Puerto Rican-American??

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:39 AM -0500 3/20/03, David Bergdahl wrote:
>It seems to be a new fad.  In the last election VP-candidate Lieberman was
>touted as a Jewish-American but then Gov. Bush was not called an
>Episcoplian-turned-Methodist American.  I remember the flap over Kennedy's
>religion, but no one called him a Catholic-American, nor have I ever heard
>someone described as a Muslim-American.

This one (Muslim(-)American), with or without hyphen, I've seen.

>  There must be some rule at work
>here ... is anyone able to state why some people achieve hyphenated-American
>status and others don't?
>
>--an English-Irish [County Caven--a county of Ulster but it's in the
>republic]-Swedish-American