Why the Coke Ad is Good for America

The ad was as sicky sweet and schmaltzy as the drink itself.  The commercial for Coca Cola where young people sing “America the Beautiful” in nine different languages first aired a couple weeks ago during the Super Bowl and then replayed in a longer version during the Olympics Opening Ceremony.

It’s been years since I drank a Coke, but the ad almost made me gag as much as that crude oil-like high fructose corn syrup does.  I didn’t even want to think about the damage the drink would do to the teeth, stomachs and weight of those adorable singers.  Or how this ad was going to cause similar damage to the body politic.

Because the outrage was so predictable: “Un-American!”  “Boycott Coke!” were the immediate trending tweets and Fox diatribes. Glen Beck said the ad was intentionally “divisive,” and black former Congressmember Allen West said it showed “we are on the road to perdition.” “Speak English or go home!”

Trouble is, of course, that these folks can’t go home: America is home for all the young and old who sang the lovely, very religious song in English, Spanish, Tagalog, Mandarin, Hindi, Hebrew, Keres (a native American language), French and Arabic.  (Several news sources said eight languages, as if only the non-English versions counted as “languages.”)

As Jon Stewart said on the Daily Show, “How American can they be?  They’re singing America the Beautiful while drinking Coca Cola!”  Then he went on in a typical delightful rant: “Maybe they’d be more American if they were openly carrying a gun shaped like Jesus while using a bald eagle strap-on to fuck an apple pie, for God’s sake.”

So thanks, Coke, for reminding us what idiots so many conservative Fox News-loving Americans are.  We know they’re out there, but it’s good every once in a while to see how really childish and knee jerk stupid they are, so predictable and shallow, so desperately clinging to a past that never existed.  Those shrinking and shriveled older generations of fearful white rural farmers may switch to Pepsi, but the growing diverse younger citizens will only laugh.

And of course, sadly, they will keep drinking that shit.  Companies don’t pay $4 million for a 30 second Super Bowl ad if they don’t think it will increase sales.  (And this was a really good ad, because you could tell in about 5 seconds what the product was, and you remembered it afterwards.  Such ads are so rare these days.)

And as my fellow citizens keep drinking this crap, and I (happily) help pay for universal health insurance, I worry more about the damage done by sugary drinks to our bodies than to our nation’s mythic Valhalla.  All that saccharine poison (Americans drink 2 cans of soda every day) adds extra pounds, rots teeth and contributes to osteoporosis, reduced bone density.  That’s the real threat to America, old fat people with no teeth and broken hips. 

But I say the ad is good for America?  Well for the above reasons; it showed how stupid and shallow English-only conservative crackpots are.  And it helped us laugh a little – thanks, Jon.

But I must admit I also think it might actually have done some good education and inspiration about what American really does look like these days.  Americans speak hundreds of languages, not just those nine.  The majority of Americans are young and female, more and more non-white, unlike what you see on the evening news or the halls of Congress.

So simply for those diverse folks to see faces like their own on TV – that’s a good thing.

Lt. Uhura Chief Communications Officer, USS EnterpriseI was reminded of the story of Lt. Uhura of Star Trek and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Cast your minds back to 1968 when African American actor Nichelle Nichols played the fourth in command of the Starship Enterprise on the original TV series Star Trek.  She was considering leaving the series after one season because she wanted to go back to her true love, Broadway theater.  Here’s how she described it to National Public Radio a couple years ago:

I went in to tell Gene Roddenberry that I was leaving after the first season, and he was very upset about it. And he said, take the weekend and think about what I am trying to achieve here in this show. You're an integral part and very important to it. And so I said, yes, I would. And that - on Saturday night, I went to an NACCP fundraiser, I believe it was, in Beverly Hills. And one of the promoters came over to me and said, Ms. Nichols, there's someone who would like to meet you. He says he is your greatest fan.

And I'm thinking a Trekker, you know. And I turn, and before I could get up, I looked across the way and there was the face of Dr. Martin Luther King smiling at me and walking towards me. And he started laughing. By the time he reached me, he said, yes, Ms. Nichols, I am your greatest fan. I am that Trekkie.

And I was speechless. He complimented me on the manner in which I'd created the character. I thanked him, and I think I said something like, Dr. King, I wish I could be out there marching with you. He said, no, no, no. No, you don't understand. We don't need you on the - to march. You are marching. You are reflecting what we are fighting for. So, I said to him, thank you so much. And I'm going to miss my co-stars.

