Middle Schoolers To Have No Idea What "PC" Means

By Alicia Dorr in News on Nov 15, 2006 4:03PM

We admit, we deal in stereotypes. It's like our own version of Occam's Razor — the simplest humor is usually the funniest. But when you get a bunch of middle schoolers in a room together to act out these stereotypes, we think it probably stops being funny. And there are a lot of Italian-Americans in Batavia who feel the same way.

Incredibly, there is a drama teacher in the suburb who thought it would be great to do a play called "Fuggedaboudit: A Little Mobster Comedy" ... a title which does, in fact, make us snicker. But the play, written by a teacher at the school, drew the ire of the Order Sons of Italy in America after an Italian-American mother read a copy of the play and sent it to them. Now there is a protest scheduled for tomorrow, the day before the play goes up. And there are a lot of angry people.

Apparently, there are also a lot of silly people too, like the school's principal. This wise guy (not a goodfella, mind you) defended the play, saying it wasn't offensive and that he thought they were "working with people who are in a play who happen to be Italian who happen to live in New York." In response to that pearl of wisdom, the members of the Order, which is the oldest Italian-American organization in the country, have launched a national phone and e-mail campaign to stop the play from being shown this week.

As much as we would probably laugh about a bunch of middle schoolers running around saying "friggin’," we definitely side with the Italian-American organizations on this one. It wouldn't be okay to have a play with a Jewish character named "Mr. Tightwadstein" or a Polish person who couldn't screw in a lightbulb or a bunch of blonde women twirling their hair and running into each other for two hours — basically, to exaggerate basic stereotypes about any group — so why should this one be OK? Unless Martin Scorsese agrees to direct the two-day show, we're not having it.