These days, political correctness is more political than correct, and it has everyone second-guessing everything he says before and after he opens his mouth despite the First Amendment’s protection of free speech. Anti-defamation groups are popping up everywhere like night crawlers after a rain. Modern-day practitioners of political correctness have perfected public whining to such a degree that it is now unofficially considered to be one of the performing arts.

Not so for the pioneering Italian-American practitioners of political correctness. They didn’t whine in public when they were displeased or offended by ethnic slurs or stereotyping, they wielded—bats, metal pipes, and grappling hooks. You name it; they wielded it. Let’s just say they were not whiny, wordy or terribly subtle about their methods of persuasion. Theirs was political correctness on steroids.

It was a half century ago that a group of Italian-Americans [longshoremen, mostly] took umbrage at a television show—The Untouchables—for publicly defaming Italian-Americans on a weekly basis. They claimed the show stereotyped them as the only criminal element in society. It stands to reason, however, that Italian-Americans would not have been pegged as society’s one and only criminal element had it not been for a certain anti-social subculture in that ethnic group. This subculture, referred to alternately as La Cosa Nostra [“Our Thing”], The Mafia, or The Mob, consistently failed to keep a low profile. Instead of taking care of business in private, they gunned down one another right out in the open in front of God and everybody. [Silencers might have helped some.]

The Italian-American League to Combat Defamation [Sure, let’s call it that.] insisted that The Untouchables’ sponsor drop the show, and it pressured the show’s production company [Desilu] to change mobster surnames from Italian to those of other nationalities. Additionally, they made demands for improving the depiction of Italian-Americans on the program. Not surprisingly, the League got its way in every way. [I often wonder if some among them made the sponsor and the producer offers they couldn’t refuse.]

My grandparents immigrated to The States from Italy—Sicily, to be exact. Because of my ancestry, people expected me to look like Sophia Loren, cook like Alfredo Di Lelio, sing like Renata Tebaldi, and break kneecaps like Lucky Luciano. They were disappointed on all counts.

They were also disappointed to learn that I was not really a Mafia Princess. No one in our family was ever involved in the Mafia. We were not connected, as they say. Nevertheless, the Mafia jokes persisted, and throughout the years those jokes grew very, very stale.

I wish I had a share of Apple stock for each time one of the intellectually bankrupt young men I dated referred to me as The Mafia Princess. Sadly, I only profited once from that erroneous designation. The circumstances under which it paid dividends were priceless, producing a memorable occurrence where the stars and planets were perfectly aligned.

Shortly after we married, Macho Guy and I moved to the South where he completed his tour of duty in the Army and I taught a sixth grade class in a local elementary school. One noteworthy afternoon, I came home at the end of the school day to be greeted by a sad-faced, sorrowful Macho Guy.

ME: Uh-Oh. What’s wrong?

MACHO GUY: I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Honey. There was a death in your family yesterday.

ME: [Dropping my briefcase] Oh, no! Who died?

MACHO GUY: Your favorite uncle. [He handed me the newspaper he was holding.]

The front-page headline read: Mobster executed gangland style. I’m not sure, but I believe I picked up my briefcase and hit him with it. Hard. Really hard. My favorite uncle, indeed.

I was still annoyed with Macho Guy for suckering me with his phony sympathy act when I arrived at school the following day. I told my team-teaching partner Carol about his tasteless prank. I had the newspaper with me and showed it to her. She sympathized, gave me a hug, and assured me that Macho Guy would grow up eventually. Her husband did. We had a good laugh about that, and about men in general, and I tossed the newspaper with its offensive headline into my wastebasket where I felt it belonged.

That spring, the school’s principal Mr. K__ treated Carol and me with exceptional deference. He stopped complaining that our portable classroom was too noisy or that our skirts were too short. He asked—and took—our advice on school matters. Mr. K__ also gave us high marks on our performance evaluations. It seemed Carol and I could do no wrong. We were the envy of the school’s faculty.

Finally, at the PTA’s end of school year picnic for the faculty, Carol owned up to being the one responsible for our special treatment.

ME: You were? How?

CAROL: Remember that day when you were so aggravated with your hubby’s joke about your mobster uncle’s death?

ME: Oh, please. Don’t remind me.

CAROL: [grinning] Afraid I have to. That newspaper article got me thinking about how gullible Mr. K__ is. He was a jock back in high school, and he really is dumber than a box of rocks, bless his heart.

ME: So . . .what does that have to do with anything?

CAROL: [grinning broader] Well, because he’s the way he is, I went and did something I probably shouldn’t have.

ME: [with eyebrow arched] Car-rol, what did you do?

CAROL: [leaning forward in conspiratorial fashion] I fished the newspaper out of your wastebasket and took it to show Mr. K__. I told him you were feeling upset that day because there was this horrible death in your family.

ME: Oh, my God. You didn’t!

CAROL: [starting to giggle] I sure did. I said you came to work to take your mind off what happened, and that he shouldn’t bring it up because it might upset you. Then I handed him the paper and pointed to the headline. I swear to you on a stack of Bibles, he turned chalk white, and you should have seen the look on his face when I said, “It’s so tragic. He was her favorite uncle.”