AMERICANS DREAM OF GYPSIES, I HAVE FOUND

I'm sure you've seen this quote:

According to Rep. Steve King's (R-IA) math, legalizing undocumented immigrants is untenable because for every valedictorian DREAMer -- immigrants brought to the U.S. as children -- there are 100 more who are carrying drugs across the border.

"Some of them are valedictorians, and their parents brought them in," King told Newsmax in an interview last week. "It wasn't their fault. It's true in some cases, but they aren't all valedictorians. They weren't all brought in by their parents."

"For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert,” he continued. “Those people would be legalized with the same act."

The ethnic stereotyping is noxious; the imagery is ... well, curious. As Tim Murphy tweeted:

"calves the size of cantaloupes" I just what, what? http://t.co/kLEZPj2qnI

— Tim Murphy (@timothypmurphy) July 23, 2013

But I'm reminded of the last verse of the Randy Newman song "Sigmund Freud's Impersonation of Albert Einstein in America," which I've always thought perfectly captured the way certain white Americans recoil from people they regard as "exotic" while having prurient fever dreams about those same "exotic" others, and all the while thinking of themselves as utterly innocent:

Americans dream of gypsies, I have found
Gypsy knives and gypsy thighs
That pound and pound and pound and pound
And African appendages that almost reach the ground
And little boys playing baseball in the rain

Yup, that's pretty much what's in the heated imagination of Steve King, Real American, as he thinks of undocumented immigrants' muscular calves.