Dive Brief:

• Coca-Cola, the soft drink that has become a symbol of America across the globe, aired a soft-hearted commercial that touched upon that symbolism during last night's Super Bowl. 
• The ad featured soaring images of America and the sound of immigrants singing "America the Beautiful" in multiple languages. 
• The commercial unleashed a social-media firestorm of racism, hate, ignorance, and a call to boycott Coke.

Dive Insight:

If you want to truly understand America, the Super Bowl is the place to start. It's a massive, garish, absurd spectacle that confuses patriotism with commercialism, homoeroticism with masculinity, and freedom with beverage consumption.

The idea, somehow, is that the Super Bowl is celebrated by Americans because the Super Bowl, somehow, celebrates America. But it does no such thing. It's a game. And a bunch of commercials. All carefully packaged and marketed to appeal to people who think America is super and football is super and beer is super, etc.  

But someone should have warned Coke that "America the Beautiful" is a very different sort of celebration of America. It's about America's ideals of brotherhood, the wonders and abundance of this land, and the grace that God has bestowed upon us. It is a song in which the people of America sing of their shortcomings and ask that "God mend thine every flaw"  It is a song that, by its very nature, can't be understood by millions of people who seem to confuse it with Queen's "We Are The Champions."

Yesterday, before the game, we happened to chat with a neighbor. He came here years ago, raised his children here. He loves this land in a way that native-born folks simply can't — because he remembers life in the absence of America, in the absence of freedom.

But this country still confuses him. And yesterday he wanted to talk about the upcoming football game. "The Super Bowl.... it is very popular with dumb people, yes?"

"Yes," I told him. "It is."