Purple Mountain Majesties -- No Thanks!

Americans might like to sing about "purple mountain majesties" in their national hymn, "America, the Beautiful," but German politicians aren't much interested in having one of their most famous peaks actually temporarily turned purple for advertising purposes.

Milka, a subsidiary of Kraft Foods and one of Germany's favorite chocolate makers, wants to flood the 2,962 meter (9,718 foot) peak with purple light from 140 purple spotlights at the end of June and film the event for a new advertising campaign. Kraft announced that it wants to start a campaign along with the new commercials that would raise €1 million for various environmental projects.

Milka's most well-known advertising symbol until now has been a purple and white cow. The company is ready to move on to better, and bigger, things.

But politicians across the spectrum in the mountain's home state of Bavaria aren't ready to see their beloved mountain go mauve, if only for a little while.

"We wish as much rain and fog as possible on this event," Ludwig Wörner of the Bavarian Social Democrats (SPD) told reporters.

One of his conservative colleagues, Henning Kaul of the Christian Social Union (CSU), said Milka has already contributed to a distorted view of nature. According to him, a purple precipice in the powerful medium of television would only make the matter worse.

"When city kids today are asked what color cows are, they say purple," he said. "That they also say mountains are purple shouldn't happen as well."

A spokesman for Milka, Stephan Becker-Sonnenschein, said kids should be given more credit.

"Just because we light up the mountain one time -- and briefly at that -- doesn't mean that children aren't going to assume that mountains are purple," he told the newsmagazine Der Spiegel.