And his face got very, very serious. And he said, what are you talking about? And I said, well, I told Gene just yesterday that I'm going to leave the show after the first year because I've been offered - and he stopped me and said: You cannot do that. And I was stunned. He said, don't you understand what this man has achieved? For the first time, we are being seen the world over as we should be seen. He says, do you understand that this is the only show that my wife Coretta and I will allow our little children to stay up and watch. I was speechless. 

Later in the interview Nichols says that Whoopi Goldberg told her she watched Star Trek as a nine year old just to watch Lt. Uhura.  “She told me she turned on the TV and saw me and went running through the house screaming: Come quick, come quick.  There’s a black lady on TV and she ain’t no maid.”

Kids of all races and ethnicities see folks who look like them a lot more today on TV than they did in 1968, but we’ve still got a long way to go.  Some future Rev. King might have seen that Coke commercial and heard America the Beautiful in their own language and gotten a tiny bit more self esteem. 

That’s good for America.

Copyright © 2014 Deborah Streeter

It Was 50 Years Ago Today

Marsha Albert 15 year old Marsha Albert watched Walter Cronkite’s nightly TV newscast on Dec. 10, 1963, in her home in Silver Springs, Maryland, and wrote a letter that night that changed music history.

Earlier that day Walter Cronkite decided to air a segment in his nightly show that he had been sitting on for three weeks.  He’d only been the anchor of the CBS nightly news for a year (after a distinguished journalism start in WWII and radio) and he was helping to shape the still new TV phenomenon of evening broadcast news.  Later he was called “the most trusted man in America” for the way he wrote and delivered news all through the 60’s and 70’s.

But that night he simply decided to air a story he had intended to run on Nov. 22.  Not breaking news, obviously, but a piece about a British band, the Beatles, who were gaining in popularity in their native land.  The four minute piece showed some concert footage from Bournemouth, screaming young women fans and a few sound bites from the lads.  It was actually aired on the CBS morning news Nov. 22.

But events in Dallas that day cancelled all regular news programming, and the piece sat on the shelf.  Like the slow return to normal newscasts following 9/11, Cronkite didn’t think it seemly to show a grieving nation these foreign happy boys singing a very new kind of music, and girls a little out of control in ecstasy.

Until Dec. 10.  In a fascinating essay Martin Lewis, who knew Cronkite and helped organize the 2004 40^th anniversary of the so-called British Invasion of the US by the Beatles, recounts how Cronkite decided that day that “the nation recovering from tragedy might be warmed by a light-hearted story.”

Marsha Albert saw the piece (do 15 year olds still watch the evening news?) and liked the music.  So much that she sat down and wrote a letter to her local radio DJ and asked, “Why can’t we have music like that in America?”  (Do 15 year olds still write letters?)

Carroll James and Marsha AlbertDJ Carroll James of station WWDC had seen the show too and agreed.  He didn’t know that Brian Epstein had finally convinced Capitol Records to release a Beatles album in the US in late January and had persuaded Ed Sullivan to book the unknown Beatles on his popular Sunday night variety show Feb. 9, 1964.  James just wanted to please a listener and boost his ratings.  So he contacted the local office of BOAC airlines, who got a flight attendant (then called a stewardess) to get a copy of “I Want To Hold Your Hand” in London and bring to DC two days later.

James invited Marsha Albert to the station to introduce the very first playing of the song in the US, Dec. 17. You can hear her intro here. The response was immediate; listeners in DC and then NY and Chicago demanded more and more play time for this new band.  Capitol Records heard of the groundswell and decided to release the record a month before they had planned.  They got the record in stores within a week and put the marketing campaign into overdrive.  Kids over Christmas vacation had time and money to buy the record and listen to it.  In the first two weeks after release Capitol Records sold over one million copies of “I Want To Hold Your Hand.”

