Bada Bing? Bada Boom.

OpinionJournal ^ | May 13, 2004 | Peggy Noonan

[condi2008]

I share an obsession with Tony Soprano. This startles me and makes me unhappy because it has been my experience that once my inner fears are echoed in the outer culture, some kind of grim critical mass has been achieved, and trouble ensues. (Does this sound oddly egocentric, even for a pundit? I think it may. Yet it's true.)
On Sunday's "The Sopranos," Tony stayed up one night channel-surfing. This is not unusual for Tony. His sins keep him awake. Or rather a perplexing question about his sins: Why has the committing of them become so joyless? Why don't they yield happiness?

He comes across a documentary about the potential use by terrorists of the nearby Port of Newark. The Port of Newark, the biggest port on the eastern seaboard, receives millions of ship containers each year; the feds say they can check only 2%; terrorists could easily smuggle in a dirty nuke.

Tony becomes alarmed. He knows Port Newark. The mob is there, his people are there. It is corrupt, lazy, badly run. Suddenly he realizes there's nothing between his home and kaboom but a chain-link fence and a mall.

He shares his new anxiety with everyone, sounding like a crank. When a bartender doesn't respond with the appropriate anxiety Tony becomes enraged and beats him up. Tony has anger problems. So does al Qaeda.

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[dead]

You apparently don't know any honest, hard working Italians or Sicilians.

You’ve obviously never lived in North Jersey.

There are plenty of hard-working, honest Italians here. And there are some of them who are, shall we say, a little less scrupulous.

The show is about the latter. The former make good neighbors, but lousy television characters.

[stanz]

Sorry...never watch it.

[Sybeck1]

Anybody bored with season as I am? More misses than hits. Steve Buscemi's character is a waste.

[scab4faa]

Anyone who is left to watching the "Sopranos"(an insult to every honest, hard working American of Italian/Sicilian ancestry) needs to reexamine their Sunday evening entertainment options... In fact, just like less cigarettes and less booze, less television adds more to your life.

Who the hell are you to tell us what we should or should not watch on T.V.? Maybe you should think about posting your biased suggestions over at D.U. They seem to enjoy that kind of thing.

[kellynla]

Who the hell are you to tell us what we should or should not watch on T.V.?

I am a free American who is merely making a suggestion, thank you.
I didn't say "you should not watch" now did I?
I merely stated that
"Anyone who is left to watching the "Sopranos"(an insult to every honest, hard working American of Italian/Sicilian ancestry) needs to reexamine their Sunday evening entertainment options..."
I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.

[Lando Lincoln]

ping

Lando

[mumbo]

I think that "Deadwood", once I got past the constant f-bombs, is one of the best things I have ever seen. Even with the cursing, the language is very literate and dense with meaning.

[dsc]

"The Sopranos is a bigoted stereotypical insult on an entire ethnic group."

You know what? The Sopranos even pokes fun at people like you (the shrink's husband).

However, the fact that the stereotypes are so obviously exaggerated (beginning with the very name "Soprano") is a dead giveaway that they're having fun with it, and not saying "This is what Italian people are like."

Tony's next-door neighbor is an honest, hard-working Italian. So is his shrink. So is the guy Carmella almost has an affair with (he backs out).

As a matter of fact, one of the things I find so striking about the series is the clear and sharp contrast that emerges between good people and moral lepers like the Soprano gang.

Even though Tony thinks he doesn't deserve to go to Hell, and even though he tries to "do right" by his wife and kids, in the final analysis he is an evil guy, capable of terrible deeds. Capable of enjoying terrible deeds.

The contrast between Tony taking his daughter to interview at colleges and Tony garrotting a turncoat to death is an interesting moral lesson. But I don't think anyone is getting the idea that Italians are like Tony Soprano.

[moondoggie]

Some conservatives watch and like the Sopranos, so do I. And I don't need to re-examine anything in my life. It doesn't insult anyone. Lighten up..being conservative doesn't have to mean boring.

I agree with you! :-)

[qam1]

Anybody bored with season as I am? More misses than hits.

Yep this season and last have been real snooze fest, There is maybe one 5 second shocking thing per week and the rest is boring soap opera like talk. If it weren't for Deadwood coming on after I probably would have stopped watching it

Steve Buscemi's character is a waste.

What's the point of his character? I have no idea.

[bc2]

Let me know when you start a class-action lawsuit against the Lucky Charms people.

Sheesh get over it already!

Anybody got a beer?

[razorback-bert]

Don't rent the "Godfather", you will have a cow.

[metesky]

On "The Sopranos," one sees a plot twist being signaled: Tony and Carmella will stay together, and Tony will attempt to extricate himself from his life, removing himself and his family to the Hudson River Valley farm where he spent some happy boyhood summers. On the farm, in the last scene, he is smoking his cigar, full face to the camera. We are left to wonder if it will work.

It will not work.

The man whose farm was used as Union headquarters at the battle of Gettysburg was sickened by the war and moved to get away from it, once and for all.

He moved to Appomattox Courthouse and his home was used by Grant and Lee to sign the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia.

In the mid-thirties there was a man who saw the gathering storm and wanted to protect his family from the coming catastrophic war. He moved his family to the most out of the way Pacific island he could afford, Guadalcanal.

You have to stay and fight the good fight or you are lost, morally and physically.

[metesky]

I forgot to add that Tony Soprano is, of course, lost anyway.

[breakem]

My family is from Castlemare PG west of Messina. My reaction to your being insulted...............y a w n!

[kellynla]

My reaction to your being insulted...............y a w n!
I don't know where you took remedial reading but ya better go back and take a refresher course. LOL Where did I say that I was "insulted"??? hello? I said that the program was an insult to all the honest, hard working Italians/Sicilians in America... And if you aren't insulted that's your problem... 'cause your ethnic group is being stereotyped! The program is garbage! And that's the bottom line!
Ciao

[breakem]

I couldn't yawn any wider.

[discostu]

Mob movies/ TV shows aren't an insult to Italian Americans, all of us fans of the genre know there are plenty of legit Italians that have contributed vastly to Western culture and technology.

Now the people that get in a tizzy because other people like mob movies, they most certainly are an insult to Italian American, they're the ones that perpetuate the myth that nobody can look past the fiction.

[My Favorite Headache]

[breakem]

clearly insulting to fat men