Osama bin Laden’s Coke-Pepsi taste test

Like most everyone else, I have been eagerly consuming reports on the death of Osama bin Laden.

Good riddance, as we used to say in Worcester, to bad rubbish.

Part of me wishes he had been taken alive; another part wishes that he had, in fact, been resisting with a gun. Still, if the world may not necessarily be in the short run a safer place without him, one would hope that in the long run it will be a better one.

Of the many articles I have grazed through, a few stand out.

First are the obituaries that ran in The NY Times, The Boston Globe, and, presumably, other newspapers.

Okay, so the man is dead, and a death notice is a death notice. And, of course, there were no “he leaves his beloved wives….” or “he is survived by dozens of children and his 54 siblings….”

Still, it was peculiar to see the word “Obituary” followed by this Boston Globe header: Osama bin Laden, 54; Al Qaeda leader and mastermind of Sept. 11 attacks.

With the same tone that might have headed the obit for the cello playing lawyer, the former president of the League of Women Voters, or the collector who’d amassed thousands of license plates, dating back to 1905.

It all seemed so bizarrely mannered – sort of like when Irish leader Eamon De Valera paid a condolence call on the German Embassy in Dublin when he learned of Hitler’s death.

But the article that really popped out at me was the one I saw on Bloomberg, in which an intrepid journalist interviewed the local Abbottabad grocers to see what the bin Laden household consumed. From this, we learned that the family’s go-fers:

…bought bulk food orders, chose major brands and equally favored Pepsi and Coke, neighbors and a local shopkeeper said.

Pepsi and Coke.

Since most people lean one way of the other – sort of like they do on Miracle Whip, albeit not as strongly – and the household was large, it’s not surprising that they brought in some of both.

But the idea that bin Laden may have partaken of a beverage that could not have been more quintessentially American – either Pepsi or Coke would do – is astounding. What better indicator of the reach and potency of American consumer brands?

Did the kids ever blindfold dad and see if he could tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi in a blind taste test?

Of course, neither brand would want to be associated with bin Laden, and I’m sure that brand managers on both sides are hoping that, as more details emerge, their beverage does not turn out to be the chosen one. Pepsi doesn’t want bin Laden taking any part of their generation. And the thought of bin Laden liking to “teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony”… Shudder, shudder.

Why, one wonders, would bin Laden allow a product that’s so representative of the Great Satan’s consumer culture, its bankrupt commercialism, its pedestrian and tawdry tastes, to take up space in his family’s fridge, when they could have been drinking something more Pakistani, like Apple Sidra, Bubble Up, or Pakola Orange? Or more pious, like water?

I wonder what other American products the family enjoyed while the head of their household decried the decadence of the West, and threatened to doom us all.

Did the bin Laden kids eat Kellogg Sugar Flakes? Fight over the plastic toys in Happy Meals? Did the wives occasionally throw a couple of Lean Cuisine’s in the microwave? Or sneak some midnight Oreos?

Maybe it’s just me, but the fact that the bin Laden household drank Coke and Pepsi gives me a bit more confidence about which side is going to win this thing.