A fight you cannot win

Looks like some conservative and Christian sites are jumping up and down about a new Super Bowl ad featuring Neil Patrick Harris.  In the ad (which I've not found yet, and haven't seen since I don't usually watch CBS), apparently uses Harris - an outspoken homosexual - with eye black showing the game's date.  The eye makeup was made famous by Tim Tebow as a way of promoting the Gospel.  The outcry is that this is some deliberates slap at Tebow, and by extension, Christianity as a whole.

You know what?  It probably is.  It's unlikely that the management at CBS is unaware of Harris's open advocacy for gay rights and gay marriage.  It's also probable that they get the modern cultural reference that comes with using various words and numbers on eye black.  It isn't as if they've not heard of Tim Tebow, or don't really know why Tebow became a lightning rod of hatred following his own pro-life Super Bowl commercial.

But here's the thing.  This is a fight you can't win.  It falls under that slippery little category of 'plausible deniability.'  That was long a mainstay of the sex and drugs culture of the 70s and 80s, before Rap and Hip-Hop blew the lid off things and let a singers say whatever.  Back in the day, if you wanted references to sex, drugs, female body parts or whatever,  you had to use boat loads of innuendo and figurative language. Of course the punchline was that if some adult or parent became outraged at a line like 'honey dripping from her pot', the brave rock star or equally courageous teenage fan could just hold up their hands and say 'Hey, we're just talking about honey, you know, like Whinny the Pooh. What are you thinking about?"  Followed, of course, by adolescent snickering and giggling.

The point is, it was dishonest, and knowingly so.  But it was plausible deniability.   You couldn't prove that's what they meant, and millions of teens and rock stars were happy to go along with the sham.  Same here.  Already CBS defenders are saying, "Hey, who's to say that someone with eye black who happens to be a homosexual gay marriage advocate has anything to do with any message against Tebow or, by extension, Christianity?"  You just can't win. It could be true, but if it isn't, you could't prove it if you had to.  Best to let this one go.