“I’m neither pro-life nor pro-choice, but this is the best pro-life ad I’ve ever seen.” So said one NBC employee, after watching CatholicVote.org ‘s latest ad, ” Life: Imagine the Potential .” If you haven’t seen this forty-second film yet, by all means go watch it. As Brian Burch, founder of CatholicVote.org, said, “The ad reached the top ten on YouTube on Inauguration Day, and it was in the top twenty last week on YouTube. And it was front page on Washington Post Online on Friday, so I’m pretty certain the White House saw it.”
Motivated by the tremendous success, Burch began a movement to show the ad during the Super Bowl, making his way through the legal maze of NBC and, to his own amazement, raising the required funds in scarcely a week. Then, according to an announcement posted yesterday: “After several days of negotiations, an NBC representative in Chicago told CatholicVote.org late [Wednesday] that NBC and the NFL are not interested in advertisements involving ‘political candidates or issues.’”
Rejecting an ad that shows the potential of every human life . . . even, after being born into hardship and a broken home, to become president of the United States? As Burch commented, “There is nothing objectionable in this positive, life-affirming advertisement. We show a beautiful ultrasound, something NBC’s parent company GE has done for years. We congratulate Barack Obama on becoming the first African-American President. And we simply ask people to imagine the potential of each human life.”
One has to wonder if NBC and the NFL’s non-partisanship would have been so scrupulously upheld if different “issues” were in question. Still, Burch is undeterred, already considering airing the ad during the State of the Union address or the Academy Awards: “No matter what, it’s going to run and it’s going to run in a big way. It just may not be the Super Bowl. But that’s in God’s hands—we propose and He disposes.”
“The purpose of our new ad,” Burch reiterates, “is to spread a message of hope about the potential of every human life, including the life of Barack Obama.” It’s too bad that, for NBC and the NFL at least, some hopes are unworthy.
Via the National Catholic Register and FreeRepublic.com .
