Pepsi meets Nixon

April 3, 2022 8:46 PM

A Marxist threat to cola sales? Pepsi demands a US coup. The October 1970 plot against Chile's President-elect Salvador Allende, using CIA 'sub-machine guns and ammo', was the direct result of a plea for action a month earlier by Donald Kendall, chairman of PepsiCo, in two telephone calls to the company's former lawyer, President Richard Nixon ... Mr. Kendall cultivated a close personal and professional relationship with Richard M. Nixon, who early on represented Pepsi as a lawyer and in 1965 played the piano at Mr. Kendall’s second wedding, at the Pierre hotel in Manhattan, and at Mr. Kendall’s request, Nixon steered Khrushchev to the Pepsi display during the infamous "Kitchen Debate."
posted by geoff. (24 comments total)

"And in Dallas that morning, Richard Nixon awoke in the Baker Hotel. There was a policeman stationed in the hallway outside his door, but the officer was there not so much to protect the former Vice President as to deter jewel thieves or autograph seekers from bothering movie star Joan Crawford who was a few doors down from RN.

Both the Hollywood legend and the future President were in town for the same reason – to attend the annual convention of the American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages. Both were there on behalf of the Pepsi-Cola corporation"
posted by clavdivs at 9:12 PM on April 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

Well if you've been following, Joan Crawford was married to the CEO of PepsiCo and to get back at the Coca Cola CEO for denying her a condo in the building she wanted, reportedly had the Pepsi Cola sign installed on the East River near the building, and lived in the iconic "Pepsi building" at 500 Park. And I've yet to post about it but Pepsi under Kendall provided much needed syrup to the Soviet Union and was a key component in relations with Russia during the Cold War. As one of the few American companies doing business with the Soviet Union having Nixon there wasn't really much of a surprise. I've learned so much about Pepsi!
posted by geoff. at 9:20 PM on April 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

Pepsi‐Cola a Casualty of the Cambodian Conflict. 1970.
posted by clavdivs at 9:39 PM on April 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

The syrup must flow.
posted by subdee at 3:31 AM on April 4, 2022 [3 favorites]

Pepsi is not ok.
posted by condour75 at 5:14 AM on April 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

That's true. OK Cola was a Coke product.
posted by briank at 6:35 AM on April 4, 2022 [5 favorites]

The irony is that earlier US interference caused later interference.

The Kennedys cajoled US multinationals into pouring $2 billion into Chile, a nation of only 8 million people. By the end of this process, Americans had gobbled up more than 85 per cent of Chile's hard-currency earning industries.

Without all that "investment" to begin with, there would have been no need to "protect" it.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:39 AM on April 4, 2022 [4 favorites]

PepsiCoup
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:05 AM on April 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

This makes me want to see The Coca-Cola Kid again.
posted by neuron at 8:23 AM on April 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

Flat. Circle.
posted by Horkus at 8:42 AM on April 4, 2022

Is this some sort of Pepsi Theme Month and I've missed the memo? We've had the Harrier case, the art deco building... and yes I am aware of the P. Blue scandal.
posted by Shepherd at 8:59 AM on April 4, 2022

Is this new news? I vaguely remember back then that the “revolution” in Chili was sponsored by Pepsi. It was during my first couple months in college at UC Santa Barbara, where anti Vietnam war and general anti capitalism was rampant.
posted by njohnson23 at 9:00 AM on April 4, 2022

Hey the the rock n roller cola wars that Billy Joel couldn't take anymore.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:01 AM on April 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

At first, I was like, 'nah, this is too thin for a FPP.'

But then I was like, 'you know, you could really flesh it out.'
posted by box at 10:42 AM on April 4, 2022

(Also, I love this and am eager to see how long you can keep it going.)
posted by box at 10:45 AM on April 4, 2022

The coincidence of Nixon being in Dallas on 11/22/63 was so striking to comics writer Alan Moore that he mentioned it in two separate projects: Watchmen and Brought to Light, the comics adaptation of the Christic Institute's work.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:47 AM on April 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

This makes me want to see The Coca-Cola Kid again.

What a fun quirky '80s movie!
Greta Scacchi Santa FTW
posted by kirkaracha at 11:40 AM on April 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

If geoff can keep this daily series going for just over a month, it would culminate on the 20th anniversary of the original Pepsi Blue post. That would be a pretty epic task, though. Surely not. :)
posted by automatronic at 12:08 PM on April 4, 2022

(Negativland's Dispepsi could be an FPP.)
posted by box at 12:48 PM on April 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

And of course, due to Crawford’s acquaintance with Walt Disney, Pepsi was the original sponsor of “it’s a small world” at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair. And now you’ve got that song stuck in your head.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:31 PM on April 4, 2022

Maybe related to the topic of Pepsi and coups, Caleb Davis Bradham--inventor of Pepsi and a resident of New Bern, NC--was evidently in 1898 a lieutenant in the NC Naval Militia, described here:

While men from the gentry dominated the Naval Reserves’ upper ranks, middle class and working-class men were permitted to join. Most were from Democratic families active in the White Supremacy Campaign. Like the men of the Light Infantry, members of the Naval Reserves had served on federal duty during the Spanish-American War, aboard the USS Nantucket off South Carolina. They, too, returned to Wilmington late that summer. And they, too, ostensibly reported to the governor but served instead as a white supremacist militia.

That's a lead-in to an account of the Wilmington Massacre, a.k.a. Wilmington Coup of 1898, in which the Naval Reserves from Wilmington and Kinston participated. I'd suppose C.D. Bradham was 100 miles away in New Bern, where five years later his Division was able to respond within 25 minutes to a local need (conflated somewhat with a rumor about this defendant, accused of the murder of Senator F.M. Simmons's father). Then, in 1907, there's a record of people named C.D. Bradham and F.M. Simmons incorporating a business together in Wilmington, and perhaps this is Senator Furnifold M. Simmons of New Bern, one of the architects of the 1898 "White Supremacy" campaign that led to the coup? If so, that's another very tangential connection, though I'd wonder if someone with access to local archives would find anything else to either connect or distinguish them.
posted by Wobbuffet at 4:13 PM on April 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

Incidentally, here's another more definite business relationship between Caleb Bradham and the architect of the White Supremacy Campaign: "George Bradham said that at one time his father and a fellow investor, Senator Furnifold Simmons, had over two thousand acres of land under cultivation." Bradham's role in Democratic politics as chairman of the board of county commissioners (maybe a decade after New Bern's city council was dissolved to get rid of the opposition?) may have also given them reasons to work together.
posted by Wobbuffet at 7:16 PM on April 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

Just as Coke no longer has its namesake ingredient, Brad's Drink originally had pepsin.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:19 PM on April 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

Oh, wow, I've been assuming for years that it still had pepsin in it. Drinking flat cola had helped me with upset stomach before, and I thought it was the pepsin. And I'm just now finding out that medicinal cola syrup is a thing. You learn something new every day.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:34 AM on April 5, 2022