Lance Black's Anti-Bullying Coca-Cola Campaign

Here in Virginia, LGBT students have little anti-bullying protections.  Every attempt to enact meaningful protections die in the GOP controlled House of Delegates and school administrators are left free to giving lip service to banning bullying, yet the bullying goes on and on occasion LGBT students find suicide as their only perceived escape.  Would that Coca-Cola would launch a anti-bullying campaign such as the one it has launched in South America with the help of Lance Black of Milk fame and a founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights which helped win marriage equality for all Americans.  A piece in The Advocate looks at the Coca-Cola campaign that needs to be replicated far and wide.  Here are highlights:

With marriage equality established across the nation, Oscar-winning activist Dustin Lance Black is, once again, taking to the screen to affect change. His upcoming ABC special, When We Rise, is an eight-hour exploration of the interconnectedness of activists from the LGBT, civil rights, women's rights, and peace movements,

Black recently directed a pro-equality commercial for Tylenol, featuring same-sex couples, which was well received in the United States. He's also channeling his energy south of the border, directing a series of three short anti-bullying films for Coca-Cola to be aired across Latin America. One, 'El SMS' (or 'The Text'), revolves around LGBT youth.


Black discussed the project.  On the reaction:

"The campaign in general is doing quite well, but the response in the LGBT community to 'The Text' was remarkable. I heard from one of the heads at the ABC network about how much it moved her. I heard from Cleve Jones, one of the leaders of the LGBT movement, about how much it moved him. And these aren't people I sent it to. They found it, which I find remarkable, since it's in Portuguese on the Internet. For Coca-Cola to take a pro-diversity, pro-equality stance creates a lot of goodwill in the LGBT community. It's heartwarming for the LGBT community to see that a global brand would embrace this community because, let's be honest, there are places in the world that know about Coca-Cola where it is still a death sentence to be gay."

On cynics doubting Coca-Cola's sincerity:

"Some of them are very critical of what the intent of the brand might have been. And I say, 'Yes, their intent was to win a market, and their intent was to sell their product.' My intent was to send the message that diversity is a good thing and LGBT people and their families deserve respect and love. Well, I'm not going to skip an opportunity to send a pro-equality message just because they're selling a product alongside it."

Read the full interview on Adweek.

Coke Ad Underscored Racism of the GOP Base

I've looked at the growing and often open racism that is becoming one of the pillars of the Republican Party's agenda.  Frequently, GOP elected official try to use dog whistle lines that will resonate with the party base while not openly offending the larger public.  But sometimes that the hatred and swamp fever sickness of the party base simply explodes into open view.  A case in point is the reaction of so  called conservatives - I'd call them white supremacists - to the ad aired by Coca-Cola during the Super Bowl last Sunday.  There is simply no way to put lipstick on this element of the GOP base and try to claim that they are decent people who can see the common humanity of others.  Michael Gerson looks at (and tries to down play) the spittle flecked reaction that exploded across the Internet and what it says about the Republican Party.  Here are column highlights:

Just after House Speaker John Boehner affirmed the eventual need for Republicans to embrace immigration reform, a commercial for a carbonated beverage, of all things, demonstrated how difficult that process is likely to be.

Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl ad featured a series of multicultural images set to “America the Beautiful,” sung in seven languages. It turned out to be a national Rorschach test. The immediate reaction of some — myself included — was a lump in the throat. There is something moving about hearing American ideals of brotherhood, reverence and sacrifice praised in other tongues. It is the universality of these longings that makes them powerful.  . . . Some hopes belong to everyone.

The immediate reaction of others — measured by Twitter and talk radio — was that the ad represented an aggressive and divisive multiculturalism and that American national songs should be sung in English (though conservative blogger Erick Erickson smartly noted that “E Pluribus Unum isn’t in English either”). Fox News radio host Todd Sarnes called Coca-Cola “the official soft drink of illegals crossing the border.” Former congressman Allen West (R-Fla.) declared America “on the road to perdition.”

Some looked at those images and saw an affirmation of the universality of American ideals; others saw a violation of the particularities of American culture, such as the use of English. Some saw exceptionalism and strength; others adulteration and threat.

As a policy issue, immigration reform is complex, with serious arguments about the economic effects of migrants on the native-born working class and serious questions about more adversarial forms of multiculturalism. But it is this immediate reaction, this habit of mind, that has large political implications.

After decades of participation and reflection, here is my proposal for the most basic truth of politics: Human beings know if they are welcome at a party or not. . . . For this reason, effective ethnic politics (and not just ethnic politics) is actually a form of hospitality: Please make yourself at home. 

