Posted on 01/07/2014 11:25:08 AM PST by nickcarraway
Bill Dal Cerro of the Italic Institute of America [Free for All, Dec. 28] took Dana Milbank to task for allegedly stereotyping Italians in his Dec. 22 Sunday Opinion column, “Godfathers of the Capitol.” But Milbank never used the word “Italian.” He did write “mafia” twice, and he used the phrase “going to the mattresses” once. He also used the term “mob boss.”
In my opinion, it takes more effort than it is worth to be offended, no matter what one’s origins, by any of these words. It seems to me that even in “today’s enlightened era,” to use Dal Cerro’s phrase, we can pretty much agree that Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and Meyer Lansky were not Italian Americans. They were, however, major players in the American mafia.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Melting pot? More like a diversity filled 55 gal drum barrel.
In Boston there was a notable bad guy (1960s, 1970s roughly) named Joseph "The Animal" Barboza. He built quite a reputation as a scary guy -- but he could never be a "made man" because he was Portuguese.
What?
Now just because my brother and nephews have a business deposing of the “contents” of 55 gal drums then reconditioning them.....doesn’t mean our family has anything to do with, well you know
FWIW, he and another corrupt guy were sponsored for the Hoover's FBI by then US Speaker, John McCormack (D) MA.
And probably had very high moral standards and were very decent and honorable people if you looked at them relative to many of todays’ mafia, drug cartels , jihadist gangs, child molesters and other various modern day criminals.
The Mafia was Sicilian. Gangsters could be anyone.
LOL. “Let me make it up to you...here’s Vinny’s watch...”
Interesting true story. In 1890 New Orleans the local Sicilian gangsters murdered the local Chief of Police (who was, not unusually himself for NO, arguably himself a crook). Jury intimidation and bribery of judges then got those accused acquitted. This was standard practice in Sicily and always had been. They killed cops and judges that got in their way with enthusiasm.
This didn't sit well with the locals. Mob formed, basically KKK/vigilante types, stormed the jail and killed (eventually) 16 imprisoned Italians, quite possibly not all of whom were guilty.
This made an enormous impression on the US Mafia, and it became a cardinal rule not to target cops, judges, prosecutors, etc. Wasn't always followed, but the net effect is that such practices have been MUCH less common than in the old country.
I always thought this whole story would make a great movie: The KKK vs. The Mafia.
Thinking about an offer....
“The Mafia was Sicilian. Gangsters could be anyone.”
That’s the way I always understood it, too. I’d read that even non-Sicilian Italian gangsters like Capone couldn’t have been in the actual Mafia as it existed in its early days.
Might be wrong about that, but that’s the way I’ve always heard it.
There is mafia and Mafia.
Mafia (large “M”) is limited to individuals of entirely Sicilian ethnicity.
Mafia (small “m”) is any criminal enterprise organized along hierarchical lines like the Mafia (large “M”), e.g. Russian mafia, Columbian mafia, etc. There are mafias (small “m” in nearly every ethnic group).
True. Guys like Lansky and Siegel could be powerful gangsters, but even their friend Luciano, boss of all bosses, could not get them into the mafia.
Not only that, “big names” were not welcome. The Mafia was a secret society. You weren’t “in” the Mafia, you were “connected”. You knew someone who knew someone. You were just a legit businessman.
Big name gangsters tended to die early because they got people too curious. Remember, the only people who said there was no Mafia, were the people in the Mafia.
Amusing story but probably not main reason La Cosa Nostra doesn't target government officials. Italy has no death penalty. When the maximum penalty is a life term whether or not you kill someone - and many of these Italian gang leaders are facing life terms, there's no incentive to avoid targeting government officials. La Scorta is a decent 90's movie about the current-day dangers facing Italian officials responsible for mob prosecutions. Latin America has the same problem, which is why informal government death squads have formed to deal with the problem of government officials getting bumped off. The problem is that it's not systematic enough to kill the thousands of murderers who need to be eliminated as an example to other would-be killers, which may be why homicide rates there are simply stratospheric on a per capita basis.
“I’d read that even non-Sicilian Italian gangsters like Capone couldn’t have been in the actual Mafia as it existed in its early days.”
The non-Sicilians had their own versions of the “mafia”, separate from La Cosa Nostra, but similar. The Sicilians just became the most numerous and powerful, so they ended up controlling the whole structure set up after the Castellammarese war. Capone may have been in the Neopolitan version of the Mafia (the Camorra), but couldn’t have been in La Cosa Nostra.
Multiculti ahead of their time!
Problem with this theory is that the Sicilian practice of killing inconvenient government officials goes back centuries, to a period when the death penalty was widely used. But they largely dropped it in this country.
Whether it can be directly assigned to the New Orleans mob is of course highly debatable, but I think there can be little argument that the two mafias are very different in this regard.
And, of course, what are the chances of a cop-killing mafioso in this country, perhaps outside of TX, being executed before dying in prison of other causes?
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