[SMEDLEYBUTLER]

I'm a little verklempt! Talk amongst yourselves.

[petuniasevan]

And the legend of John Gotti lives on. Forever.

Funny, Vicki, I don't know anyone who immortalizes sewer rats.
All this weeping on his coffin won't change the fact that your father made other daughters fatherless.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

he wished that I had been a boy

and now we know why.

[neutrino]

Interesting post. It's a good reminder of the different aspects present in a single personality...a gangster on one hand, and a doting father on the other.

[meisterbrewer]

It is said that the value of a person's life can be judged by the turnout at his funeral. That being the case, my father was priceless.

Quite a few people turned out for Stalin's funeral, as well. Nuff said.

[dep]

there can be little doubt, i suppose, that john gotti is weeping "bitter tears this very day," ro quote mario puzo. he was a bad man. in the litany of bad men, though, he was scarcely in the top 10 or even the top 100. this is in no way meant to accept or excuse his badness, but merely to note that he was latched onto because he was a compact, bite-sized one-reeler in the universal struggle between good and bad. attention paid to him means attention distracted from other evil -- gotti and his crew do not hold a candle, even a little pink birthday candle, to the likes of robert mugabe, about whom we do nothing because the situation is more complicated and we live in terror of being thought to attack others (and so we excoriate the catholic church while calling islam a "religion of peace").

that gotti's daughter is sad that her father died should be no surprise; indeed, the surprise would be if she felt any other way. what she has to say about it is of no matter one way or the other, because who and what john gotti was from our perspective, not hers, is the one that matters. and our perspective is that he was two-bit, even by mob standards. he presided over the dismantling of the outfit because he was interested in personal power and aggrandizment alone. he was the peter principle applied to a punk and a thug. the unintended good effect is that the gambino family is a lot less powerful than it was when his guys killed paul castellano. this is because gotti lacked any redeeming grace, any spark of wisdom, anything except the hunger that ultimately consumed him -- the cancer was to him as he was to what had been a fairly well oiled criminal enterprise. that this is all for the good is no thanks to him. but at bottom he was a sideshow, and not a very good one. compared to charley lucky, to carlo gambino, even to carmine galante or tony pro or junior persico gotti was a pimple. a punk. a little nicky scarfo without the panache. good riddance.

though if mugabe had croaked instead, it would have mattered a whole lot more.

dep

[Cable225]

Regardless of the all the things John Gotti was or wasn't, he was still this woman's father, and now he's gone. Trust me, it's a wound that never completely closes.

Yes, he was a ganster and a murderer, but as far as Ms. Gotti is concerned, he was "Dad".

We do not have to admire or respect John Gotti, but I think we can all cut his daughter a break on Father's Day, and respect the fact that he was her hero, and she misses him very much.

[elcaudillo]

What a stupidly vapid, moronic article. Ghost written or not this is utterly worthless.

A sex change is the next item on la Gotti's agenda.

[missmanhattan]

I am ashamed of my Italian heritage when the likes of gotti are worshiped by morons.

[NYCVirago]

I guess Ms. Gotti conveniently forgot the two separate stints of years in jail (for hijacking and manslaughter) that her father served during her childhood. He physically wasn't there for at least five years of her youth, and it didn't sound like he was spending much time around the homefront when he wasn't in jail.