A man had a heart attack on a flight, and one man heroically leapt into action and is being praised in all of the news stories now. That man was Tim Tebow, HERO.
What did he do that was so helpful? He prayed. He organized a group of people to pray for the sick man, heroically.
According to people who were there, flight attendants and passengers tried to help: they did chest compressions. They tried to help the man breathe. They started an IV line. These people are not named. The True HERO was Tim Tebow, who is a famous Christian, and who publicly prayed for the man.
The crew on the plane apparently responded with commendably swift action to help the unconscious man, and did merely material things, like chest compressions, starting an IV, helping breathe life into this man
, but then Tim Tebow, HERO, strode up the aisle like a boss and prayed.
I observed a guy walking down the aisle. That guy was Tim Tebow. He met with the family as they cried on his shoulder! I watched Tim pray with the entire section of the plane for this man. He made a stand for God in a difficult situation.
Fuck yeah! Because God was in such a difficult spot here that he needed a cheerleader. And this is the big news, that a pious man stood and did nothing but mumble at an invisible man to come fix a problem. We should all be glad that someone was there to make a stand for a god.
Unfortunately, the sick man died.
The only appropriate thing to do now, of course, is to blame Tim Tebow, FAILURE. He obviously did not pray hard enough. After all, if he was notable enough to get all the attention and credit for doing nothing, he’s notable enough to get all the blame for doing nothing.
Do nothing and be a hero. Try to do something and be ignored.
That’s today’s lesson on life kids!
Nice. Real effing nice.
The prayer concentration was fine. He just left out the thoughts. Every practitioner of the faith-based healing arts knows that the current treatment guidelines are prayers co-administered with thoughts since the two have synergistic effects.
So, that omniscient god thing in the sky was distracted and the victim had a coronary when gawd wasn’t watchin? Tebow’s prayers alerted Gawd to his inattention and got him to fix his oversight?
/sarcasm
It disgusts me how prayers get far more credit for healing than the actual procedures performed by medical services. Why do doctors and nurses and EMTs get so little credit for their services?
The news story must have been written by Tebow’s publicist. (at least ghost written)
still disgusted.
I’ve been there. My recovery from my TBI was often attributed to prayers some said for me; with no appreciation for the medical people involved (nor the ability of my own body to recover).
yuck
I’m afraid my first thought was “at least he kept the family busy while the people who could do something did it”. In other words, I’m not sure he didn’t provide some useful intervention…though not the one he thought he was providing and not nearly as useful as he’d like to claim.
Does the power of prayer fall off exponentially the further the prayer gets from the victim, like the gravitational attraction of two bodies? Otherwise, what did Tebow hope to accomplish by approaching the victim, publicly praying and drawing attention to himself, rather than staying in his seat and praying in anonymity.
Sympathies to the family of the victim and to those who actually tried to help the person and a hearty fuck-off to professional christian and total dick, Tebow.
Tebow did seem to have helped the family after they deplaned and he didn’t crow about this himself (yet), so good on him for that. But why did he have to insert his religious beliefs into their lives at that critical moment? I wonder if he asked them if they minded him praying or just did it on his own? I really wish Christians would realize that not everyone shares their beliefs and may not like having them thrust upon them.
one small consolation could be that a prayer leader could prevent amateurs from interfering with trained providers addressing the issue. One way to keep meddlers from interfering. I doubt that was the case in this story.
Still, to highlight prayer as the most significant item in this story is still disgusting.
AFAICR, the most credible scientific study of the effect of prayer on medical outcomes for heart patients suggests that it makes things slightly worse. Granted, that’s in cases where the patient was aware that they were being prayed for, which may not have been the case here. But an alternative conclusion is that PRAYER KILLS. See, Tim Tebow didn’t fail: he succeeded in KILLING that poor man.
The woo-woo dancing worked just fine, the problem is the magic sky faeries’s temporal and spacial aim is so bad the Miracle Healing Sparkles™ missed the patient, plane, planet, and millennium, and was in orbit around Saturn as a minor component of one of the rings about the time of A. africanus.
I’m not Tebow fan, but to be fair, the other side could also mock us: gee, your fancy IV and chest compressions were completely ineffective and the stroke victim died. Also, Tebow went with the family to the hospital and stayed with them until he was declared dead. I’m sure prayer had no benefit for the victim, but if the family are believers it might have been nice for them.
@10 jaybee
They could, sure, but we can point to examples where it actually worked. They can’t.
@10 – We’re not the ones claiming that our side controls everything in the world.
Maybe his sky-buddy was still ticked off about losing the ‘dime’ on the 2011 post season game against New England.
@10, jaybee – Had there even been an article about how some people came in to heroically provide medical advise, then there could be mockery. Said article doesn’t exist though, only the article about how Tebow is heroic for being on the sidelines praying. There’s also the matter of how this is part of a long line of examples where Tim Tebow is held as some sort of borderline culture hero with everyone fawning over how morally excellent he is due to a public display of piety. I live in Colorado, and can say that at least here, when he was on the Broncos, that sort of sycophancy was routine. How much it extended to the national level, I don’t know.
Doesn’t take much to be a xian hero. Which shows how desperate they are for heroes.
1. Tim Tebow pretended to talk to an imaginary sky monster while other people actually tried to help someone with a medical emergency.
2. Donald Trump is now a Real True xian just like my houseplant might be a Real True xian.
3. Tim Tebow is also an anti-Catholic bigot which the xians always ignore. He was in the Philippines converting…Catholics to fundie-ism.
@jaybee (#10):
Depending on who “he” is, that was either very considerate, or extremely considerate.
