Well, that certainly was a close one.
The good name of the single largest ethnic group in the US, Italian Americans, which has been under brutal and ruthless assault for some time, this week nearly saw the final nail hammered into its coffin.
Mayor Bloomberg, over in New York city, wanted to invite a couple of actors from The Sopranos to march with him in the Columbus Day parade. For myself, I don't see how I would ever have been able to look an Italian American in the face again. The sight of those actors, marching down the street, would have irrevocably tainted my entire view of Italian American culture. I mean, they play *Gangsters*. Not just any old gangsters, either, they play *Mafia* gangsters. And those people are usually, you know, portrayed as *Italian* in some way. Or at least, as eating a lot of pasta.
Could Mayor Bloomberg be any more callous and unfeeling? It's the Columbus Day parade, for goodness sake. A day when we all celebrate our Italian American heroes. Men like Columbus himself, who sailed from Europe and landed, well, not actually in America, but at least reasonably near. He probably ate lots of pasta though.
I can see the organizer's point. If it wasn't for actors like the ones in The Sopranos, people wouldn't associate the Italian American community with the Mafia at all. I for one was always of the opinion that the Mafia was generally composed of a mixture of Latvian and Irish immigrants. Al Capone, the well known French gangster, certainly never ate pasta and his alleged 'Sicilian' background was nothing more than a weak attempt by the powerful French community in Chicago to make Italian immigrants look bad.
John Gotti, ruthless head of the brutal Swedish crime family, was an ardent and vociferous anti-Italian, and refused to even wear Italian clothing just in case he might be mistaken for 'some kind of Mediterranean'
What the organizers of the parade should have done is picked some nice Italian American actors to march instead. Someone like Al Pacino, or Robert DiNero, neither of whom would *ever* be associated with any production involving Italian Mafioso. Well, except for a couple of Godfather movies. And the Goodfellas. Oh, and Carlito's way. But other than that, nothing. Better yet, bring back that nice Paul Sorvino. With the exception of a brief stint in The Goodfellas, he's hardly every played a mafia boss, and he was an excellent Grand Marshal of the parade back in 1997.
Thankfully good sense prevailed and we were all spared the horror of honoring those cultural traitors. The point has been made, the parade has been run and we can all get back to thinking of Italian Americans as loveable, pasta eating, hard working imports with a song in their heart and an open mind. And that's how Mayor Bloomberg better start thinking of them too, or maybe he's hoping to get invited on some deep-sea fishing trips.
If you see what I mean.