The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan ShowThe Beatles with Ed SullivanWe usually think that the Beatles’ US success began with their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.  But actually, by the time the Beatles plane landed at the newly renamed JFK airport (Dec. 24^th 1963 its name was changed, a month after Kennedy’s assassination) on Feb. 7, with millions of records already sold in the US,  they were already a media sensation of unimaginable proportions.  The Ed Sullivan Show appearance, originally booked as just one of many new musicians they had weekly, was now a hugely anticipated event. An unknown band would not have gotten 73 million Americans to tune in.  But on Feb. 9, that’s how many folks watched, 40% of the nation’s population.  (In today’s terms that would have been 123 million viewers in the US alone.)  The crime rate dropped dramatically because everyone (robbers and victims) was home watching.  Talk to any American over 55 and they remember that night.

I know I do.  It was, in Ed Sullivan’s inimitable phrase, “a really big shew.” I was 13, another screaming hormone-driven fan, my bedroom covered with Beatles pictures.  My favorite was George.

50 years later, we’ve been inundated, and treated, for the past few weeks with Beatles tributes, all over press, radio and film.  Great old stories, old songs, old clips.   And new stories, to me at least, like the one about Marsha Albert.

So thanks John, Paul, George and Ringo for coming to the US and waking us up and turning us on.  Thanks, Walter, for airing that show.  And thanks, Marsha, for wanting more of that kind of music and writing your letter.  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Copyright © 2014 Deborah Streeter

Why I Dislike the Google Buses

If I lived in San Francisco I might very well join the Google bus protestors.  I’d stand with them in the street, in the dark early mornings, and block one of the many huge anonymous buses which Google provides for thousands of its employees, to give them a free ride to Silicon Valley.

I’d hold up my sign, like the ones I’ve seen on TV: “Stop the Tech Gentrifiction of SF” and “Warning: Illegal Use of Public Infrastructure.”

It’s a small group that mounts these occasional public protests, no match for the mighty Google and the mighty tech world that has changed the face of San Francisco.  The buses are only temporarily slowed, not stopped.  Of course the protestors know that cities and economies are always changing.  They just want folks to know the cost of those changes.

San Francisco has actively encouraged more tech companies to move in, along with tech workers, often young, who like city living.  But many still have to work an hour away in Silicon Valley, and Google was the first major tech company to offer free buses.  Now many companies do. 

With all the new buildings, and all the new workers, SF neighborhoods are changing overnight.   The minority population is shrinking dramatically; Asian American and African American renters, a long historical presence in SF, are vanishing.  As rents have skyrocketed, the elderly, artists, young non-techies, families, are forced out.  Many landlords are getting around rent control and leases with very questionable evictions.  More and more service workers, the folks who make a city run, can no longer afford to live in the city, but commute from farther and farther away.  The public schools offer no free buses to the teachers who come from 2 hours away to teach in SF.  Same with the garbage collectors and the workers at all those coffee shops that fuel the techies.

The buses are just a symbol, of course, of all these sudden and sad changes.  There’s nothing wrong with buses.  They’re a good thing, keeping thousands of workers from clogging the roads and clogging the air with their own cars, keeping lanes open for other drivers.  I’ve always been in favor of vanpools and rideshares.   Why protest bus riders?

Because I dislike how those big fancy plush buses just muscle their way around the city with no awareness of their impact.  The companies didn’t talk with the city, got no permits, paid no fees. They just showed up, and started picking up their passengers.  And they pick them up at the bus stops that the city built and maintains for the public city-owned Muni buses. 

That’s what galls me.  They just pull into the Muni bus stops.  Sometimes the public buses the rest of us use aren’t able to get past the behemoths to pull up to the curb.  And the Google buses are much wider than the Muni buses.  No problem if only they would stick to the wide streets.  But no, they go through the little neighborhoods picking up techies and blocking the way.  Everyone else, the workers and the kids going to school, they have to wait, they pay a fare, and they get no anonymous free ride with a toilet.

Google’s attitude reminds me of the Republican outraged victim comments after Obama said during the election, “You didn’t build that.”  You didn’t build the bridges and the system of low cost government grants and farm subsidies.  And the bus stops.  Republicans and Google act like they just arose one day fully formed and fully independent.  And fully arrogant.

(Just last week the city finally reached an agreement with the tech companies to pay a very paltry fee to use the bus stops.  And maybe to think about using only the wider streets and having the poor weak young workers walk a block or two for their free ride. I can’t help thinking the protests forced the city’s hand.)

My imagined protests sound a little petty, really.  I’m probably just jealous these workers are smart enough to get nice perks like a ride to work, not to mention free fresh food and rock climbing walls and dry cleaning on premise when they get to Mountain View.

