Enlighten Me
Enlighten me as to the why Italian Americans (just using that one ethnic group for now, of which I am "one half" ethnicity Italian) can maintain a good sense of humor all through the years when shows like "The Sopranos" plus movies like "Goodfellas" among a myriad of others.......and now "The Family" starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pheiffer about a mobster who goes into the witness protection program in Paris with his non Italian wife and their children.........are frequently promoted depicting Italians as crime family bosses, hit men, thugs, murderers, and so on???
By the way, I can't wait to see it........we've seen every single Di Niro movie and Pacino movie ever made......plus those of Joe Pesce...etc.
BUT, why are we not insulted? How do we maintain our composure and our good humor????
The only scenes in THE SOPRANOS I can relate to are Sunday Dinner.....
Oh, yes, we did have relatives in Caldwell New Jersey and Livingston, New Jersey......but one was a plumber and not in the mob, that's for sure.
He retired to Brooksville, Florida. He wasn't even Italian but Hungarian.
THE GODFATHER movies.......remind me of my own immigrant grandparents when they came to Little Italy New York City in the 1890 time period.........and "how it must have been for them".........as poor people in tenements.
NOT as young Michael becoming the crime boss of the famiglia (family in Italian).
Most Italian Americans were NOT in crime organizations.
So, why do we have to tippy toe around drug dealers that come up from the cities to Vermont??? Especially when it's a fact of life and in our daily newspapers. It's not a secret up here? We don't want them here. Our cops don't want them here. The F.B.I. doesn't want them here.
Or the ones who cross borders illegally?
All of mine came legally and I have the ship's manifests and documents to prove it.
Or the ones who get out of the prison system and then see our small state as a "soft target" where folks are backwards and ignorant. Far from it.
They all stand out like a sore thumb, if truth be told.
I just don't get it.
Any fellow Italians care to enlighten me?
Thank you in advance.............
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