I like the Sopranos.

I’ve watched the Sopranos (when I can, usually over someone’s house since we don’t get HBO).

It’s a well written, well acted, smartly shot show. A damn entertaining piece of work.

Still, as an Italian I have to admit I’m not particularly crazy about some of the things that show portrays. It’s really just a gory soap opera set against an organized crime backdrop. As good as it is, it really does promote a certain stereotype and that’s a bit of a problem.

See, maybe you don’t realize it but, Italians aren’t necessarily crazy about being imagined as mobsters (although it’s always a little bit of fun to yank the crank of some schmuck who is blinded by his own prejudice and amazingly there are quite a few of you out there).

What I mean to say is, generally among other Italians, we have noticed that the Hollywood does have a tendency to push one very small segment of the Italian population out in front of the American public in movies and on TV.

Let me put into real terms with numbers you can understand: In the last US census, Americans of Italian descent numbered 15,638,348 making them the 6th largest ethnic group in these Untied States.

Okay, so let’s take that number and extrapolate. New York is a big Eastern City and in and around it is probably one of the higher concentrations of Italians involved in organized crime. Let‘s be generous and say that there’s 20,000 (sounds like a pretty sizable amount of people don’t you think) in and around New York involved in the “Mafia.”

Across the country, there are some cities where there are no members of the mob (Boise, Yuma) but, let‘s take the 100 largest American cities and with New York having 20,000 (which sounds generous), let‘s work downwards from there and figure some cities only have 1,000 while others have 5,000 and still others have 10,000 (and these are probably overestimation)...

—6.29.04

Well, I managed to finally get these thoughts out in a later post but this is still something of a sore spot. Fortunately, the Sopranos is something of yesterday’s news. A season’s worth of tepid stories will do that to you and although I haven’t yet seen them the last season of Soprano’s episodes which were broadcast left fans less than thrilled.

I worried with the show being moved over and rebroadcast on basic cable (A & E), there might be some resurgence in popularity but, it doesn’t seem to have been the case at all. The Sopranos seems to have reached its saturation point a few years back and it’s not the kind of show I think which holds up to repeated viewings (like let’s say the X-Files). Nobody is chomping at the bit to watch the episode where Paulie gets whacked again, or at least certainly not a watered down version of it.

I’m going to put this out there for those of you mainly for the shock value of it - all Blacks are criminals, all Jews money lenders, Poles stupid, Irish drunkards, Asians smart and Italians in organized crime. 

Now, I don’t believe that.

These are the stereotypes of another era and unfortunate ones at that but, if you don’t want me getting upset about things like the Sopranos or all those movies glorifying a bunch of mobsters and somehow thinking that represents all Italians, well take a look at the derogatory way your group may have been portrayed (or is portrayed) at one time or another and think how offensive something like that is.

Some of the people I mentioned this whole thing to had the audacity to say to me, ‘Well, that’s just the way things are, you can’t take it seriously or get upset over it.’ Really? Remind me of that the next time your on the receiving end of this stupid crap.

Yeah, I’ve talked about this before more than a few times. In today’s scenario, something that I started back in 2004 probably is SHOCKING because it rolls out a series of stereotypes that have existed through the years.

Thing is you hear about the Asian MAFIA or the Russian MAFIA neither of which are the MAFIA. Besides which when you do the math the percentage of Italian Americans in organized crime are a percentage of 1%. It’s a small, small number but the thing of it is you wouldn’t know that from Hollywood.

Those other stereotypes I listed? Hollywood doesn’t trot them out anywhere near as much as they do with Italians. Hollywood STILL DOES IT TODAY which is a bit amazing. That’s because certain stereotypes are OKAY in our society. Thing is, until you apply the same set of standards across the board for everyone I’m sorry but I’m not going to be buying into any of your enlightened BS.

The other thing that is somewhat disturbing is just how many Italians in this country are highly accomplished member of society it’s just people don’t recognize that they really are Italian.

*   *   *   *   *   *

Today, society is more WOKE than ever before which no doubt means I will be pilloried at some point. That’s because it’s much simpler to take a portion of what someone says out of context and use it as a cudgel to paint them as the villain of the day, to ostracize them, to shut them down.

We are now no more than a simple step away from being a totalitarian society and it’s all being bought to you by people on the Left who studied the lessons of Marx and Lenin well. Those lessons are known as conflict theory and most people probably aren’t aware of how what’s happening to us today is a perfect example of conflict theory in action.

I’m not crazy about any stereotypes but that doesn’t stop them from being used against me and mine or others as well.