yet.

Granted, it costs a lot of muckin funny to pay for thirty seconds of air time during the Super Bowl, at about 2.8 million dollars a pop, in order to have your say so to speak.

Granted, these ad spots  -- on CBS -- the network hosting the 75 million viewers to the one and only greatest sports spectacle of the year, having earned the reputation of showcasing the best and the brightest creative minds in sales pitch the world has ever seen -- can sell their ad time to whomever they please, as it is a free country and all.

Granted, the freedom to choose can be nothing more and nothing less than the freedom to choose -- and if that's your platform -- then wouldn't you respect one woman's right to choose life?

Again, WE HAVEN'T EVEN SEEN IT YET and already we have Gloria Allred blasting the organization paying for the ad, Focus on the Family, for exposing families sitting around the game on Sunday to some kind of "religious inspired, sugar-coated ad" preaching the gospel of pro-life. Oh, the shame of it all.

Gloria, Gloria, Gloria -- given your inherent ability to find a way into nearly every high profile case within the boundaries of Hollywood and the state of California, how do you find the time?  And aren't you, by trade, beholden to a certain level of jurisprudence and obligatory discretion?  And are we not in a country backed by law and inalienable rights, individually and collectively, and held to the standard we are innocent until proven guilty?

It's kind of like the President and Eric Holder prophesying the guilt and death of KSM before his trial has even started (not that he should have one in the first place), but I digress.

Gloria, you haven't even seen it yet --  the defense has yet to take the stand -- and you have not only remanded their audacity to speak their own truth, but have virtually called for the death sentence without even so much as their day in court, or 30-seconds of mind-space, as the case may be.  The irony really, as one renowned for speaking on behalf of victims everywhere, you take the side of the narrow minded -- the organizations espousing the woman's right to choose, that is unless you make the wrong choice.

Oh the contradiction. 

The thing is, you simply can't be an organization all about choice if advocating that not all choices are the same -- or worse, that some positions are down right deserving of disparaging remarks, blatant disrespect or an excuse for jumping in for another fifteen minutes of fame in front of the camera like our infamous Gloria "look at me on tv" Allred.  Of course, she does have back up:

"CBS cleared the way to subject nearly 100 million people to Focus on the Family’s extreme agenda by agreeing to air its new pro-life ad during the Super Bowl.


Focus on the Family has an unmistakable anti-choice, anti-birth-control, anti-sex-education, anti-gay agenda. If that wasn’t bad enough, its views on women are just plain insulting and dangerous. For example, its web site urges women facing an unintended pregnancy to seek “wise advice” because “the hormones and extreme emotions of pregnancy make reasonable decisions more difficult.”

We can’t just sit by while CBS lets Focus on the Family place a political ad during the Super Bowl, when millions of people are watching ads."

Said "NARAL Pro-choice America"-- which I refuse to automatically give you a link. 

The organization believes in your choice -- as long as it looks the same, tastes the same, acts the same, and speaks the same as theirs apparently.

How can one woman's story threaten a national organization of the size and stature of NARAL to the extent it has?  By the last two weeks of media frenzy, and by it's own hate-mongering propaganda currently multiplying on it's own website, NARAL's divisive nature to an already emotional family topic does not seem to lend a reasonable, supportive voice to all sides of the issue.

In order to be "pro-choice" do we have to lose all sense and sensibility to the act itself -- do we have to make the pro-life stance an act of evil in order to hold the absolute and right decision of a women's right to actually choose?  How can a pro-choice advocate say choosing life is considered some kind of obscene "extreme"?  That makes no sense.

A person's choice is a person's choice is a person's choice --

Now, to voice your choice, you can go to a link via the American Family Association.  It's really not about the opportunity to tout the right to choose -- to abort a child or not -- as much as the honor to raise a voice for the choice of free speech.  For as long as we remain a free country, we are all at choice to do with the information what we want -- that is, once we hear it -- as  huuuhhh, WE HAVEN'T EVEN SEEN IT YET!
 
It is interesting to note that in this same week a rather obscure and small study out of the University of Pennsylvania came to some rather monumental conclusions with regards to our influences upon impressionable young minds when it comes to sex education.  The clincher, teaching abstinence may actually do some good.
 
Basically it was taking a group of middle school students -- 662 to be exact.  They also happened to be all African-American students (a detail not widely advertised -- and should be noted, a group specifically targeted due to the overwhelming risks of early sexual activity). 
 
Dr. John Jemmott III took two groups -- one group was paid $20 bucks a week to attend a weekend class that taught the values of abstinence (by neither advocating the "not before marriage" position, or portraying sex in a negative way, or dismissing the effectiveness of condoms) -- the other group was taught via the normal channels of broad based sex education, including a more comprehensive curriculum teaching the use of birth control, the risks of std's, the importance of condoms, and the like.
 
The results showed that for the weekend abstinence class -- only 1/3 were found to be sexually active two years later;  the all-inclusive comprehensive study class, 42% active within the same time frame.
 
What we teach our children -- what they see in thirty seconds, more or less --  matters; real change we can believe in can be taught. 
 
And what is so bad about teaching our children -- and our fellow Americans sitting in front of a football game -- that being responsible with our bodies, with our decisions, with our choices IS the most important choice we make each and every day?  To promote what it takes to create responsible families is exactly where we need to be in the conversation.  To be respective of all moral obligations and values known to man, and to be brave enough to discuss the fullness of our choices and how our society reflects that, cannot be discounted or discouraged.  
 
Put good in, you get good out, as they say -- what can be so terrible about that?
 
I can only hope that the ad on Sunday simply sends a message of inspiration -- if it inspires one girl to choose life, even if that means ultimately putting the baby up for adoption, it will have done enough.  If it inspires one grown Woman to realize that a choice to life is of equal portion in the right to choose debate, it will have done enough.  If it causes all of us to realize the magnitude of our choices and be more cognizant of the ramifications, and certainly the joys, of parenthood, it will be enough.  If it only says, way to go Tebow -- way to stick up for your beliefs in an age where having a moral compass show seems downright unheard of, let alone appreciated or respected, it will be enough.  If it turns into one big Hallmark commercial exposing us to the sentimental journey of ONE woman's right to choose -- and choosing life -- it will be enough and may require a tissue.
 
After all the hype, if it only makes us stop and listen -- there between double dipping in the onion dip and reaching for another beer -- it will be enough.  
 
And it just may be the wisest 2.8 million dollars spent in thirty seconds the world has ever seen.
 
Make it a Good Day, G
 
Our choices begin long before conception -- smart women recognize this and want to be apart of the conversation to teach responsibility first, if only for ourselves and to our children.
 
But on the grander scale:
Respecting women, being sexually active, family planning, prevalence of sexuality in Hollywood, the business of sex and the belief that sex sells, the self-esteem of our girls, raising respectable boys, and overall morality -- are not simply talking points, they are attributes and characteristics which in turn create who we are as a nation... It better be okay to talk about it.