America the Beautiful

You know, you can always count on someone to be offended by the commercials run during the Super Bowl. I'm starting to wonder if anyone watches the game any more.

Well, this year's hands-down winner in the controversy department is this one, from Coke:

Nice idea, right? Celebrate the diversity of our country by having Americans singing "America the Beautful" in the language of their heritage. What could be more American?

Apparently not. This is just a sample of the reactions from "real 'Murricans'":

That last one is a real WTF? moment.

Speaking of which, here's a reaction from Breitbart that I think deserves a Through the Looking Glass Award:

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. 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.

And last but not least, there's Glenn Beck:

“Why? You need that to divide us politically? Cuz that’s all this ad is. That’s all this ad is. This is to divide people. It’s an in-your-face… and if you don’t like it, if you’re offended by it, then you’re a racist. If you do like it, well then you’re for immigration. That’s all this is, is to divide people.”

Well, consider the source.

One thing that has struck me repeatedly about this whole flap: note who are calling this commercial "divisive": people who seem to think that they have an exclusive right to determine what is "American" and what's not, culminating in Beck, whose whole career is built on divisiveness. (I should note, by the way, that the comments at YouTube are overwhelmingly positive.)

Maybe it's something in the water.