America the Beautiful Translates

Professor J, are we too late to get our two cents in on this one?

 The Super Bowl Coke ad was moving. No matter how small minded anyone is, the imagery was beautiful. And the song in the various languages was brilliant. We can sing the same song and embrace the same ideals in different ways. That vision of America the Beautiful is why people want to come here. To dream big dreams, start over, and breathe free. And these days, it isn't even so much the reality of what is, as it is the vision of what can be that brings people here. The desire to embrace freedom and possibility is timeless, colorless, and has no language. That's what I saw. And it kind of reminded me of another Coke commercial:

Maybe they were just supposed to sing but not America the Beautiful. And not come here for crying out loud!

I'd like the people who were so offended by the Coke ad to tell our Native American brothers and sisters how outraged they are about all the outsiders featured in a Coke commercial. One of the languages used in the commercial was Keres, a language spoken by the Pueblo people.

Here's the list of languages used: English, Spanish, Tagalog, Hebrew, Hindi, Keres, and Senegalese-French.

I doubt that many people were actually offended by the French or Hebrew. Rather I suspect that they were offended by the different. The other. The not like us. 

Most of the xenophobic Twittter comments were crouched behind the "English is the official language" argument. I suspect however that if the song had played with no words and the same images had been shown, the outrage would have been just as fierce. 

We are a nation of hypocritical immigrants who now dislike immigrants. Which I find amusing and disturbing, and sad. How ironic that the Super Bowl opened with various people quoting the words on the Statue of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door. 

 

Whether or not anyone should be consuming the product advertised is another matter entirely. If you must, I recommend finding it on the Hispanic aisle of your grocery. Coke bottled in Mexico is made with cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. It tastes the way you remember it tasting when you were a kid. Well, except for the added Jack Daniels. ;)