Posted on February 3, 2014

Coca-Cola Super Bowl Ad Stirs Controversy with Multilingual Singing of ‘America the Beautiful’

CBS Atlanta, February 3, 2014

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This year, a Coca-Cola ad landed in the proverbial hot seat, but not for being lewd–it showed Americans of different races and ethnicities singing “America, the Beautiful” in a variety of different languages. After it aired, many took to various social networking sites to express their outrage at the song being performed in any language other than English.

The company’s official Facebook page was inundated with comments after the spot appeared during Super Bowl XLVIII. Though some showed support for the diversity shown in the ad, many others expressed displeasure.

“Today we are throwing away all our Coca-Cola products and replacing them with Faygo,” the Facebook page for the Tri-County Congregational Church in St. Cloud, Minn. wrote. “Faygo represents Christian Values and follows the Constitution. Mexicans singing the National Anthem is an abomination.”

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Angered customers also commented on videos of the commercial that were posted to YouTube.

“[M]ulticulturalism has been turning America into a slum for the past 50 years, and the CEO of Coca Cola is Turkish so he doesn’t give a s***,” one user who identified himself as Benji Kenton wrote on a video published by WorldStarHipHop Official.

His comment is referring to Muhtar Kent, the Turkish-American business man who is the CEO of the soda company.

Added a user called Emily Statton, “What a f***ing terrible commercial. That majority of it was not even in English and was sung by a bunch of foreigners. Just more multicultural, politically correct, liberal s***.”

Many Twitter users were also upset by the use of different languages in the singing of the patriotic song.

“@CocaCola has America the Beautiful being sung in different languages in a #SuperBowl commercial? We speak ENGLISH here, IDIOTS,” one user was quoted as saying by Time magazine.

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