I fell short not from the lack of material but from a lack of trying. As always, life got in the way, especially this damned head cold I am recuperating from. Getting ill around Halloween is my body’s way of letting me know, “Fall has arrived in Central Texas!”
You may have briefly seen my playbook too when I let the draft/list article get published on the others I had scheduled under the headline of Famous WOPs. Smooth on my part. However, much like the N-word for Black Americans or the F-/G-word for Homosexuals, we Italians have taken ownership of WOP. It seems really silly too because it’s an acronym for Without Pass/Papers. Back when the mass migration of Italians happened (around the early 20th Century), the US starting taking a harder line on immigration for the usual reasons: fear, ignorance, paranoia, racism, anti-Catholicism and America’s biggest problem, the winner-loser attitude, meaning that in order for one person to have a nice lifestyle, some others have to be in the crapper. Numerous Italians hopped on the boat figuring it would work out since it did for the waves of Irish, Polish, Germans, Scots, Welsh and English who came before. Whoops! Turns out those people and their descendants were the runs beating the drums to keep the Italians away (sadly, I think I used to be friends with one such bigot). I suppose they were partially successful, about half did return to Italy much like the Norwegians and Swedes. Anyway, most couldn’t speak English, probably didn’t have a sponsor/relative to help and the derogatory term stuck as you hear it in movies.
I have a pretty good list for next year in 2012. I promise to do this again due to the positive reaction I received from a couple people.
I’ll close with my preferred joke about Italians…
Why are so many Italians named Tony? Since most didn’t speak English, they wrote “To NY” on their foreheads to make sure they got put on the boats to New York.