Besides the "Big Game"

I couldn't stand to watch the game. It wasn't my Niners playing and that hurt.

However, I did peek in every so often to watch a few (awful) plays and see how far down the hill the game went. And I did spot the Budweiser commercial (that was cute).

I might have seen them in a different order, but I then remember seeing the Coca-Cola commercial with "America the Beautiful".

That hit home pretty hard for me. I like listening to other languages, though I still find it hard to listen to tele-novellas because the acting seems so stilted. (Now that I think about it, I have a difficult time with soaps here in the States.)

Listening to where the beats fell for the alternate languages in the song was something special. I've never heard this song sung so sweetly and tenderly. Even when the alternate language had more syllables made my heart tug ever so lovingly.

And I would have been fine at that, except I then went on the Internet to find the commercial and found out that there are a lot of Americans who were offended by the choice for a multi-language song.

One small part of me wants to shout them down. One small part of me wants to join the other "enlightened" people and degrade these imbeciles for their comments.

And then I think. Calling these xenophobes "imbeciles" would not solve this problem.

Problem. This is a problem. Although we have the Internet and allowed many more "remotely located" people to engage in conversation, we still allow our own selves to be insulated from other cultures. How? By interacting only with those who are just like our own selves.

What we ALL should be doing is talking to people who are different from ourselves and understanding one another. Instead of pointing out the terrorists and giving these terrorists the spotlight, we should shine our attention to the people who are sensible and hard working, regardless of the language they speak or the religion they worship or the food they cook.

But who am I to point fingers? Yeah, I'm just an American who grew up here in the States speaking conversational English. Yeah, my parents also speak conversational English but grew up in the Philippines learning English. Yeah, I'm an American who revels in the sound of other spoken languages because I'm finding the sound of English dull and blunt.

And, yes, I loved that commercial and Coca-Cola should play it again if they know what's good for the country.