I haven't been doing the English Lesson of the Day lately... don't really know why, just got tired of them. I guess it's spring and I'm ready for it to be summer already!
Any-who, I may start posting an Urban Legend of the Day feature in which I debunk all those e-mail myths that get stirred around all the time.
Or maybe not.
In any case, I do have one which I wish to expose today: The Pepsi Can Pledge of Allegiance Myth.
The basic notion is that Pepsi has come out with a patriotic pop can which has a picture of the Empire State Building on it and quotes the Pledge of Allegiance but leaves out the "under God" phrase, and the e-mail encourages people to spread it around and boycott Pepsi products packaged in the new can.
According to Snopes.com, there never has been a Pepsi can with these items on it. The brouhaha got started when Dr. Pepper came out with a patriotic-themed can with the Statue of Liberty on it and the phrase, "ONE NATION... INDIVISIBLE" at the top. They merely pulled a couple of phrases out of the Pledge, but because they happen to be the phrases that bookend "Under God," it got people stirred up.
At any rate, that Dr. Pepper can has been off the shelves for five years now.
My encouragement to anyone receiving an e-mail with urgent boycott-this-product news is to ALWAYS point your browser immediately to Snopes.com and enter the topic into the search box -- 99 times out of 100, the e-mail's a hoax or, at the very least, long-since expired.
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