Poor me, and poor San Franciscans, experiencing finally the dramatic income inequality and class warfare, the giant anonymous privilege and arrogance of the 1% that has plagued cities around the world forever.

But I’d still probably go out a few mornings and protest.  Then I’d go home and fire up my Apple computer and check my Facebook page and look for something on Google.  Thanks, tech workers, for making my life easier and more interesting.

Copyright © 2014 Deborah Streeter

Palo Colorado

I hiked the other day for several miles along Palo Colorado Creek.  I stopped for a while in the Fairy Ring, a large circle of 100 ft. tall second-growth redwoods, who solemnly stand, as if holding hands, around a soft clearing where once stood one giant old growth redwood.  I stood in that circle ankle deep in a carpet of redwood duff, deep red dead needles and bark slowly turning into soil, birthing the old growth into new.

The coast redwoods in my canyon, sequoia sempervirans, were extensively logged 150 years ago, along with most of California’s giant trees.  Of the 2 million acres of redwood forest that stood before loggers arrived with their giant hand saws, and later steam powered donkey engines, only 4% still remains, half in parks, the other half still controversially logged.

From Palo Colorado Canyon (which means redwood canyon in Spanish) the trees were hauled out by oxen, loaded onto ships on the rough Big Sur Coast, milled at Felton or Davenport, and used to rebuild San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.  Giant stumps line our canyon with hewn indentations 8 feet above ground where loggers stood on boards notched into the trunk and slowly toppled the tree.

One old growth tree still stands on our four acre property, spared probably because of its tricky location in a steep creek bed.  We call it Big Red.

California redwoods are the tallest trees in the world, reaching over 370 ft, 120 meters, like walking along through a forest of 35 story buildings.  They are also the largest living tree by mass volume, up to 2000 tons, the size of 20 blue whales.  And they live a long time, as much as 3500 years.

California author John Steinbeck said about redwood trees, "The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always...From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which sees to shift and vary under your eyes, no then are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time."

Actually then are from another time, the Jurassic period to be exact. Stephen Spielberg was correct in placing T.Rex among the redwoods; the dinosaurs may be long gone, but the sequoia still stand tall. Once populous on most continents, their range shrank as the world warmed, now only on the California coast and Sierra foothills. They depend on coastal fog for 40% of their moisture, since they don't have a tap root. Their extensive root system, strong enough to hold up a 2000 ton tree against coastal storms, extends not down (only 10 ft) but out, up to 80 ft from the base.

I learned about these wide roots from a suicide prevention counselor. She told a group of us ministers that we need to emulate the redwoods; they extend their roots out widely not only for precious water but also for mutual support - they literally grab onto each other when the storms come.

Buddhist botanist Stephanie Kaza says, "Redwoods are the yogis of the forest," silent and wise and deep. Their longevity comes in part from their very thick bark, full of resin that resists fire and prevents decay from insects.

They are also one of the few trees that can reproduce without seeds; new sprouts can form from a stump or from a downed tree's roots, as a clone. Hence the Fairy Ring around the ghost of a former Big Red, and the new trees that rise from those old lumbered stumps.

Activist Julia Butterfly Hill sat atop a 180 ft redwood she called Luna for 738 days in the Late 90's to prevent the Pacific Lumber Company from felling it, and to draw attention to the plight of these rare and wise trees. She was somewhat successful - Luna still stands and lumber companies have made at least a public relations commitment to sustainable forestry practices.

Californians realized early that special beauty of redwood groves and have set apart some magnificent ones: I recommend Big Basin State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the first of our state parks, 1902, and Muir Woods, just 12 miles north of San Francisco, a magical spot. I stopped at Muir Woods once on my way to a dreaded church meeting and got some good advice. I have a card, "Advice from a Tree" hanging in my bedroom:

Advice From a Tree
Dear Friend
Stand Tall and Proud
Sink your roots deeply into the Earth
Reflect the light of your true nature
Think long term
Go out on a limb
Remember your place among all living beings
Embrace with joy the changing seasons
For each yields its own abundance
The energy and Birth of Spring
The Growth and Contentment of Summer
The wisdom to let go like leaves in the Fall
The rest and Quiet renewal of Winter

Feel the wind and the sun
And delight in their presence
Look up at the moon that shines down upon you
And the mystery of the stars at night
Seek nourishment from the good things in life
Simple pleasures
Earth, fresh air, light
Be content with your natural beauty
Drink plenty of water
Le your limbs sway and dance in the breezes
Be flexible
Remember your roots
Enjoy the view!
(Ilan Shamir)

Copyright © Deborah Streeter

MLK: “I Accept…. and I Refuse to Accept…”

“I talked in Washington in 1963 about my dream, and we stood there in those high moments with high hopes.  But over and over again I’ve seen this dream turn into a nightmare.”

When we celebrate the birthday of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. every year in January we like to reminisce about his dream-y speech.  But we often forget that in the next, and last, 4 years of King’s life he watched that dream become a nightmare. 

In those years King became less and less willing to limit his work to “simply” civil rights.  He spoke increasingly about poverty as much as race.  And he condemned, early and unpopularly, the Vietnam War. He deplored the $500,000 spent to kill each Vietnamese soldier while President Johnson’s War on Poverty spent only $53 per person each year.  Criticized by both blacks and whites for naming going beyond civil and voting rights, he said it made no difference if a lunch counter were integrated if the person could not afford a meal.  Condemning the war in a way that was far to the left of mainstream at that time, he despaired that blacks were 11% of the population but 25% of the drafted soldiers.  

FBI Director Herbert Hoover had ordered King followed and wiretapped in 1962, and sent Johnson daily messages that King was a communist.  King aide Andrew Young said they found FBI microphones hidden in church pulpits and would move them to the top for better sound.  But they were not so amused, after King’s assassination, to learn that Hoover had been well aware of death threats against King that he never reported.

Why does this sound so familiar?  An American government that cares more about foreign wars than the ever-widening income gap?  A racial divide only deepened by generations of poverty?  An intelligence community that spies on its own citizens?  We love to hear about that dream, but we too are still living in a nightmare.

I heard a good radio program this week about Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s last year, 1967-68, called “King’s Last March.”  Here’s a link to the program’s transcript.  I recommend it.  It got me thinking back to King’s speech 50 years ago, in 1964, accepting the Nobel Peach Prize.

Read the speech below, especially his litany, “I refuse to accept….”  I wonder what he might have added to this speech today, if he had lived his deserved 85 years, what he would have refused to accept in 2014.  Maybe NSA surveillance of American citizens.

            *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, Mr. President, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen: I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when twenty-two million Negroes of the United States are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award on behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice.

I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs, and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder.

Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle, and to a movement which has not yet won the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence of the Nobel Prize. After contemplation, I conclude that this award, which I receive on behalf of that movement, is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.

Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later, all the peoples of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

The torturous road which has led from Montgomery, Alabama, to Oslo bears witness to this truth, and this is a road over which millions of Negroes are traveling to find a new sense of dignity. This same road has opened for all Americans a new era of progress and hope. It has led to a new civil rights bill, and it will, I am convinced, be widened and lengthened into a superhighway of justice as Negro and white men in increasing numbers create alliances to overcome their common problems.

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history.

I refuse to accept the idea that the "is-ness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "ought-ness" that forever confronts him.

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of nuclear annihilation.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow.

I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men.

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.

I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up.

I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed and nonviolent redemptive goodwill proclaimed the rule of the land. And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid.

I still believe that we shall overcome.

This faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.

Today I come to Oslo as a trustee, inspired and with renewed dedication to humanity. I accept this prize on behalf of all men who love peace and brotherhood. I say I come as a trustee, for in the depths of my heart I am aware that this prize is much more than an honor to me personally. Every time I take a flight I am always mindful of the many people who make a successful journey possible, the known pilots and the unknown ground crew. You honor the dedicated pilots of our struggle, who have sat at the controls as the freedom movement soared into orbit. You honor, once again, Chief Lutuli of South Africa, whose struggles with and for his people are still met with the most brutal expression of man's inhumanity to man. You honor the ground crew, without whose labor and sacrifice the jet flights to freedom could never have left the earth. Most of these people will never make the headlines, and their names will never appear in Who's Who. Yet, when years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvelous age in which we live, men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness' sake.

I think Alfred Nobel would know what I mean when I say I accept this award in the spirit of a curator of some precious heirloom which he holds in trust for its true owners: all those to whom truth is beauty, and beauty, truth, and in whose eyes the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold. Thank you.

Copyright © 2014 Deborah Streeter