Right after the Super Bowl there was a huge controversy about an ad from Coca-Cola featuring people from all over the world singing “America The Beautiful.” Not going to lie, my wife and I got choked up when we watched it the first time.
It’s a just a commercial and like anything it’s up to interpretation – beauty or ugliness is in the eye of the beholder. When I first saw this commercial all I thought it was about people who came from other parts of the world to be in THIS country rather where they came from and the first they learned to do is learn to speak “America The Beautiful.” Maybe they learned that song in their native language BEFORE they came to this country. Who knows and who cares? Fact is, they wanted here and they want to sing “America The Beautiful” period.
As someone who was treated as an outsider, as someone was weird and strange, and even excluded by people who were supposed to make me feel at home - I still love America. I love this country and the freedom to be me. I also love that people from other parts of the world want to come here. People want to come here, to the United States for whatever reasons. Doesn’t matter where or why, they want to come to The United States and become something new while at the same time bring a part of where they come from to help them feel more at home. Not only do most of them integrate into our culture, but they also bring something to integrate into ours.
We have the best of the entire world here, it’s not just the best of two worlds, it’s the best of all worlds and cultures. Not only that, but we also have the freedom and the power to disagree. If you don’t like the aforementioned commercial (or any commercial) we can talk about it. We can argue and debate and at times our discussions become super-heated. Some of us get angry because the others can’t – or won’t – see things their way. On the bright side we don’t have the state sponsored media beating it over our heads how “great” this country or lining dissenters along the wall to be shot.
If some people saw something else out of that commercial because of their own baggage they brought to the TV that’s their burden to bare. It’s America, we work out our differences and we get better. We expose all the parts of ourselves – the good and the bad – and we hammer out.
Most importantly, The people who came to this country also learned to drink Coke! What’s more flipping American than that?
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