We are not the ones claiming magic works either.
We do claim modern medicine works and works well.
It does always fail in the end though. Despite tens of billions spent on medical research, the death rate is still 100%.
There’s no losing with these guys, though: The fact that he died means that he’s with his god now. That’s great! Maybe even greater than if he had survived!
in light of some events from the recent past I think it would a wonderful stroke of genius if Trump would pick this certified hero for a running mate they deserve each other.
I also think that this story is only a story because it functions as in modern terminology as click bate and plays on his celebrity to attract readers otherwise it is not very news worthy rating just a few lines at best “stroke victim diverts plane and is pronounced dead at _____hospital on ___day”
uncle frogy
Dunno about other news sites, but this story vanished rather rapidly from NBC News’s front page. Probably when they heard the guy died and Tebow didn’t have miraculous healing powers after all. Providing emotional support just isn’t as sexy as wonder-healing.
I am certainly not a Tim Tebow fan at all. However, I have to say that it was actually very nice of him to take time out of his life to show some empathy to complete strangers. It appears from the articles, that the situation was being taken care as best as it could have been, under the situation, but it is never easy for anyone to watch a family member suffer and even die. Tebow didnt have to intervene (and it would be unfair to chide him if he hadn’t), but I think that he knew that his attention to this family, due to his celebrity status, would mean something to the family and he went out of his way to help comfort them. Reports say he went to the hospital with the family; he certainly didn’t have to do that and I’m sure he had other things to do. Prayer is a completely ineffective way of “helping,” but in the US, it seems to be an accepted way to show support and give comfort to grieving people. The thing I disliked the most about this story was the Facebook post that said that Tebow was “standing up for God.” Again, that wasn’t written by Tebow, but some other white guy.
if only he hadn’t used up his lifetime granted prayer quota on winning sportsball games.
@congaboy
What celebrity status? Why is it assumed that everyone knows who some sportsball player is? All I know about Tebow is that he occasionally makes the news for being an asshat. I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup, neither could my family, or the people I choose to hang out with. In an emergency, the last thing I would want is some self-important douchecanoe getting in the way. If you don’t have actual medical training, stay in your damn seat.
@16, Richard Smith: Beautifully put. I am still chuckling.
Jesus prayed on the cross
Final Score: 0 Prayer – Death 1
Tebow prayed in a plane
Final Score: 0 Prayer – Death 1
Billions of other prayers for the dying…
Final Score: 0 Prayer – Death billions
So far, prayer is losing really bad.
Doing chest compressions is exhausting.
If there is more than one responder, they trade off when one person tires.
Did Tebow take a turn?
Nothing more than public preening for the sake of feeding his own ego. You wonder how some people can look in the mirror…
Richard Smith @16:
I really have no words for how much I love this.
I feel for the family, that’s awful.
I’m thinking, because I’ve been in a similar situation before. What if the family are not religious. Tebow’s gesture would make a bad situation worse for them. He’s this famous guy who insists on praying with you. You don’t want to say anything but you’re sitting there grinding your molars worrying about your family member wishing this guy would just shut up. But you can’t really say anything because everyone would be like “He’s just trying to help”. But you just feel worse for it.
Something very similar happened to me several years ago on a bus. A woman in the back started screaming and ran to the front, and when I looked around there was a man having a grand mal seizure – he had hit his nose on the metal bar at the back of the seat before him and was spurting blood, then he slumped over and started to choke because the bar was pressed on his throat. The screaming woman and an elderly lady dressed for church (this was on a Sunday and there was a Baptist one on the way) started yelling that he was POSSESSED BY DEMONS and the older lady demanded that everyone get down and pray.
I ran back to the guy and despite him being almost literally twice my size and completely limp I managed to wrestle him back in a sitting position and hold him there. The driver had by then called the EMTs. He came back to see what was going on and I told him the man was having a seizure but he was OK. The old lady pushed past the driver and asked, “Are you a student doctor?” (I looked very young) Before I could tell her that no, I was a grocery clerk who’d taken a basic lifesaving course years ago, she turned around and assured the rest of the passengers I was a doctor, then kept calling on Jesus, who, incidentally, never showed up. Luckily the real medics did and took the poor guy in.
I asked the transit cop to write a note to my boss, who was a major a-hole and would never believe why I was late (this being before the cellphone era) and we continued on our way. The screaming lady and the godbothering lady sat next to each other for the rest of the trip congratulating Jesus, God, and themselves for saving the guy. Not a word about me, or the paramedics. I really hate to think what would have happened to the guy if I hadn’t been there.
This kind of story really annoys me. Here they are, a group of people doing their level best to save a man’s life, doing everything that their knowledge and skills allow; and some godbothering git mumbles a bunch of gibberish and he gets called a hero for it, while the people who actually worked feverishly to keep a fellow hairless ape alive get ignored.
Where’s the big story thanking them for working to save a man’s life using actual evidence-based treatments ?
What utter rubbish.
re Lew @30:
kudos.
thank you, for putting your training to use in an emergency.
*virtual-hand extended to shake yours*
Who is Tim Tebow?
He got up and stood in the way of those trying to save the unfortunate man’s life, and tried to make it more difficult for the flight crew to save the man. That’s horrific, not “heroic”.
If he knew he couldn’t help the unconscious man, maybe he did what he could do, which was to comfort the upset family members, keeping them calm and out of the way of the people who administered medical care. If letting them cry on his shoulder and praying was a ritual that helped them cope with stress and allowed the medical caregivers to continue treatment without interference, that might have been something socially useful in the situation.