The CVS drugstore chain recently decided it will stop selling tobacco products. One applauds CVS for taking a stand on the side of a healthier populace. Of course, that stand became a controversial issue of personal rights according to Fox News.
One wonders if Fox would also prefer the nanny state retreat from regulations on food inspections, speed limits, and licensing of medical professionals.
Sadly, there will always be an undies-in-a-bunch someone who will find something to criticize.
The CVS drugstore chain recently decided it will stop selling tobacco products. One applauds CVS for taking a stand on the side of a healthier populace. Of course, that stand became a controversial issue of personal rights according to Fox News.
One wonders if Fox would also prefer the nanny state retreat from regulations on food inspections, speed limits, and licensing of medical professionals.
Sadly, there will always be an undies-in-a-bunch someone who will find something to criticize.
Take the recent kerfuffle over an ad aired during the Super Bowl. It seems that Coca-Cola had the temerity to picture Americans of different ethnicities singing “America the Beautiful” in their native tongues. Thanks to social media, the umbrage taken was swift and acrimonious.
Blogging for site Breitbart, Michael Patrick Leahy complained about Coke's use of the song, calling it "a deeply Christian patriotic anthem whose theme is unity…As far as the executives at Coca Cola are concerned,” wrote Leahy, “the United States of America is no longer a nation ruled by the Constitution and American traditions in which English is the language of government.”
Former congressman Alan West fumed on his website, "If we cannot be proud enough as a country to sing 'American the Beautiful' in English in a commercial during the Super Bowl, by a company as American as they come—doggone we are on the road to perdition.”
And the twittersphere exploded with barely-thought-out bashing, like “Characters in these cola commercials, from Mexicans to Indians, learn to SpeakAmerican already!” and “Nice to see that Coke likes to sing an AMERICAN song in the terrorist's language.”
And so we find ourselves at this moment in our nation's history, where a dwindling segment of the population rants in protest over any development that does not confirm their memory of how things once were or reflect their opinion of how things should be. That is to say, a paler portion of the American demographic has the heebie-jeebies over how the country is changing.
They are not completely to blame; a certain part of the media stokes and panders to their fear. This is an extremely effective strategy for selling commercial time on your not-so-accurate news channel or your bloviating radio talk show, to say nothing of selling ad space on your rabble-rousing website or moving your latest conservative screed up the best-seller list.
But the fuss over the Coca-Cola ad says most about those doing the grumbling. The knee-jerk condemnation of the ad speaks volumes about the insecurities of those doing the condemning.
Honestly, you are uptight because someone isn't speaking English? You are up in arms because there are so many Americans who don't look, think, or speak exactly like you?
Maybe the ones who need to assimilate more sincerely are the folks still living in some fictional America the past.
Pat Grimes, a former South Bay resident, writes from Ypsilanti, Mich. He can be reached at pgwriter@inbox.com
