This New York Times Real Estate Magalog piece on town-level immigration politics is dying for a theatrical treatment. For the purpose of this exercise, I have reinterpreted one of the article’s more important monologues in song form:
ACT ONE
Arrangement: tuba, bass drum, tenor soloist, three back-up singers: baritone, tenor, bass
Enter: conservative anglo Tom Roeser, a good old boy – a longtime denizen of the small town of Carpenterville, IL, who roots for Newt Gingrich which makes him an unlikely ally to the town’s immigrant Latinos – or maybe not so unlikely when you discover he owns a factory! The following aria is Roeser’s explanation of the “immigrant conundrum” that has sent Carpenterville teetering on social strife – the “immigrant conundrum” that will, ultimately, transform the small community… for better… or for worse.
Tuba solo, bass drum in simple oompa loompa rhythm
Hispanics!
they are more social! [tuba bleat]
They’re more in… your… face… [in ya face!]
If you live next door to a Hispanic, they probably [probably]
have more levels of family [faaaaam-i-lyyyy]
living there.
I’ll call it overcrowding. [tuba solo, chorus: wah wah wahhhhhh]
ok i’m bored with typing all the italics tags. here’s the rest of the actual quote:
They may live in a low- income house, so they have only one bathroom, and the men go outside and urinate on the tree. You live next door to this family, and you don’t like that the man urinated outside, and you don’t like the fourth car in the front yard. And you don’t like the loud music and the picnicking, and so what you say is they must be a bunch of damn illegals. But once they’re all legal, you still have the same problem. You need to assimilate them.”
SO MANY BABIES! SO MANY CARS! SO MUCH PISSING ON A TREE! SO MUCH LOUD MUSIC and worst of all so much socializing!
VIVA LA RAZA!
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