6 February, 2014 | www.howtomanguide.

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How To Respond To Coca-Cola Hypocrisy

The recent indignation sparked by CoCo-Colas Superbowl advertisement shows that America is the land of the free and the home of the proudly ignorant. How dare America the Beautiful be sung in any language other than the English language, right?! Hey, the last time we checked, America is a melting pot of ethnicities and cultures. If you find the singing of any song in a different language offensive, you need to get out of your tiny corner of the world and visit some other of the incredibly beautiful cultures that exists outside America. You need to learn that there are far more important issues at hand that raising a stink over someone singing how beautiful America is in his/her native tongue. If we the people are going to be legitimally outraged, shouldnt we be rising up against the case of speaking Enlish at all? After all, Native Americans didnt speak English and our ancestors forced our will on them, stole their land and called this place home. We even went so far as to smile at the Indians and hand out smallpox-infested blankets, in an attempt to rid our new home of its rightful owners. Do we really want to talk about the real victim here? Lets think about the real injustice. If youre angry over this song being rendered in a different language, why arent you pissed over the fact that America was never ours to take in the first place that we sing songs of national pride and wave flags in a country that we took by force? Why arent you learning the Native tongue of the land and speaking only in that dialect? Why arent you learning Native American traditional songs and only singing those? Hypocrisy looms large. The fact is that multiculturalism is beautiful and thats what we have in America many people and many languages. Summing up a correct response to opponents of the amazingly popular Superbowl ad is anchorwoman Brenda Wood of WXIA in Atlanta. [embedded content] Brenda Wood But the fact that people are outraged over this ad is outrageous itself. People indignant that others would have the audacity to sing America the Beautiful in a language other than English, when America was built on opening its arms to the world? The quote on the Statue of Liberty doesnt say give me your English-speaking only, Christian-believing, heterosexual masses. It says give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, tempest-tost. Have we forgotten that every one of us Americans except for Native Americans, are descendants of foreigners? That the English language is from England? What makes America different from everywhere else is that we are a melting pot. We are not homogenous. It is our diversity that built this country. How dare there be indignation over the very thing that makes us

great. And why not honor the beauty of that in song? Whats so sacrosanct about this song that it cant be sung in other languages by other ethnicities, by those of diverse religions and diverse lifestyles? A relevant question considering the words of America the Beautiful were penned by a gay woman, Katharine Lee Bates, in 1895, an English professor at Wellesley who also wrote lovingly of her longtime committed relationship with another woman. Regardless of your feelings on the matter, Coca-Cola gets the highest marks for getting the most out of their advertising dollar. Is it possible that a few thousand people might actually swear off drinking Coke for a while? Sure but even they will come back. Remember the baseball strike? Is Cokes name recognition going to extend even further? Were not sure thats possible but if it is mission accomplished. Only in America the beautiful. YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE