LatinaLista — If Homeland Security had had their way, in addition to watching Super Bowl commercials of men pulling out their chest hairs after eating a Snickers bar, we would have been subject to watching a recruitment ad for the U.S. Border Patrol.
That in itself may not have been bad but the content of the ad was disturbing enough for the NFL to throw a flag at this powerplay.
It seemed that the ad Homeland Security wanted to broadcast contained such phrases as
“the right men and women to help protect America’s southwest borders.” It listed the duties as preventing “the entry of terrorists and their weapons,” blocking “unlawful entry of undocumented aliens” and “stopping drug smuggling.”
The people in Washington, and obviously the ad agencies, don’t understand that though yes, undocumented immigrants cross the southern border and drug cartels are active, there exists and has always existed a positive and brotherly exchange between towns and cities along the southern border – it even reaches up into Middle America.
For example, though soccer is the “football” of Latin America, many of our southern neighbors have adopted US football teams into their hearts. In Monterrey, Mexico, there is estimated to be 1,500 season ticket holders for the Dallas Cowboys.
The NFL has said they didn’t want to air the commercials because they didn’t want to get entangled into the immigration debate. They even offered Homeland Security the opportunity to run a generic ad that didn’t mention the border specifically.
Homeland Security officials counter by saying that the NFL didn’t want to air it because they didn’t want to risk angering the rising fan base south of the border.
“The NFL missed a golden opportunity to reach countless patriotic citizens who want to answer the call to help prevent another terrorist attack on American soil,” said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents the agency’s nonsupervisory personnel.
Yet, who said (Al Queda) terrorists are coming in from our southern border?
If the ad only mentions the southern border, then the NFL was correct in rejecting it.
The Border Patrol is supposed to patrol all of our borders. Who knows how many “terrorists” or undocumented immigrants or drugs have passed over our northern border with Canada.
Any recruitment ad for the Border Patrol should be encompassing of all of this country’s borders. To focus only on the southern border with all the implications advertised in the ad, is, of course, offensive – especially when there are so many eyeballs glued to the small screen that night.
Nationally, the game was the second most-watched Super Bowl ever and the third most watched national television program in history.
It says something when this country’s businesses/organizations have to step in and exhibit the kind of restraint and diplomacy when it comes to communicating with our global neighbors that should be the priority conduct of any government administration who needs foreign cooperation to achieve success with their foreign policy.
For an organization that has created one of this country’s most violent sports, they showed remarkable sensitivity in their judgement for not airing the Border Patrol commercials – regardless of their motives.
