I did not, of course, watch the Superbowl (or Superb Owl, as I now learn it is more properly called). I have, however, consumed the next-day coverage of the important part - THE ADS. Apparently Jesus made a huge ad buy (for the 2nd year in a row) which managed to outrage absolutely everybody from far right to far left and quite a few people in between. Well, maybe not the foot fetishists, but everybody else. So Of course I had to pull up YouTube and watch it. It's a series of beautifully rendered full color still shots of pairs of people who don't normally get along washing each others' feet over sappy background music. And in case you somehow missed the point, it closes with a huge text message across the screen: "JESUS DIDN'T TEACH HATE. HE WASHED FEET." 

Okay, a little reductive (not sure that feet was right up there with opposing hate as part of His ministry) but a wholesome message, right? At the very least, completely inoffensive? Wrong! Leftists are furious because it was "a manipulative attempt to co-opt progressive values" and was sponsored by a group with ties to Hobby Lobby. Conservative pastors are furious because "it's obviously part of a psyop to trick Christians into thinking Jesus is fine with sin & apostasy." Just regular old MAGA conservatives are furious because it's "woke," and they know that's bad! Other than a possible uptick in foot fetish activity, it's hard to see what harm could come of this commercial no matter which side you're on. At worst, people might briefly try to be nicer to folks on "the other side" of  some divide. Oh, but wait; if these images show a righteous person tricked into condoning SIN AND APOSTASY, what could that lead to? Let's check it out!

So I watched the slideshow again, trying to identify the sin represented in each image. Okay, what am I missing? Here's what looks like a middle-class family preparing to serve dinner to someone who might possibly be a homeless man; Dad is kneeling in front of him washing his feet. [very Biblical, actually. It was an act of hospitality, not a religious ritual]. A cheerleader pouring water on the feet of a punk-rock-chick in a high-school corridor [okay, a little odd, but she is using a plastic water bottle]. A Western landscape with an old cowboy washing the feet of an old Indian [I found this one particularly beautiful]. Similarly, another desert scene with oil-rigs in the background, and a middle-aged man (an oil worker?) washing the feet of a young Native American clean air protester. An All-American mother outside a suburban home, washing the feet of a neighbor in a head scarf. The only ones that seem to imply anything that I can identify as Old Testament Sin is the policeman and a woman who looks like a hooker and the one that everyone has mentioned outside an abortion clinic. Oh, and then there's the other one I found particularly beautiful: two old men, one black and one white, sitting on the porch of what looks like a 1930's rural diner both soaking their feet in the same galvanized iron tub! I suppose that one is pretty shocking to an old southern preacher. They are not just being nice to each other, they have their feet in the same water. 

Manipulative or not, these are beautiful pictures, looking more like paintings than photographs. So which are they? Looked it up. Oh my. AI-generated images!!!  Now that's something to worry about! Or maybe not. Apparently these perfect images backfired and annoyed everybody but me. So society is safe, and I feel faintly inspired to be a little nicer to people I don't like.