I’ve always loved history and to me one of the greatest topics was learning about was how all those new immigrants, desperately wanting to come to the land of opportunity, seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time and reading:
And for today’s mindset, that famous phrase should be updated by adding “leave your religious belief and native tongue, to be American you need to speak it or be gone.”
Hm, imagine where many of us would be had our great grandparents had not made that dream trip of freedom of religion and ignorance.
I love the fact that my 7 year old is so enthralled with his family’s heritage. Oh the travel plans of Ireland, Italy, Scotland, and Germany are pinned on a map of his youthful bucket list.
Xenophobia is not new to the American mind as even at the beginning of the 1900 and the Industrial Revolution, the fear of losing one’s job to a foreigner caused mass hysteria and myth of one’s race. The mania has only intensified to critical stages on 9/11/01 and has yet begun to lower.
So it does not surprise me that as the Super Bowl played out on Feb 2, people massed together to cheer for either the Broncos or Seahawks and enjoy what has become a bigger spectacle of commercial watching, that some commercials would draw ire of a few.
So, as bored as I was during the game, I took to Twitter and Facebook to read posts of silliness until Coca-Cola aired that horrible commercial of people singing “America the Beautiful” in their native dialect.
How deplorable was it to have people, who want to be part of the “melting pot” society, dare think of singing that song and not in English by far!
Sometimes I wonder how far we’ve come to know how far we’ve fallen. In other words, people need to revisit American history and get some schoolin’.
Many found the commercial uneasy to accept but added “Maybe if they sang it in their new American language it might be acceptable.”
Have we forgotten American Idol contestant William Hung singing “She Bang?”
To borrow portions of former Rep Allan West’s online response to the commercial:
“Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.”
Many families have that one or more members that speak in their native immigrant tongue. I know I still have a few members that speak fluent Italian daily with broken English second. More people complain about those of Latino nationality not learning/speaking English but turn blind eye to the Italian or Asian or German that speak native tongue
“In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn’t doing his part as an American”
While we’re at it, let’s get rid of accents as well. If there’s anything that annoys me more are accents. New Yorkers, Yinzers, Northwestern accents, get rid of them all. All those living in heritage communities; Latino, Chinatown, Germantown and so forth, drop your accents and your ancestral beliefs. Everyone shall now speak identically in monotone voice fashioned after Ben Stein and for that matter dress akin as in some Utopian-style life like Logan’s Run while changing their last name to either Smith or Jones.
Will that make everyone happy?
Within the realm of recent American history and remembering that many immigrants, without a syllable of English when they arrived have become titans of industry, created jobs and not once thinking differently of whom they employ.
Sergey Brin (Russian) – Founder of Google; Alexander Graham Bell (Scottish) – AT&T; Maxwell Kohl (German) – Kohl’s Department Store; Pierre Omidyar (French) – Ebay
Let’s not forget how would one pop a Viagra pill for a booty call without Germany’s Charles Pfizer?
How long did it take you to learn a foreign language? 3 high school semesters and I bet you weren’t even fluent in that language
It seems rather selfish when we must consider that we, as a nation are not a purebred nation, we are the definition of mutts.
Then again, life in the US would be healthier without allowing Justin Bieber a US work visa.
That’s it, instead of slapping the tap, this one time only, I’m pouring a tall glass of Cap’n & Coke. So pay your political tab in yen or rubles, but leave the loon at home.
Cheers
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