In 2007, a widely forwarded email went viral, claiming that then-candidate Barack Obama hoped to replace the national anthem with Coca-Cola's 1971 advertising campaign song "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)." The email claimed that Obama had actually said that during an appearance on "Meet the Press," while explaining why he didn't wear an American flag pin and refused to put his hand over his heart when the anthem was played, suggesting that if the Coke jingle replaced the anthem, "then I might salute it." According to the email, Obama went on to say the U.S. flag should be redesigned; that the U.S. should disarm "to the level of acceptance to our Middle East Brethren"; and that when he was president, "CHANGE" would quickly "overwhelm the United States of America."
From the distance of 15 years, it's easy to chalk that viral email — whose text was originally intended as satire — up as the same kind of "fake news" that proliferated during Donald Trump's presidential campaign, with Facebook posts and Macedonian-owned websites claiming that Obama had just banned the Pledge of Allegiance or the pope had endorsed Trump. After two years of moral panic around critical race theory, it's also easy to recognize the subtext that a Black person is unpatriotic by definition.
