Here, to begin with, is the exhaustive list of Coca-Cola products you will have to boycott if you found the soda company's stirring, patriotic ad aired during the Super Bowl offensive.

Apparently, my Facebook newsfeed wasn't the only place lighting up with threats of boycotts after the Coke ad, featuring the singing of what I feel should be our National Anthem — America the Beautiful — in eight different languages aired.

It also, I discovered later, featured two gay dads in it.

I don't see how you could not like this ad. Of course, as I have mentioned before, I am the grandson of an Albanian immigrant who made his way to America more than a century ago. I understood what Coke was doing, besides selling soda, and appreciated what they were doing.

I am proud of my heritage and don't feel the multi-lingual singing of one of our most treasured patriotic anthems in any way desecrates the flag, the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence that a group of immigrants crafted when they built this new nation.

We seem to have forgotten, in our lust to wrap ourselves in the red, white and blue, that we wouldn't be here if it weren't for the British, the Irish, the Germans, the Greeks, the Italians and Albanians and a multitude of other nationalities that built this country.

Those who are not sons or grandsons of the foreign-speaking immigrants like myself — my grandfather spoke Albanian, Greek and learned English, by the way — seemed to be the ones most offended by this tribute to the people who worked to make this nation what it is today. “How dare they sing that song in a foreign language!” some screamed on their social media news feeds, many thinking it was God Bless America they were singing. “In America we speak English!”

In America we do speak English, but I know when my grandfather was with his Greek and Albanian friends, he spoke their language and I'm not so sure what's wrong with that.

One of the most important things most strive to do when they come to this country is learn the language. That doesn't mean, however, you lose your cultural identity in the process. This is what makes our country so great, the fact we were once known as a great melting pot where all were welcomed. Now many seem to have developed this great sense of arrogance that we should forget where we came from and develop this tired, worn mentality that if “them foreign folks” ain't speaking the language they should be shipped back to where ever they came from. To me that's not even close to being patriotic, it's close to being ignorant and forgetting the great folks who made this nation what it is.

I'm grateful my grandfather came over here because without the voyage he made as a 17-year-old Albanian, I would not be here. I'm grateful Coca-Cola took a pause to refresh our memories that our forefathers and mothers were at one time immigrants, new people to this country.

No one should squawk too loudly when we encounter someone willing to come here, someone willing to learn the language, but is not willing to give up their own heritage and culture.

If you don't agree, well here's that exhaustive list of Coke products you're going to have to boycott — Lance Martin