Posted on 09/13/2022 6:28:36 PM PDT by Rummyfan
Politicians are corrupt this is my shocked face
Read later.
it was purely a selfish pursuit for them to gain lots of tax free money and live like kings....
OTOH....consider our present American condition...
nobody gets rich alone...you know somebody, you do favors for some govt official, you get cozy with the cops, you do underhanded accounting ...
your kid gets arrested for murder and IF you know the right people, he'll be free...
that is the sad reality....connections and quid pro quo...
so the reality is that the Mafia just played the game...
Life imitates art—in this case LE used a helicopter to kill cartel leadership:
the first 2 movies were loosely, but brilliantly based a actual historic events, why Coppola and Puzo strayed from that was just stupid...the obvious no brainer would have been to bring the story up to date to the John Gotti/Sparks Steak House era...just a huge miss.
I like the part where the alien pops out of McCluskey’s chest and scurries away.
Spaceballs did a great take-off of that scene.
My grandparents were all Italian immigrants and from what I’ve heard faced the same discrimination and suspicion as every other group of newcomers. They didn’t whine about it, they worked at the jobs they could to feed their families. The discrimination and suspicion goes away when people see your groups values and work ethic are like everyone elses. If they’re not,...
Somebody’s thinking too much
Somebody’s drinking too much
SPOILERS BELOW
I have heard this argument before.
The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, and III even more so make it very clear that while Vito got what looked like a good thing going, Michael ultimately becomes a monster, destroying the family he was trying to protect.
Someone made the point that at the meeting of the Dons in Part I, Vito swears on the souls of his grandchildren that he would not break the truce. Michael broke it, but with Vito’s support, and the grandchildren suffer.
Coppola was not supporting the Mob life, or excusing joining up, only showing how it can be rationalized. Khartoum’s death in GF I was inexcusable. The prostitute’s murder in GF II many times moreso, and NOT to protect the family from anything more than the kind of financial shakedown they pulled on lower people still.
I have no problem with Michael pointing out the corruption of government, and today’s U.S. government looks more like the old mafia than ever, but in the big cities corrupt bosses were around 100 years ago and more, Don Vito’s time.
Vito got the wrong lesson from it, not because of anti-Italian prejudice, it was real but could be overcome, as it was by many and also by other Mediterraneans (you don’t hear much about the Portuguese Mafia), but because some of the old bad ways were brought over by the Black Hand and Black Hand pretenders, etc., who preyed on other Italians. THAT is what Vito saw as forcing his hand.
In any event, who would want to be Michael Corleone? Or Santino? Or Fredo? Or Kay? Or Apollonia? Or Carmela? Or Connie? Or any of Kay’s three children (remember, she aborted one).
I saw that and I saw a Greek tragedy. The more Michael tries to muscle his way through pain the more he gave to himself and those around him.
Ive never liked any of The Godfather crap. These criminals justified their crimes by saying “I just did what I had to do” but the Italian grocer sold tomatoes and worked 15 hour days to get by. The Italian barber and the Italian cobbler worked honest jobs.
Glorifying crime is a non-starter with me.
That was when the opportunity to begin a life of crime presented itself - but it was not the "motivation."
Prior to that, he had himself been victimized by the "Black Hand."
Regards,
Yes that was ridiculous.
I agree with your take, having myself lived in the Italian Market in Philly among hard-working, enterprising Italian-Americans. The insular Italian culture may have contributed in part—there is a word in Italian campanilismo—meaning "never stray farther away than the bell tower in your home neighborhood." In Philly, each ethnicity could name the four streets that enclosed "their" neighborhood. It's true of most immigrant groups. In the past century, there were churches all over the country that specialized in the many languages of the "old country."
Some of the ethnic friction between the Dutch and English Protestants who settled New York City against the incoming Catholic Irish in the half-century preceding The Godfather was well depicted in Scorcese's Gangs of New York. The major Italian influx shown in The Godfather came after, and was subjected to the same tensions over religion, language and culture, certainly in part by the freshly-assimilated Irish who were, by then, in the top spots in Catholic seminaries and parishes.
As for this article, the well-respected author Michael Anton's disbelief that there was significant prejudice against Italians is surprisingly naïve, especially since he is of Italian and Lebanese extraction himself. Anton was born in 1969, so he missed the earlier era depicted in The Godfather. He grew up and was educated mainly on the West Coast, where ethnic attitudes have long been more liberal than on the East Coast.
Yo, Michael. Sad but true.
then there was the thousands of raids U.S. helicopter gunships made in the Vietnam war....Godfather III came out 25 years later....some people just clueless....smh.
Well yea. The ideal is equality and justice for all,
Civil rights enforced. That is what I fight for.
GFII seemed more like a morality play than GFI, which glamorized the Mafia. GFII really shows their internal decay -- Michael forced to live in isolation, his siblings in broken marriages, his wife leaving him, etc.
Crime does pay, but at a cost.
Balzac: "There is no fortune without a scandal."
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