Committee Tasked With Defining “Real Americans” Disqualifies Itself

WASHINGTON: A newly formed committee charged with identifying “real Americans” hit a snag Tuesday when every rule it proposed eliminated at least one of its own members.

The first draft required applicants to be born in the United States. It survived eleven minutes, until member Dale Whitcomb mentioned that his wife was born on a military base overseas. The committee added an exception for military families, then spent a while on whether it covered the woman who cleaned the base hospital.

“We’re going to circle back,” Whitcomb said, drawing a box around the question and writing “complicated” beside it.

Next came language. Member Patricia Hale proposed that real Americans speak English at home. Whitcomb objected on behalf of his grandfather, who spent forty years fixing farm equipment in Iowa and mostly spoke Polish. Hale agreed to exempt grandparents. Another member asked how old a person has to be before an accent becomes charming.

The committee broke for lunch, which did not help. Hale had brought tacos. Whitcomb ordered a pizza. Someone opened a container of chicken adobo, and the room spent twenty minutes debating whether a meal could be foreign if everybody went back for seconds. The debate ended when Hale asked for the recipe.

By midafternoon the committee had moved on to “shared American values,” a phrase everyone endorsed until asked to list them. Freedom made the board. So did hard work. One member proposed minding your own business, then interrupted three people to explain what they were doing wrong.

A proposal to require proof of family roots was abandoned once members reviewed their own family trees. Hale’s grandfather arrived with one suitcase. Whitcomb’s great-grandparents crossed an ocean. No one could agree on a cutoff date that didn’t sound suspiciously like the year their own relatives got here.

Asked at last to propose a date, the one member whose family had been here before there was a country to put on the form suggested the committee begin by showing her its paperwork. The motion was tabled.

At 4:47 p.m., the chair erased the final eligibility rule. The whiteboard was blank except for the word “Americans,” underlined twice.

“That can’t be the whole definition,” he said.

Whitcomb suggested the committee take the citizenship test to see what was on it. Whitcomb missed the number of senators. Hale placed the Constitution in the wrong century. The chair, asked to name the freedoms in the First Amendment, named two and a half and asked to move on.

The woman collecting the lunch containers was asked to grade the tests. She had passed the same exam eight years ago, on her first try, while working two jobs. She graded in very small red ink.

The committee has scheduled a follow-up meeting to discuss whether the question requires further study. Lunch is expected to take longer.