I’d like to teach the world to think

The newest version goes something like
“I’d like to teach the world to chill
take time to stop and smile
I’d like to buy the world a Coke (TM)
and chill with it a while”
When this stupid, creepy, fake hippie, crapitude first came out I was about 9 years old. I had a room full of Jack Wilde and Bobby Sherman posters, plastic inflatable flowers and peace sign pillows, I was probably wearing a plastic ecology sign necklace and still, I was not buying that line of shite.
In fact it was so very Parkay margarine schmaltzy it actually caused me to take a bit of a harder look at myself and start backing off just a little.
A couple years later when I heard Frank Zappa sing
“Every town must have a place where phony hippies meet
psychedelic dungeons popping up on every street”
I’d see in my mind’s eye that rinsed out blonde in the Ophelia dress with her daisy head singing crap to sell crap.
Dear Coca-Cola,
We weren’t fooled by your cultural co-opting then, and I doubt very much that the kids whose culture you’re seeking to co-opt now, are buying it either. The fact that you use chill twice in the same verse to attempt to doubly emphasize the very hipness of the very white boy singing, just causes me to say feh, no, make that double feh.
Thanks a bunch for decades of crapitude.
Love,
Stella