Those who were watching the Super Bowl were mostly interested in knowing if either the Seattle Seahawks or the Denver Broncos would win. Other viewers wanted to see all of the commercials aired during the big game (since more and more viewers are tuning into the game just for this reason). But I honestly did not think that there would be such a strong opposition to the Coca-Cola commercial! The video, “America the Beautiful,” showed footage of people of different diversities, while the patriotic American song of the same name played in the background in various languages, beginning and ending in English. Within seconds of this commercial airing live, people went to the internet to take out their anger.
Public Shaming, a blog that dedicates itself to pointing out tweets from various people whose rants range from “welfare, food stamps, etc.,” took screenshots of all of the tweets related to this commercial and publicized them for the entire electronic world to see. Besides the many (and obvious!) grammatical errors, it was hilarious (at least to me) to see that many of these people referred to “America The Beautiful” as the national anthem. To clarify, “America The Beautiful” IS NOT the National Anthem – that honour goes to “The Star Spangled Banner.” Now, the people who made that GINORMOUS error should not even be allowed to whine about this commercial!
Furthermore, whatever happened to accepting and loving diversity? Don’t those complainers know that this country was built into what it is today by immigrants? Why should someone who looks Middle Eastern, or speaks Arabic be automatically labeled as a terrorist? Why does someone who is tan-skinned automatically a Mexican? Seriously people, stop being so ignorant! it’s embarrassing!
Lastly, I get to the best point of all: The U.S. DOES NOT HAVE AN OFFICIAL LANGUAGE. Yep, you read that right! I bet you were thinking “It’s English!,” but NOPE! Even though official documents are written in English, it’s only because the majority of the population speaks it, thus making it a “common” language [national] (with Chinese and Spanish right behind, of course), but not official. Now having know this awesome tidbit of trivia, does it not make you want to rub it in the faces of all of those ignorant people who think otherwise?
Even though Coca-Cola’s Twitter and Facebook feeds were inundated with soo many complaints, the company did not stoop down to the complainers’ level; Coca-Cola simply responded to all of the harsh comments with “The only thing more beautiful than this country are the people who live here.” Now THAT is an awesome response to such cruel commentators.
The upside to this controversy? As much as there were bad comments about this ad, there were also many people who really loved the commercial and were not afraid to voice their support, for both an intriguing take on an American song, as well as an American company promoting diversity.
I personally LOVED the commercial, it even made me tear up a bit (I will admit it! I’m not ashamed!). I honestly think it could not have come at a better time, especially with all of this back-and-forth with immigration reform.
Here’s hoping that those who opposed the commercial have learned something new!
Laura Guerrero 