Posted on 06/05/2019 2:05:33 PM PDT by OddLane
Wendy’s has a commercial where a group of stereotypical Italian Americans crowd around an idealized white person and act crudely and threateningly towards him. They eat like slobs, eating spaghetti and meatballs, acting suspiciously of him, and generally make buffoons of themselves. They wear gold chains, have a darker complexion than the white man, and have very ethnic features such as black hair and big noses. Most obviously, the premise is that they are all mobsters and that the white man is there to defeat their evil. At the end of the commercial, two very non-Italian looking federal agents are shown.
This commercial was about a parmesan Caesar salad, by the way. The commercial took Italian food, culturally appropriated it, weaponized it, and attacked Italian Americans with it. The media is not covering this outrageous commercial. In fact, there is a civil rights group on Facebook that gets attacked, both by Italians and non-Italians, in very hateful language, just for pointing these kinds of issues out to the general public. Facebook, quick to ban right-wing haters, seems to be fine with the Italophobia...
(Excerpt) Read more at smerconish.com ...
What IS recorded is the fact that 1) Israel ( renamed PALESTINE by the Romans ) was ALL Jewish 2) there were very large Jewish communities in Rome itself, as well as in other places in what is now known as Italy, 3) Syria, what is now Turkey, Egypt, had very large communities and Jews were also living in many parts of Europe, that were under Roman rule, as well.
Julius Caesar accepted them as citizens of ROME and then the Empire, as did most the the next several Emperors. And when the Empire was split, many 100s of years later, Constantine talks about the Jews under his rule.
You are demanding that which is NOT knowable! Is it because you are so ignorant and bereft of factual historical knowledge that you feel it is your right to be spoon fed the "impossible" by someone who knows history?
FYI...the word ghetto is Italian and began in Venice; it was a place/area where the Venetians made all of the Jews live, in the early 16th century.
And no, I'm NOT Jewish; just someone who knows and loves history.
Everyone thinks polar bears are white but actually their fur is transparent. No color at all.
Well, I’m not sorry to disabuse you that I know way more history than you. Which is why your claim of 1/4 Jews (or whatever you dream up) in the entire Roman Empire, or even in the divided eastern Roman Empire is impossibly ignorant.
Apparently you don’t know and love history enough.
Also, putting words in my mouth, isn't going to avail you much of anything, except derisive laughter from me. In every single reply, to you, that I've made concerning numbers or percentages, I have continually said that it is UNKNOWABLE just how many!
From ancient texts, it has been stated "large numbers".
Just what the population of Israel/Judea/Palestine was under Tiberius onwards, lets say...would be what? NOBODY KNOWS!
How many Jews were living in Rome itself, when Julius Caesar first gave then the right tot practice their religion, as they saw fit, and still be Roman citizens is also unknown; however it was substantial enough for him to recognize them and it was an even larger number under Agustus, who granted them more privilege status; not to mention the fact that their numbers must have grown even larger, by the time of Nero, who refused to "blame them", for the blaze ( where he wanted to build a new palace...so it's up for grabs just WHO had started the conflagration )that just happen to flare up, and instead blamed the it on the Christians.
Pity about you're abysmal lack of reading comprehension skills and total inability to debate like an adult.
Why don't YOU give the stats re the population figures of how many Jews throughout the Roman Empire, including the figure for those living in Rome, for the time between when Rome was a just a Republic and when Constantinople fell?
Thanks fieldmarshaldj. My ass.
OH, it’s all so UNKNOWABLE; I’ll just make this dumbass statement in public.
You admit your post was/is stupid ignorance.
I saw it recently I’ll look again
https://brainstats.com/average-iq-by-country.html
Here it is Italy leads all of Europe and is among the top IQs on the planet.
K, my bad, my dumbass post.
No lack of reading comp but rather responses to your responses to my response to Jewbaca post 48 without looking at sender.
Yep - was stationed in Italy for a couple years and there are many fair-haired Italians....now us Polish folks need to be considered minorities so we can act as spies within the enemy camps....
I guess I’m a bit biased here, but without Italians, I highly doubt there’d be an America. Just for starters, it was discovered by and named after Italians.
