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Coke Heads
Author: BobR
Date: 2014-02-05 11:31:17
For the football-challenged readers, there was this fairly important game this past Sunday called the Super Bowl. It's the final championship game of the year, so it garners a lot of attention. Because there are so many people watching it, commercial ad time is at a very high premium, so companies pull out all the stops to make their ad spots memorable. In recent years, there is as much anticipation and post-game discussion about the commercials as there is about the game, which I can only describe using a phrase of a previous occupant of the White House: "uniquely American".
This year was no different. For the purposes of this blog, however, there is only one commercial that has really set tongues wagging, and not in a good way. I am referring, of course, to the Coca Cola commercial, in which the song "America the Beautiful" was song by people of a variety of colors, nationalities, and sexual orientation. Oh yeah, parts of it were sung in languages other than English.
The reactions by the neanderthals in the right wing has been loud and nauseating. Between all the tweets and blog and Facebook comments, you'd think the Aryan Brotherhood was on the rise. Apparently, anything with the word "America" in it MUST NEVER BE SPOKEN OR SUNG IN ANY LANGUAGE EXCEPT ENGLISH. It says it right there in the Constitution... or so they must think. Can you imagine the outrage if someone sang a favorite American Christmas carol (like "O Tannenbaum") in another language, like German or something?
The anonymous internet idiots are bad enough, but then you get people who were (once) elected to office saying things like
This from a guy who has a drop-down in the bottom of his website front page that allows you to read his site in another language - like Spanish! Here's the Spanish version from his site:
Hmm - I don't think that's quite a literal translation. Methinks he's soft-selling the xenophobia to the Hispanic crowd.
There's also the paranoid conspiracy types who can weave a conspiracy out of anything. In their minds, this was all just a plot to push immigration reform. Oy...
One of the best responses to all this was from one of my favorite news anchors in Atlanta - Brenda Wood - who had this to say in response to the haters:
Can you imagine if they put out a commercial about wanting to "teach the world to sing" nowadays? They'd be accused (ironically) of pushing communism. Idiocracy was supposed to happen 500 years in our future, but I have to wonder if that movie was off by 400 years.
This year was no different. For the purposes of this blog, however, there is only one commercial that has really set tongues wagging, and not in a good way. I am referring, of course, to the Coca Cola commercial, in which the song "America the Beautiful" was song by people of a variety of colors, nationalities, and sexual orientation. Oh yeah, parts of it were sung in languages other than English.
The reactions by the neanderthals in the right wing has been loud and nauseating. Between all the tweets and blog and Facebook comments, you'd think the Aryan Brotherhood was on the rise. Apparently, anything with the word "America" in it MUST NEVER BE SPOKEN OR SUNG IN ANY LANGUAGE EXCEPT ENGLISH. It says it right there in the Constitution... or so they must think. Can you imagine the outrage if someone sang a favorite American Christmas carol (like "O Tannenbaum") in another language, like German or something?
The anonymous internet idiots are bad enough, but then you get people who were (once) elected to office saying things like
I am quite sure there may be some who appreciated the commercial, but Coca Cola missed the mark in my opinion. If we cannot be proud enough as a country to sing “American the Beautiful” in English in a commercial during the Super Bowl, by a company as American as they come — doggone we are on the road to perdition.
This from a guy who has a drop-down in the bottom of his website front page that allows you to read his site in another language - like Spanish! Here's the Spanish version from his site:
Características comunes del lenguaje une y permite el paso de un carácter nacional a las generaciones posteriores y para todos aquellos que - legalmente - vienen a nuestras costas.
Pero, de nuevo, tal vez incluso Coca-Cola es la compra en la "transformación fundamental" de América.
Hmm - I don't think that's quite a literal translation. Methinks he's soft-selling the xenophobia to the Hispanic crowd.
There's also the paranoid conspiracy types who can weave a conspiracy out of anything. In their minds, this was all just a plot to push immigration reform. Oy...
One of the best responses to all this was from one of my favorite news anchors in Atlanta - Brenda Wood - who had this to say in response to the haters:
Can you imagine if they put out a commercial about wanting to "teach the world to sing" nowadays? They'd be accused (ironically) of pushing communism. Idiocracy was supposed to happen 500 years in our future, but I have to wonder if that movie was off by 400 years.
