If you felt like Coca-Cola's multilingual "America, the Beautiful" ad somehow dishonored this country, then shame on you.
Advertisements infect every aspect of our digitally connected lives. One brief message may not have an immediate impact, but a continual bombardment gradually changes peoples' perceptions of reality. Too often corporations use this to sell harmful ideas, especially to our youth--ideas like the objectification of women, solving problems through violence, or the predominance of white people (specifically men) as a normality. Eventually these ideas become our culture. It casts a damning light on the United States that some of us felt threatened by one advertisement--a 60-second video--as though it were somehow destroying this culture instead of enriching it.
But, for every person offended by the ad, I've seen someone who appreciates it for crossing cultural boundaries and welcoming the country's growing diversity. At least there's some hope.
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