Uproar, rage of racist comments at multi-ethnic Coke ad at Super Bowl.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: A Coca-Cola advertisement that ran during Sunday night’s Super Bowl broadcast, in which the patriotic ballad “America the Beautiful” is sung by several singers in a variety of foreign languages, including in Hindi, is drawing both effusive praise and heated condemnation from Americans around the country.
The ad, which can be viewed below, features passages in languages as diverse as French, Spanish, and even relatively obscure ones like Keres and Tagalog, apart from Hindi. The message, quite obviously, is to celebrate the cultural melting pot that the US is – to draw attention to the fact that despite originating from all sorts of disparate places around the world, we are all fundamentally American.
Unfortunately, not everyone seems to agree with that sentiment.
A legion of Americans took to Twitter and Facebook after the ad aired during the telecast. Comments ranged from relatively benign – “Not a fan of that commercial I speak English” – to ones that used racist and defamatory language to make their point. One such tweet even said “That coke commercial sucked. Mexicans, terrorists, jews, and n*****rs are not ‘American,’” and sadly, that’s just one example of many.
Several thousands of Americans have even said that they will no longer drink Coke products because of the ad, calling it “unpatriotic” and even telling the Coca-Cola company to “leave America.” Even those in the US military chimed in on the ad, with one Tweeter saying “I feel un-American for drinking Coke today. I took an oath to defend this country. How is a song to our nation sang [sic] in different languages?”
Perhaps most jarring is that lawmakers and political personalities are also voicing opinions against the advertisement. Former Rep. Allen West (R-FL) called the ad “disturbing” and said that “if we cannot be proud enough as a country to sing ‘America the Beautiful’ in English […] we are on the road to perdition.”
Republican talk show commentator Glenn Beck called the ad a poster child for immigration reform, saying that it was made simply to divide people. “If you don’t like it, if you’re offended by it, you’re a racist,” he said. “If you do like it, you’re for immigration.”
Super Bowl XVIII, which aired Sunday night, was watched by a record 111.5 million viewers, making it the most watched telecast of any kind in American history. Coke is planning to air an even longer 90-second version of the ad during the opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics, which is scheduled for this Friday, February 7.
It remains to be seen if an ad celebrating international diversity can be appreciated during the most international event in the world.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com