Super Bowl Commercials and Glenn Beck: Is Coke-Cola Trying To Divide Us?

On one of the most important days in America, Super Bowl Sunday, citizens of this great country were subjected to perhaps one of the most built up, and then anti-climatic football games in the history of planet Earth. Thankfully however, we were able to enjoy the many Superbowl commercials that have come to epitomize this non-official national holiday. Most of the time these commercial come and go and I am left at the end still trying to determine what exactly they were selling. Then every now and again there is a commercial that is so beautifully simple that even though there is a multi-national corporation only trying to sell sugar water behind it (Coke-Cola) you still have to acknowledge that you are impressed.

One commercial in specific from this Super Bowl Sunday was this:
Coke-Cola Commercial Super Bowl 2014


As I am sure, about you and about a hundred million other people saw this ad. And the majority of us afterwards felt perhaps a little better about ourselves and our country. It was very interesting to see and hear such an inclusive rendition of one of our nation's most famous songs. Perhaps it was another step on the path towards recognizing equality of all Americans. However, as with any good thing, there always has to be one guy or gal, that somehow miss-interprets even the most basic message. Whether it was this commercial or even a passage from Obama's State of The Union speech, it is inevitable that concise clear messages will be placed out of context and used as propaganda so support someone else's point of view. In this case, political conservative television and radio pundit Glen Beck had his own , albeit strange, views on the "true" meaning of Coke-Cola's commercial. Salon.com's Elias Isquith reported on this,

During his radio show on Monday, Glenn Beck discussed the Coca-Cola Super Bowl ad that's got some conservatives threatenting a boycott. He hated it, of course. Beck said his first respsonse, when he saw the ad, was to ask, "Why?" "You need that to divide us, politically? 'Cause that;s all this ad is," He continued. After Beck's co-host, Pat Gray, chimed in, describing the as "in your face," Beck went further. "It's an in your face--and if you don't like it, if you're offended by it, then you're a racist. If you do like it, well then you're for immigration. That's what it is. You're for progress. That's all this is--is to divide people.

After having read Beck's response I was left just a bit confused.On one hand, Beck is arguing, if you are against the ad then you are racist, but if you are for the ad then you support immigration policy. This is a far to complex, and yet also to simplistic approach to take on this commercial. I do not believe that this commercial is trying to "divide" as at all. In fact I believe quite the opposite is true. This commercial is reminding this country of its long history of diversity, and furthermore the ability to coexist as one nation, for the most part, should be celebrated. Coke's choice to have multiple languages sing the song only reinforces the fact that it takes many types of people to make this country what it is today. This all inclusive attitude is one shared by many of the people that make up the Millennial generation. We have grown up in schools, and also in work, interacting with all different types of people. The racism so prevalent in the early to mid part of the 20th century seems like an alien concept to us. However, we are also not so naive to think that racism itself has been eradicated. It still exists and it still affects people on an everyday basis. That being said, we as a country have progressed more on this issue that at any point in our history, and any claim that a Coke-Cola commercial was intended to "divide" us it just flat out wrong.

So even though the actual Super Bowl was a bust, the commercials, and Coke's in particular, was worth the three hours I spent sitting in my over-stuffed chair. Rock on America and next time I want to hear the National Anthem sung in seven different languages!