Feb 10, 2014 4 min read

Well, Coca Cola has gone and done it. It’s managed to tick-off that fragile segment of the America that can’t stand to hear people from all over the world sing.

It didn’t used to be that way.

Back in 1971, it wowed much of America with that catchy, multicultural ditty — “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing,” filmed on a mountain outside of Rome, Italy. There was hardly an American on that hill.

Coke’s latest rendition of “America the Beautiful,” complete with (apparent) immigrants singing in their own languages, has set off a right-wing mini-controversy.

Allen West, you’ll remember him as that sanctimonious, one-term U.S. Congressman from Florida (and one-term was far too many), was outraged.

“Coca Cola commercial came on, and it started rather patriotically with the words of ‘America the Beautiful,” West recalled. So far, so good, I guess.

“Then the words went from English to languages I didn’t recognize,” he fumed.

Oh, my. He must’ve felt abandoned. There he was, watching a soft drink commercial, then suddenly, and without warning, he felt like he didn’t belong.

There was more. “If we cannot be proud enough as a country to sing ‘America 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.”

Perdition? Perdition? Did he just say PERDITION?

Tell those Coke folks to stop it. I’m too young to get put into a state of eternal punishment and damnation, because they have those foreigners singing our (supposedly) sacred songs.

Either that, or somebody tell Allen West that the language he’s used to uttering, hearing, and writing nonsensical comments in — is not purely American!

Let’s see. English, ENGL …, England! Oh, I’m about to get myself into trouble. I don’t care.

English doesn’t belong to Americans. Americans belong to English. There. I’ve said it.

There’s that other country, that little one over there in Europe that’s been speaking English a lot longer than we have. We’ve just borrowed it.

While we’re on the subject of things we claim are ours, but they’re not, when you hear somebody claim something is “as American as apple pie,” remind them that apple pie isn’t American, either. It came from somewhere in Europe — just like English (by the way).

Don’t get me wrong. I love this country, and I especially love the language here. I use it all time.

It’s just that my nostrils don’t flair when I hear somebody from another country speak in a language I don’t understand.

Another “Twitter-er” posited this succinct comment. “This is America, English, please.”

See what I mean. It seems a little silly me that a feel-good TV commercial has ignited such jingoistic fury, and, in 140 letters or less.

Ben Ferguson, a CNN conservative political commentator, ran that feel-good commercial through some mighty thick immigration filter. Talk about a stretch.

“When you start changing words like this, and acting like you can be in America, and actually not becoming part of America as a society and how we work, it’s only going to hurt people that don’t understand all of these words in English. If you really want to become successful in this country, you just can’t come here and not be a part of America,” he opined, without even a hint that nobody was actually HURT watching that commercial – or appearing in it.

Why am I writing this?

Because I’ve seen this kind of callous, narrow-minded, shrill, nothing-is-better-than-America nonsense before. It’s the lack of knowledge that to the rest of the entire world — Americans are the foreigners.

While serving in Vietnam, I never once encountered a Vietnamese person who chided me for not speaking their language. Never. But what I did witness were American troops who savagely belittled the Vietnamese for not speaking English — and in their own country!

I would have thought, by now, that those harsh sentiments would have diminished in these, supposedly, enlightened times. They have not. Coca Cola has proven they still exist.

Edward A. Owens is a three time Emmy Award winner and 20 year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net