Coke's Super Bowl Ad - Awesome or Awful?

When I first saw the controversial Coke ad during the Super Bowl, my first thought was "This is really PC for Coke," as Coke is a brand that I consider more "conservative," especially when compared to its rival Pepsi (remember how Pepsi leveraged Obama's election in this campaign?)  So as the commercial progressed, I became interested in how they'd treat the "God shed His grace on thee," part.  Would they actually say, "God?"  If they did, would it be sung in a language that was recognizable?

See what happens:


"OK," I thought, "Coke put themselves out there with that one.  Good for them."

As the video continued, I got into the message.  Our strength as a nation has always been the melting pot, and indeed, given demographics, our continued strength will be to continue to grow our population while others implode.  

So when Coke got to the punchline at the end, they had me a little choked up.  Indeed, we are a mosaic.  But it is a beautiful mosaic.  One that shares a common theme: a love of freedom, family, religion.  Even a love of Coke.  We are far more similar as Americans than we are different.  

Thus, when my cousin went on a rant on Facebook on all this, I felt he represented the defense of Coke's position well.  Here's his guest editorial:

I finally saw this controversial coca cola commercial. I understand both viewpoints but I totally get the message. America is a culturally diverse land. I thought the commercial wasnt anti patriotic in any way. fairly tasteful. I have friends that are Asian decent, middle eastern, European, Latin, african, gentile and jew and that doesn't make them any less American. I try to hold on to my Irish catholic roots. If I knew Gaelic I'd sing it. Does that make me any less American. I guess the only way to know is if the poop hits the fan. I can tell u Muslims, Asians, africans, Jews, latino's and European aryans have all died for this country. Cokes commercial didn't tarnish their legacy and contribution to America. In fact it embraced our cultural diversity. Btw if you think banning coke will make a difference you are wrong. They have much more of a market share over seas and they only strengthened their intl brand. Plus in business any publicity good or bad is better then no publicity. Now what is funny is in 20 years people will be mad when the song is sung in English instead of Spanish (the American language) lol.

America the beautiful, indeed.