Whenever I see some conservative politician’s ad about “Real America” it always shows a bunch of white people on a farm somewhere, even though the vast majority of Americans live in cities and suburbs, never see a farm, and are more and more not even white. As I said in a previous post, “Real America” to me is a bustling city full of all sorts of different cultures, races and religions living together in relative peace and harmony.
So I thought the Super Bowl Coke ad was wonderful. It showed Americans, singing “America the Beautiful,” and making its point that we are all Americans, no matter what we look like, who we love, or what our native language may be.
So here it comes. Warning: Irony Alert. A lot of Irony Alert.
Some conservatives thought the ad was an insult. They complained, often with misspelled words and poor grammar, that if you can’t speak English you shouldn’t be considered an American.
Michael Patrick Leahy over at Breitbart complained that Coke had used this song, which is about brotherhood and bringing people together, in a divisive manner. He complained that it didn’t fit our American ideals of “e pluribus unum.” That latin phrase literally means “out of many, one.” Or, to use simpler words, we are stronger together than we are as individuals and no matter what we are as individuals, we are all accepted and part of the whole.
Best were the “patriots” who whined that Coke had ruined “our National Anthem” (which is, of course, “The Star Spangled Banner”).
So yeah, I don’t get the complaints. They think this ad is tearing us apart from what America really means when to me, it is exactly what America means.