I don’t see any other immigrant group that’s come close to contributing to the success of this country as the Italians.
As far those insulting Italy and Italians goes: Your jealousy is transparent.
And I have Italian family that ranges in physical appearance from blonde hair and blue eyes to “dark” looking. Works for me.
Sorry, yes. The number was 25% for the “Mediterranean” part of Rome (you know like Italy) and 10% overall (e.g., much of the UK, Germany, etc).
I always forget how big the Empire was. My point was “Italy”.
How did I say that there WAS an “Italy” when the Romans were there? It’s almost exactly what I was saying!
Nothing you stated in your yelling retort really did anything to refute me.
Oh good God.
Don’t tell me about old movies. It’s part of my life - I’ve been watching old movies since I was a child, long before there was Turner. I know “old” great actors much better than I know these new fools.
Sorry, but it’s true, especially SINCE I was born - LOTS of endearing, sympathetic movies on Italians and Irish and Jews. Please. Especially the popular ones.
Tell me what old - or new - movies DENIGRATED these groups? The closest you’ll get is regarding Jews, although mostly they were just ignored prior to my birth. But you’ll find LOTS of Irish braggadocio. Boxing movies about the greats like Sullivan and Corbett, Little Nelly Kelly, George M. Cohan, lately “Far & Away”, hell, even “Quiet Man” (albeit that’s about Irish directly, not so much the Irish-AMERICAN as I’m REALLY focusing on here). Not as much Italian in the old days, either, but nothing really “insulting” either. You’ll point out Godfather, but that’s too obvious and I’m not counting that as after all, they’re focusing on crime outfits (when, BTW, did they ever make a movie focusing on obviously Irish crime syndicates, as did indeed exist before Italians got bigger?). Moonstruck, etc. much more regular “home life” I’m talking about.
Where are these constant loving and endearing movies for the rest of our ethnicities (besides black, which have been mixed)? Come up with more than 1. I’d like to know what will show me something nice (preferably also not “silly” and goofy as they do with my ethnicity at best) about Germans and Norwegians besides “Pride of the Yankees” (old parents and goofy too) or “I Remember Mama”.
Even the most obtuse, see where this is going.
Hint: it begins with a g and rhymes with "fried".
As do many of the Abruzzezi!
I was once told by an elite medical doctor from northern Italy that southern Italians are "come i messicani" — "they're like Mexicans."
I love Southern Italy and have spent time there. It was offensive. Sort of like how the English hate redheads (Irish & Scots).
My own experience with North / South Italians is the North thinks the South are lazy do nothings...
Agree that the commercial is more of a take-off on The Sopranos than anything else; but he does have a point that mainstream America does stereotype Italians as being mafia thugs and little else. I do find it disturbing. But as for his essay, when he goes off into Italian people being people of color, he loses me. We need to extinguish racism and identity groups other than "American", not continue to hairsplit.
I had a conversation with a black professional guy who migrated here from Africa about how many American blacks view all white people monolithically; but in fact, whites are from a great many different ethnicities, ancient civilzations and tribes, and I named many (Angles, Saxons, Celts, Teutons, Etruscans, Normans, etc etc), and he was totally amazed. "I did not know white people had tribes!" he said.
He was viewing this from his contemporary perspective of having come from Kenya, where there are many educated Christians with British accents, in the same country with primitive tribes in the rural areas who still do things like stretch their necks or lips, dress their hair with cow dung, etc. To him, a tribe is a much more real thing than it is to an American.
I will say that being an old person, it was common for us as schoolchildren in the 50s to ask each other, "So, what are you?" and be completely understood. The other kid would reply by naming their ethnicity, or sometimes their religion (Jewish, Catholic or some Protestant denomination). But we were steeped in American civics then and didn't regard it as anything troublesome; it was something to be celebrated, that America was "the melting pot."
Those ‘Island Folk” had some pretty ‘advanced stuff’ for the time also...
Nobody in North America back then even had the WHEEL ! Also wheel wasn’t extant in Sub Saharan Africa, and Australia. As for ‘arts’ same goes for reading—no books, library..
Yeh, some spots were really ahed of others....
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