Move over, Mel, there’s a new Passion in town

Finally, a conflation of religion and commerce I can believe in: St. Eric of Blacktable’s The Cult of Diet Coke.
A glorious bit of Good News, indeed, but it’s an incomplete testament. Sure, they mention those voices crying in the Diet Coke-ist wilderness, the “fine folks at AspartameKills.com.” But Blacktable insidiously omits any mention of the Great Satan of Aspartame, the CEO of pharma-giant Searle who lobbied for FDA approval of the WMD we now worship as Nutrasweet, Donald Rumsfeld. All hail our new Aspartame overlords.
On a more personal note, Diet Coke (in the less patriotic, French form known as Coca Lite) played the role of comic relief in my first film, Souvenir (November 2001). [pause that refreshes] The protagonist’s search for a WWI memorial runs parallel to his search for Coca Light in the countryside of northern France.