{"id":803,"date":"2004-12-15T10:15:40","date_gmt":"2004-12-15T17:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=803"},"modified":"2004-12-15T10:15:40","modified_gmt":"2004-12-15T17:15:40","slug":"part-4-the-coca-cola-betrayal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2004\/12\/15\/part-4-the-coca-cola-betrayal\/","title":{"rendered":"Part 4: The Coca Cola Betrayal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name=\"003090\"><\/a>Sometime in high school, I was at a seminar in New Mexico where a Coca Cola executive talked before us. He relayed the story of how Coca Cola created the modern image of Santa Clause.<\/p>\n<p>I did not know then but I do know now that the man was lying through his teeth &#8212; propping up a corporate myth on the backs of a supposedly great Commercial Holiday for the sake of the bottom line.<\/p>\n<p>But then again, the man reeked like a used car salesman. He also sold us the line about &#8220;New Coke&#8221; being a clever marketing ploy, a throwaway product to resell Old Coke to the public.<\/p>\n<p>When I was a child, my dad dressed up as Santa Clause. I knew it was my dad, but I went through the motions anyway. I begged him for a Cabbage Patch Kid. I whined and cojoled him, threatening to rip off his beard if he didn&#8217;t deliver my Precious Cabbage Patch Kid. The next year I did the same thing only this time for a Transformer.<\/p>\n<p>Coca Cola has destroyed that image of my childhood. They claimed to own that childhood, taking it away from where it belongs: the makers of those Cabbage Patch Kids, the Transformers, and those Saturday Morning cartoon tv commercials that told me I wanted them. I bought into into the Coke myth. And then they sold me out.<\/p>\n<p>A pox on their house! <\/p>\n<p>May Pepsi Cola Eat them alive!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometime in high school, I was at a seminar in New Mexico where a Coca Cola executive talked before us. He relayed the story of how Coca Cola created the modern image of Santa Clause. I did not know then but I do know now that the man was lying through his teeth &#8212; propping [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-skrull-and-brones-the-best-of"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}