Word: cola
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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France's Communist press bristled with warnings against U.S. "Coca-Colonization." Coke salesmen were described as agents of the OSS and the U.S. State Department. "Tremble," roared Vienna's Communist Der Abend, "Coca-Cola is on the march...
Taste & Toxicity. Last November the Reds introduced a bill into the French Assembly to "prohibit the import, manufacture and sale of Coca-Cola in France, Algeria and the French colonial empire." A Communist deputy shouted at France's Health Minister: "Are you going to permit the poisoning of French men & women by this toxic American drink being sold on the grands boulevards of Paris?" Health Minister Pierre Schneiter answered calmly: "Let the French drink what they like and trust their good taste." That good sense carried the day and the Communist bill was defeated...
Meanwhile, the Communists had found unexpected allies: France's wine growers and the complacently chauvinistic members of Premier Bidault's own M.R.P. Paris' L0 Monde spoke for the conservatives: "What the French criticize [in Coca-Cola] is less the drink itself than the civilization, the style of life of which it is a sign and ... a symbol. . . red delivery trucks and walls covered with signs, placards and advertisements ... It is a question of the whole panorama and morale of French civilization...
Other smug but nonpartisan Frenchmen took up this battle cry. "I like Coca-Cola," wrote a M. Dreyfus to the Paris Herald, "but [Coca-Cola's advertising] has ripped deep into what the French treasure most-their language. One now sees posters and trucks bearing the inscription 'Buvez Coca-Cola.' You can say 'Buvez du Coca-Cola' or 'Buvez le Coca-Cola' but you cannot say 'Buvez Coca-Cola' because this is pidgin French...
...laugh at such antics of the mid-century American; he did a good deal of laughing at himself, knowing that he had come far in a hurry and was somewhat ludicrously unsure of where he was or where he was going. Munching a chocolate bar, drinking a Coca-Cola, the American bestrode the narrow world; what he would do next was a prime question in the minds of men everywhere...