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Show 8ROADWAY AND MAIN STREET In the Case of Coca Cola Versus Champagne, The Ban on a Beverage Can VorkBothWays By BILLY ROSE No French champagne is being sold at my f York and patrons who request same will have to settle for domestic fizzwater which is a lot easier on the pocketbook. TteFJenKmmunisto and Coca-Cola-thafs what gives As you probably know, the French national assembly 'enfly paed a bill which, without naming the product, would prohibit the bottling ana sale ot Coca-Cola in France and its colonies. - Two pressure groups, were responsible respon-sible for this measure the wine interests which feared that the soft drink might cut into their profits, and the Communists, who, though they have no love for the vintners, saw an opportunity to take a rabbit punch at the United States. Suiting invective to word, the Commie paper, L'Humanite, un-leased un-leased a campaign against the "coca-colonization" of the country, Or to put it another way, it would be the beginning of a new French industry, and potentially a pretty big one, judging from the fact that more than 100,000 Americans derive de-rive part or aU of their incomes from the parent company and its subsidiaries. From where I cogitate, it boils down to this: John Q. Frenchman is being denied a choice between Leftists, aided and abetted by the bird-brain Righties, don't like the Coke and vino only because the country Coca-Cola comes from. Well, Messieurs et Mesdames, two can play at boycott as well as one, and so, no French champagne cham-pagne will be sold in my night club until the idiotic ban against our home product is lifted. Moreover, I'm hereby appealing to hotels, restaurants and night club proprietors all over the country coun-try to follow suit and to wire or write me when they do. And if they'd like to explain the boycott to their customers, they're at liberty lib-erty to run off reprints of this columnof col-umnof course crediting this paper. And remember, Messieurs et Mesdames, Mes-dames, if that doesn't work we can get really tough and stop buying your French postcards. Before I go any further, let me get it into the record that I'm not a big Coke drinker and never owned a share of stock in the company. com-pany. As far as I'm concerned, the beverage is just another American product like Orange Crush, 7-Up or Dr. Brown's Celery Tonic. By initiating an anti-coke cam-paign, cam-paign, they have given Stalin's stooges a made-to-order excuse for yelping, "Down with American Ameri-can imperialism" the same sleazy slogan used by Commies everywhere to divert attention from the accomplishments of the Marshall plan. As for the argument that the distribution dis-tribution of Coca-Cola would create unemployment and cut into profitsthat, prof-itsthat, too, is a lot of bottletops. The set-up of the Coca-Cola Export corporation is such that the entire manufacture and sale would be carried out by French personnel, on French territory, and under French supervision and ownership. loud- mouthing that the basic syrup is highly toxic and would turn La Belle France into a nation na-tion of "coca-hol-ics." At the same time, the right-wing right-wing press, front-in front-in c fnr t.hp fizz Up I W 1 merchants, began Billy Eose to blab along the same lines, and even the usually sensible Le Monde warned that "the moral landscape of France is at stake." |
