A news anchor at an Atlanta television station on Monday destroyed conservatives who lashed out a Coca-Cola Super Bowl commercial because it included people from different cultures and different sexual orientations singing "America the Beautiful" in multiple languages.
Following Coca-Cola's inclusive Super Bowl advertisement on Sunday night, racist remarks erupted on Twitter and conservatives like Glenn Beck accused the company of trying to "divide people."
"Coca-Cola has always been about inclusion," WXIA's Brenda Woods noted during her "Last Word" segment on Monday's newscast. "But the fact that people are outraged over this ad is outrageous itself. People indignant that others would have the audacity to sing 'America the Beautiful' in a language other than English, when America was built on opening its arms to the world?"
"The quote on the Statue of Liberty doesn't say 'give me your English-speaking only, Christianity-believing, heterosexual masses.' It says 'give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses tempest-tost,'" she continued. "Have we forgotten that every one of us 'Americans' except for Native Americans, are descendants of foreigners? That the English language is from England?"
Woods pointed out that America's strength came from diversity and being a melting pot.
"How dare there be indignation over the very thing that makes us great," she said. "What's so sacrosanct about this song that it can't be sung in other languages by other ethnicities, by those of diverse religions and diverse lifestyles?"
"A relevant question considering the words of 'America the Beautiful' were penned by a gay woman, Katharine Lee Bates, in 1895, an English professor at Wellesley who also wrote lovingly of her longtime committed relationship with another woman."
(h/t: Media Matters)
