Coca-Cola and Attitude

My 7 year old has an annoying habit- I think it's fairly normal for his age.  I can remember his sisters doing it, too.

Whenever we give another kid a complement in his presence, Mister gets indignant.

What about me?  I didn't do a good job?

We're trying to teach him that when we say something nice to someone else, it's not about him.  We're not insulting him.  We're just acknowledging someone else's accomplishments, and that's ok.  I think he understands, it's just his knee-jerk response right now.  I don't imagine it's an attitude that'll last forever.

I can't help but think of that when I hear stories like this response to Coca-Cola's Super Bowl ad.

I don't believe that celebrating another culture in any way diminishes my own.  I don't think there's anything wrong with acknowledging the fact that there are people in this country that speak other languages.  It's true.  Should we pretend they're not there?  Should those people not be allowed to buy Coca-Cola products?  What about the LGBT community?  They already have to fight for basic human rights, now they can't have soda either?

I think it's a waste of time and so not the point to treat this ad like an insult to "American Culture."  It's simply indicative of the fact that our country is more than a homogeneous mass of people that all think the same, look the same, feel the same, and talk the same.  We are more than that, and we are better than that.  And Coke wants to make money off of ALL of us.  Don't worry straight conservative Caucasians, Coca-Cola still wants to sell to you, too.  They just don't want to sell only to you.

If you'd like to read a really beautiful response to the commercial, I highly recommend you head over to Five Kids Is A Lot of Kids and read Beth Woolsey's post Why Our Response to Coke's "America the Beautiful" Matters.