Posted on 02/17/2010 10:59:14 AM PST by Perdogg
A national American-Italian group are considering legal action against MTV over their controversial hit Jersey Shore, RadarOnline.com can exclusively reveal.
UNICO (the National American-Italian Service Organization) president Andre Dimino has revealed that they have consulted attorneys because they are fed-up with MTV’s portrayal of young Italian Americans as booze-fueled hellraisers.
(Excerpt) Read more at radaronline.com ...
I agree. I know several people like the folks on Jersey Shore. They’re perfectly real. There’s nothing uniquely or essentially ‘Italian’ about it, though.
These Jersey Shore folks are being exploited, sure, but it’s because they are idiots.
I’ve said for years that these ‘reality shows’ (that aren’t very real at all) are the modern evolution of Carnival sideshows. Modern sensibilities prevent promoters from exploiting deformed people as ‘freaks,’ but these types of shows have the same basic sense of spectacle and promotion that old time freak shows.
Nicky, Giuseppe, and Carlo have a sit down with Moe Greene at the Tropicana; they're getting take-out from the Vannelli brothers.
I understood that perfectly, LOL! Speaking of which, the CIC and VP are "cafons" of the first order.
Idiots,,, if you don’t like freedom of speech go back to italy. This is like indians thinking they magically get the right to dictate who says what about indians. If i want to name my team the “wild indians”,,that my right. Same with the italians and anybody else.
They are free to produce a show showing us how italian youths really act like little tee-totalling saints. Get busy boys,,,,
cafon - 1 definition - a stupid, red-neck hick who doesn’t know any better. A backward person with no social skills, manners
Since this is a "reality show", how is this a "portrayal"? They are just filming people who are being themeselves without a script...
Did they also sue the producers of The Sopranos? If not, why not?
I had NO idea that being fed-up was a reason to sue.
America, get some tougher skin, for God'sake.
No kidding. Following their logic, they should also sue the producers and directors of:
The Godfather
Goodfellas
Donnie Brasco
Casino
A Bronx Tale
The Last Don
The Untouchables
This may explain the recent stories claiming the Jersey Shore clowns are not all Italian.
I have been to Seaside Heights, NJ a million times...They need to face facts...Guido’s and Guidettes are real. If this Italian club wants to start changing the stereotype they should start at their own dinner tables.
They need to get over it and stop being so thin-(olive)-skinned. There are more things to get worked up about then the way goumba’s are portrayed on TV.
I’m sure you saw this already... gee whiz.
It’s kind of cool to see the ultraliberal MTV being hit for being intolerant. Otherwise, they should do what I do and just never tune in. Me? I’ll be watching Cake Boss.
Need to get a life. Actually, the state of NJ division of tourism should be suing as only ONE of the people on this STUPID show are even FROM New Jersey.
The terms "red-neck" and "hick" are out of place. "Cafone" is an Italian expression chiefly used by people who live in italian-ethnic American communities that sprang up after the turn of the prior century, i.e. the 1900s. I have heard Italian-descended residents of Philadelphia's Italian Market area use it to mean someone "who just came off the boat" [from poverty-striken rural Italy].
So the "naive, stupid, uneducated" or "rural" aspects of the definition do apply, as well as an overtone of "does not yet know how to act in America", but Italian peasants have never been known by the terms "red-neck" or "hick."
"Red-neck" and "hick originated in the American South of a much earlier time, 1840 and before, when Scots-Irish people from Ulster migrated to America, according to historian Arthur Herman in How the Scots Invented the Modern World. "Red-neck" was a term of anti-Presbyterian mockery used by wealthy English-descended cotton plantation owners, who were Anglicans and were also the power elite of the colonies and pre-Civil War America. Presbyterian pastors wore a red collar to distinguish themselves from Anglican priests; hence the term "red-neck." That term later became generalized to apply to any Scots-Irish or white-skinned (easily sunburned) farm laborer in the south who was neither wealthy nor upper-class (i.e. English-descended).
"Hick" is also an expression from the Anglo-Celt American South of an earlier time, not associated with Italians, or particularly the Italians who arrived on boats to the major port cities of New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore at the turn of the 20th century and set up "Little Italy" conclaves in those cities.
Second- and third-generation Italian-Americans of the 1940s through 1990s who continued to live in urban Italian enclaves used the term "cafone" to try to set themselves apart as more knowlegeable and more Americanized. Many forbade their children to speak Italian, referring to it as "greaseball" language. They wanted to fit in and become recognized as fully American in a culture that whose elites were then Anglo-Saxon and whose ruling class within their Catholic churches were the waves of Irish immigrants who had preceded them. One of the indignant expressions I heard frequently in Philadelphia's Italian Market was "I was born and raised here!" in any dispute over customs, behavior, territory or rights within the community.
Awesome information. You must be in academia or some well-read Ph.D. (I am neither!)
Just a master’s. But I do read all the time. I spent whatever I had educating all the men in my family.
Thanks for the primer! In our family, the use of the word cafon was used primarily for people who acted in ways unbecoming, which gave us great practice for describing the current administration.
It's apt! Compared to Washington, they are straight off the Chicago turnip truck.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.