Gene Simmons (above, left) has done many craven, rotten things during his many years in the entertainment business…but we’ll leave ‘Music From The Elder’ out of this for the time being. Never before, however, has Gene stooped to regurgitating old Dino Costa monologues in the hopes of selling tickets to an Arena Football game. Radio.com’s Brian Ives provides the auspices for Simmons’ latest attempts to curry favor with free agent QB Tim Tebow (link courtesy Maura Johnston)
“He’s got a religious passion, as well he should, we’re in America,” the KISS frontman told Radio.com earlier this week. ”He’s proud to be a Christian, what’s wrong with that? And yet, with sports media and pop culture media, they make fun of his religion. Really? In America? If he was wearing a burqa, they wouldn’t dare say anything [editor’s note: only Muslim women wear burqas]. But if you’re a Christian, you get to be picked on? What the hell? The guy’s got family values. I never saw the media picking on Michael Vick for torturing dogs. Or this other football player, who’s alleged to have killed, committed murder. That’s ‘cool.’ But a guy who’s religious and has got family values isn’t ‘cool?’ He’s cool to me.”
The treatment that he feels Tebow has received makes him particularly incensed: “They’re a**holes. And they should be called to task, and they should lose their license, because in a very real way, as far as I’m concerned, it’s slander and defamation. You’re making fun of somebody’s religion.”