The Post That Dare Not Speak Its Name
If you're an international reader of DQ, you might not know that we have a lot of crazy people here.Wait, what am I saying? Of course you know.
Here's a good example. During the Super Bowl telecast on Sunday, Coca-Cola had a commercial where people sang "America the Beautiful" in different languages. I thought it was quite touching, really: Coca Cola Super Bowl 2014 Commercial America It's Beautiful.
So this lovely commercial airs, and people absolutely lose their shit. Why, it's blasphemy that "America the Beautiful" isn't being sung in "American"! A few examples from Twitter:
it's America and the USA language is English...not all this foreign shit
**** you coke for trying to diversify my country tis of thee****ing speak English and be normal
Yeah, I could go on, but those are so painful to read already. Oh, but wait, here's one more--from a politician:
If we cannot be proud enough as a country to sing ‘American the Beautiful’ in English in a commercial during the Super Bowl, by a company as American as they come -- doggone we are on the road to perdition.
Like I said: painful.
I've always thought it was so ironic that the people and groups that certain Americans hate and want out of the country have contributed so much to our culture. As a country, the outsiders have always been far more interesting and creative than the insiders.
Anyway, here's the punch line, and it's pretty damned funny: guess who wrote 'America The Beautiful'?
The author of this iconic anthem of American patriotism was Katharine Lee Bates. In a brilliant lampoon of the bigots' backlash against the Coke commercial, Stephen Colbert pointed out that Bates was a lesbian. He could also have added that she was also a Christian socialist and an ardent foe of American imperialism.
Boy, you couldn't make up anything funnier than that.
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