America the Beautiful, for some

America the Beautiful, as long as you're white and speak English...

Coca Cola has been having a bit of a nightmare over its endorsement of the Olympics, in particular for not speaking out against repression and violence toward gays, and seemingly encouraged by elected government representatives.  To counter this bad publicity, Coca Cola ran an ad during the Super Bowl game.  See Not the Real Thing

Coke's ad puts the diversity of America on display, as children of different cultures sing America The Beautiful in languages other than English.  The bigots and Christian right got together to slam this ad. An ad that was un-american because it had different races, languages and horror of horrors, two gay dads and their daughter.  

Here is the ad...

The reaction that Time Magazine recorded... 

It was that last aspect that unfortunately, brought out America the Ugly, at least on some parts of the Internet. “WTF?” asked one post on Twitter. “@CocaCola has America the Beautiful being sung in different languages in a #SuperBowl commercial? We speak ENGLISH here, IDIOTS.” Some of the vitriol may have been satire for all I know, but there was much too much for that to explain all of the “English or GTFO” sentiment–not all of it in impeccable English itself. To wit: “Dear @CocaCola : America the beautiful is sang in English. Piss off. #DontFuckWithUs.” (To be fair, not every Tweet brought up by a search on “Coca Cola English” agreed: “Coca Cola brings the commercial of the night: America the Beautiful sung in Spanish, English, Arabic, and other languages. Beautiful.”)

The xenophobic protesters had one thing right: we do speak English in America. We speak it on official business and in Super Bowl broadcasts; we use it in publications like this one.

Read more: Coca-Cola’s “It’s Beautiful” Super Bowl Ad Brings Out Some Ugly Americans | TIME.com http://entertainment.time.com/2014/02/02/coca-colas-its-beautiful-super-bowl-ad-brings-out-some-ugly-americans/#ixzz2sHKZUGSk

Prominent Conservatives took offence that the song was sung in other languages - former GOP Rep. Allen West...

“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." link

Remember this rendition of the Star Spangled Banner from America Blog...

"Adorable 11 year old Mexican-American mariachi singer Sebastien De La Cruz, a San Antonio, Texas native, sang the national anthem during the NBA finals Tuesday night. And boy were the Twitter racists up in arms." America Blog June 14, 2013