Coke ad hits the right note

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Gil Smart at Smart Remarks:

But it was the Coke ad that got everyone buzzing, the multilingual performance of “America the Beautiful” set to images of what America looks like these days — multicultural, multiracial, brown and black and white.

I thought it was a nice ad, making the point that you don’t have to be from America to love America. That’s not necessarily going to make me run out and buy Coke, though I might if it’s on sale.

But apparently a whole bunch of people did rush out to buy soda in the wake of the ad — though they made a point of sneering at Coke and buying Pepsi instead.

Nanoseconds after the ad appeared, the virtual airwaves were polluted with the stench of xenophobia. “Speak English or go home” was one reaction on Coke’s Facebook page. Wrote one twit on Twitter: “How dare you sing ‘America’ in different languages. (Expletive) Coca Cola. That's so disrespectful.”

Tweeted another: “Looks like I'm now a Pepsi person.”

I bet Pepsi is thrilled.

But do we really have to do this?

Multilingualism, multiculturalism is apparently still offensive to some people who see it in terms of a choice.

It isn’t a choice. It’s a fact.

It exists. It’s here. It’s what America looks like in 2014 and beyond, and if we spent as much time acclimating ourselves to the reality of multiculturalism as we did complaining about it or, ludicrously, trying to stymie it, America would be an even more beautiful place.

It’s always been a xenophobic place, of course. I like to remind right-wingers of Irish ancestry that, once upon a time, “real Americans” sought to put their grandparents back on the boat and return them to sender.

The idea of the ad was that it was all inclusive: You don’t have to be from America or even in America to think America beautiful, you don’t have to speak the (still) predominant language, you don’t have to meet some criteria to admire this country’s natural beauty, its values, the things it’s supposed to represent.

But here was Glenn Beck popping his head out of the gopher hole to call the ad “divisive.”

Divisive? How? By reminding culturally besieged white people that they no longer rule the roost as they once did?

Beck, like several other conservative commentators, seemed to think the ad had something to do with the immigration debate. Rush Limbaugh wondered aloud if the Republican Party itself was behind the ad, to pave the way for immigration reform.

Apparently, then, you are only entitled to think America beautiful, and to sing about it, if you sing in the “right” language, if your customs and habits reflect the “right” culture, if you promise to melt into the melting pot rather than trying to preserve your old traditions or language.

You’re only entitled to sing it, to feel it, if you agree to cede continued cultural control to those who feel it slipping from their grasp.

Nonsense.

I don’t see why so many people persist in this doomed rear-guard cultural action. We’re not turning back the clock; the browning of America is here and it will continue. It’s not something to be resented and resisted, it’s something to be accepted as fact. Because it is fact.

[Downwinder]

1. Back to the food fight.

Are they going to stop eating black-eyed peas, melons, okra, tacos, Chinese, etc? How about spaghetti and pizza?

Thought we had buried the freedom fries.

[oldandhappy]

2. ha ha Beck knows about divisive.

He has contributed a lot to our present divisiveness.