Here's my contribution to the discussion resulting from Coca-Cola's multilingual "America the Beautiful" Superbowl commercial. Dedicated to whatever disgusting corporation runs the Live95.5 pop music station that my daughter and her little friends that we drive to school with most days like to listen to.
"America the Beautiful"
America is beautiful but it's got a lot of ugly people
I heard one of them this morning on the radio
He interrupted the pop music programming
To tell us what he thought we needed to know
He said America is an English-speaking country
And that Coke commercial was just all wrong
You can't interrupt an all-American football game
To have little brown girls sing an all-American song
He said America is beautiful but it's only got one language
The one we inherited from the King
Although the king himself spoke German and the French helped us overthrow him
But I still don't want to hear those girls sing
He said it and I wondered if it reminded him
Of his grandparents who were probably refugees
From Finland or Italy or Lithuania
Or perhaps from Belarus or Germany
Or perhaps they came from Ireland where they fought for generations
To try to speak the language of their birth
And now their red-faced son is shouting English is the language
In this little stolen corner of the Earth
Not Navajo or Lakota, not Tagalog or Spanish
But the language of those who came out on top
Not the language of the conquered or the ones who were here first
But the language of the ones who run the shop
America is beautiful, it would be silly to deny it
If you've seen the forests or the mountains capped with snow
But as I left my Japanese wife to drive to the French school
With a carpool full of gorgeous kids in tow
Who all sang along to Katy Perry and then listened to this bigot
Tell us this is an English-speaking nation
I don't know what the kids thought but I said this guy's a fascist
And we all agreed to change the station
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2 comments:
Why do radio stations keep being the conduits for people like this? Do they think this is news to give time to bigots and xenophobes? Do they think this is a valuable social discourse? You're right in that there are lots of beautiful things about America, contrary to the opinion of many of my fellow Canadians. There's a lot to criticize, sure, but let's not forget it's also the land of Utah Phillips, Pete Seeger, Eugene Debs and Joe Hill to name just a few.
Big mouth bigots ruling the waves, the new Britannia. They're in a frenzy over a sociopathic multi-national corrupt American corporate institution's choice of language in its ad that they have to play. The bigots are annoyed that the bait on Coke's hook to lure more revenue (clients) to their product isn't in synch with their delusional expectations of how a Dinsneyfied USA should operate. Isn't that sad for them? Wow..in real terms: WTF DOES ANY OF THIS MEAN IN THE REAL WORLD? REALLY? When blind ignorance is piled upon ignorance up to the highest level and is barking from every rooftop what is left for the people of real heart and intelligence but the challenge of reform from the ground up. We need to ignore these douche bags outrageously aggressive tirades, they are as common as muck, and speak the truth clear and strong as an antidote. Thanks to David and many others like him we have our own common media to turn to once we turn away from these idiots.
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