“People don’t care how much you know,” said my old boss, the late Jack Kemp, “until they know how much you care.” Sometimes politics really is this simple. After all the arguments about economics and assimilation, people understand if they are viewed as a threat to the predominant culture. They know if their voice is not welcome in the national chorus. And this does have implications for political philosophy.

I saw Kemp’s frustration with the direction of his party. “We sound like we don’t want immigration,” he said. “We sound like we don’t want black people to vote for us. What are we going to do — meet in a country club in the suburbs one day?”

The shift to a more welcoming GOP message toward immigrants won’t happen in a single rush. It is not reasonable to expect Boehner to buck much of his conference without broader reinforcement. This will take donors and business groups willing to support pro-reform House and Senate candidates against tea party challenges  . . . . And it will require a presidential candidate in 2016 who offers something more than walls topped in barbed wire and self-deportation. 

But the most important change that is needed is the hardest to achieve: A genuine welcome to the party. And an honest prayer: Dios derramó su gracia sobre ti.

Frankly, Gerson is engaged in a fantasy if he expects this change to happen.  Given the way the GOP surrendered the party grass roots to Christofascist - most of whom are racists - and white supremacists changing the course of the GOP will be like trying to keep the Titanic afloat after if hit the ice berg.  Combined with this is the reality that no one in the GOP leadership has the guts  or common decency to call out the nasty elements of the party base.  

Racists - GOP Base ? - Goes Berserk Over Coke "America the Beautiful" Super Bowl Ad

As we watched the Coca-Cola Super Bowl "America the Beautiful" ad (a clip is set out above) last night I said to a friend basically, "OMG, the GOP base and Christofascists are going to go berserk."  And sure enough, these "Real Americans" are apoplectic over the fact that the ad featured any language other than English and, God forbid, non-whites and even a gay couple.  The batshitery has been off the charts and underscores the reality that the GOP base is comprised of raging racists who are enraged that their days of unchallenged white privilege are in their twilight.   America Blog looks at some of the spittle flecked hysterics.  The take away message?  That these people are neither nice or decent.  They would have fit in well with the Nazis in the 1930's.  Here are post excerpts:

In an effort to make up for the company’s disastrous sponsorship of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, Coca-Cola decided to run a feel-good, diversity-laden Super Bowl commercial, with lots of real Americans singing “America the Beautiful.”  In Spanish.  And then a number of other not-god-d*mn-English languages.  Oops.

Putting aside for a moment the fact that Olympic security are detaining gay dissidents in Russia, and handing them over to the Russian police, while sporting Coca-Cola’s logo all over their security uniforms, Coke’s ad isn’t bad. It’s actually quite nice (if you can ignore the fact that Coke has decided to sponsor, and then defend, the arrest of human rights activists outside of America the beautiful).

Among conservatives now freaking out is none other than Glenn Beck, who appears to think that Coke designed the ad to make Republicans look bad.  Of course, all of this has made conservatives look bad, but not for the reason they think.

You’ll recall that we had similar racist eruptions over an adorable Mexican-American boy singing the national anthem during the NBA finals, and when American singer Marc Anthony was lambasted for singing “God bless America” while Latino (it seems major league baseball fans were unfamiliar with the fact that Puerto Rico, while brown, is still part of the United States).

The only way things could have gone worse for Coke is if they had the national anthem sung by an inter-racial girl eating Cheerios.

Here’s a smattering of the racist response on – where else? – YouTube, land of the bigoted and home of the bravely intolerant:

Here’s a smattering of the racist response on – where else? – YouTube, land of the bigoted and home of the bravely intolerant (click the images below to enlarge):

 

There's more in the post, but you get the drift.  

What baffles me is that these racist cretins seemingly do not know that Florida was settled by the SPANISH a century before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock and that California and much of the American Southwest was a part of Mexico for well over a century before Texas became a part of the United States or that the first explorers and settlers of of California were SPANISH.  The Hispanics were in these regions of the United States LONG before the English settlers.    

Coca-Cola Has Learned Nothing From History

Learning history's lessons is important if humanity is to avoid past horrors  Sadly, Coca-Cola seemingly hasn't learned anything.  The company was prominent in the 1936 Summer Games in Hitler's Berlin.  Now, the company is again on the wrong side of history and equality at Vladimir Putin's 2104 Winter games in Sochi.  I do not plan on drinking a Coke ever again.  I'm even tempted to pour the cans sitting in the garage down the drain.   

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola is trying to downplay its sponsorship of the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.  Yet, apparently it has banned the word 'gay' from its customisable 'share a Coke' function.  Was it an oversight?