Why Coca Cola's Multicultural 'America the Beautiful' Ad Was Offensive

WHY COCA COLA'S MULTICULTURAL 'AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL' AD WAS OFFENSIVE

Why Coca-Cola’s Multicultural “America The Beautiful” Ad Was Offensive

by Michael Patrick Leahy, February 2, 2014

Executives at Coca Cola thought it was a good idea to run a 60 second Super Bowl ad featuring children singing "America the Beautiful" – a deeply Christian patriotic anthem whose theme is unity – in several foreign languages. The ad also prominently features a gay couple.

Conservatives instantly lit up social media with objections, with many vowing to boycott the soda company's products.

“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," said former GOP Rep. Allen West.

The lyrics of the song, written in 1893 by Wellesley College Professor Katherine Lee Bates, ask God to grant America “brotherhood / From sea to shining sea.”

As far as the executives at Coca Cola are concerned, however, the United States of America is no longer a nation ruled by the Constitution and American traditions in which English is the language of government. It is not a nation governed in the Anglo-American tradition of liberty. It is instead a nation governed by some all inclusive multi-cultural synthesis of the various forms of government in the world, as expressed by the multiple languages used in the Super Bowl ad to sing a uniquely American hymn that celebrates our heritage.

“We don't get to pick and chose whether America should be diverse or not,” says one of the women featured in the ad on a behind-the-scenes video posted by Coca Cola, “It is diverse.....We need to celebrate all the different diversities.”

The old “America the Beautiful” is beautiful because of the blessings God had heaped on it and because its government offers “liberty in law,” while aspiring for togetherness. Coca Cola's America is beautiful because of the differences in its people. When the company used such an iconic song, one often sung in churches on the 4th of July that represents the old “E Pluribus Unum” view of how American society is integrated, to push multiculturalism down our throats, it's no wonder conservatives were outraged.

Coca Cola ad on Super Bowl – America’s brand? Hm.

by Allen West, February 2, 2014

I’m watching the Super Bowl, looks like good defense (Seattle) is trouncing good offense (Denver) when a Coca Cola commercial came on and it started rather patriotically with the words of “America the Beautiful.”

Then the words went from English to languages I didn’t recognize. Now, I know the politically correct thing is to foster multiculturalism — working really well in Europe — but we should remember the words spoken by President Teddy Roosevelt;

Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.”

In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn’t doing his part as an American.

There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile.

We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, and American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house; and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.

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 “America 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 was a truly disturbing commercial for me, what say you?

Coke’s “America the Beautiful” or America the Balkanized?

by Allen West, February 3, 2014

I guess we touched a nerve last night regarding Coke’s “America the Beautiful” Super Bowl ad. Some people felt even questioning why an iconic American song was sung in other languages was racist. There are others, who I figured, just rolled over and said everything is fine.

But the last thing any of us should want to see is a balkanized America. Furthermore, it has to be of concern that we have Americans who lack the resolve to take a stand for our borders, language, and culture. That’s why I included the quotes from President Teddy Roosevelt, because once upon a time that was how Americans felt, and immigrants came here to be a part of the American experience, not bystanders.

Now, here is my recommendation for what the Coca Cola marketing executives should have done. Coke’s “America the Beautiful” should have been sung in English and showed Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen of diverse races, sex, and creed deployed all over the world drinking Coca Cola. If you truly want to show a diverse commitment to service, sacrifice, and honor that enables us to live in “America the Beautiful” that would have been rated the best commercial advertisement of the Super Bowl. And we would be here talking about how we were all touched emotionally.

I’m not advocating any boycott of Coca Cola, after all I was born and raised in Atlanta. What I do want you all to think about is this quote from George Washington:

We are either a united people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it.

Commonality of language unites and enables the passing of a national character to subsequent generations and to all those who – legally — come to our shores.

But then again, maybe even Coke is buying into the “fundamental transformation” of America.

Television segment: “Brenda’s Last Word”

by BRENDA WOOD, on Atlanta’s WXIA, :

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 doesn't 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? What's so sacrosanct about this song that it can't 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.

Coke ad’s ugly, demented moral: Exposing the right’s zero-sum culture war

by Simon Maloy, February 5, 2014, on salon.com

Every Super Bowl features the same brutal competition. As the teams on the field crash and slam into one another in the hopes of walking away with the Lombardi trophy, corporations and their ad teams get into an equally vicious scrum to walk away with their most coveted prize: the attention and disposable income of the American consumer. In pursuit of that goal, Coca-Cola dominated its competitors this past Sunday just as thoroughly as the Seahawks manhandled the Broncos.

Coca-Cola’s ad featuring a multilingual rendition of “America the Beautiful” was easily the most talked-about commercial to emerge from Super Bowl Sunday. Not because the ad was shocking or over-the-top, but because it stirred the sort of ugly nativism that sets apart certain expressions of cultural identity as somehow un-American.

As the 60-second spot aired, Twitter seethed with “English first” remonstrations from users upset that a beverage company would recognize the reality of a multilingual America. Then came the conservative radio hosts and pundits who seized on the advertisement as further evidence that the America you know and love is being stolen right out from underneath you.

“It’s in your face, and if you don’t like it, if you’re offended by it, you’re a racist. If you do like it, you’re for immigration. You’re for progress. That’s all this is: to divide people,” said Glenn Beck, whose professed concern for cultural and political unity runs contrary to his life’s work to date. An entry to radio host Laura Ingraham’s blog opined: “This is America and when you live here, work here, go to school here, don’t expect or demand that the rest of the country speak your language.”

The slugs at Breitbart.com made the case that Coca-Cola somehow undermined America and the Constitution by inflicting “multiple languages” on a “uniquely American” song:

(The Breitbart crew might be dismayed to learn that the “Anglo-American tradition of liberty” borrowed pretty heavily from the French, who don’t speak English.)

Coca-Cola’s ad was a nod to a long-standing truth about America: A country of such broad ethnic diversity is going to have whole communities that speak languages other than English. From the barrios of Los Angeles to the tenement blocks of turn-of-the-century New York to the Gullah region of the antebellum South, there have always been American communities where standard English wasn’t spoken at home. In my own family it’s not uncommon to hear conversations in English, Spanish, Russian and Portuguese. This isn’t a threat to American culture. It is American culture.

But for the conservative pundits and “English first” nativists, the simple act of recognizing other heritages somehow detracts from their own. This is the culture war, and it’s a zero-sum fight. In the eyes of the critics, Coke’s acknowledgment that English does not command 100 percent of the linguistic market was giving aid and comfort to the enemy. It’s a blatant and nasty appeal to cultural resentment and xenophobia.

This same zero-sum dynamic animates so much of the cultural discussion. We’re about to resume the debate over immigration reform, which is always colored by conservative complaints about immigrants receiving “special privileges.” The embarrassing annual spectacle of the “War on Christmas” assumes that anyone who has the temerity to say “Happy Holidays” isn’t giving Christianity its due as the true American faith. The fight over same-sex marriage is replete with conservatives arguing that recognizing the union of two men or two women will fatally undermine “traditional” marriage.

They allow no possibility for mutual benefit – if the Spanish speakers or the Kwanzaa celebrators or the gay couple down the street are winning, then English-speaking, Christmas-observing, heterosexual “real” America must be losing. There’s no real sense to it, but it’s a good way to exploit anxiety over demographic changes and stir up outrage.

As for Coca-Cola, its role as agent of cultural change in this instance seems to be a bit inflated. The heated reaction notwithstanding, the ad wasn’t that provocative and it certainly didn’t make any grand political statement. Coca-Cola doesn’t want you to speak Spanish. It wants you to buy Coke.