Perhaps CBS execs somehow think they are balancing the culture war scales by not only allowing Tim Tebow’s Focus on the Family ad to run during the Super Bowl – then nixing a gay dating website ad – but also interfering with the copy of a Super Bowl ad for the video game Dante’s Inferno. The original slogan for the ad was “Go to Hell”, but the company producing the game changed the tagline to “Hell Awaits.” No one from CBS explained the logic behind the slogan change. The only guess I can make is that some exec thought telling someone to go a place of eternal damnation was more politically incorrect than just telling someone that hell is waiting somewhere in the future.
Which leaves me shaking my head and wondering when there has been a Super Bowl with so much censorship. I certainly can’t think of one.

I thought Focus on the Family’s choice to advertise during the Super Bowl – even with Tim Tebow- was an odd one. It seems to me there are other ways to reach a large audience with their message Tebow’s story, but spend less. However, if they have the cash, they have the right to air an ad. But if CBS is going to take that money, it seems they shouldn’t attach strings to it.
I don’t know much about the Dante’s Inferno game other than that it is loosely connected in concept to the Dante Aligheri literary epic. The ad tagline makes sense in context of the literary allusion as well as, I am guessing, the rules of the game. To censor it seems a little ridiculous – as many of the excesses related to the Super Bowl seem a little ridiculous to me.
Though a few Super Bowl ads live on in pop culture history, the truth is most actually are forgotten quickly. So it may be with this ad – or the Tebow ad. Still, I would rather see people more upset about CBS’s obvious censorship than this furor over the actual ads themselves.