Word: italian-american
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...those who deserve them. By now affirmative action has grown to include preferential treatment for Hispanics, women, the handicapped and an ever-expanding list of favored groups. This is absurd. By what moral standard should, say, a Marielito, already once rescued by America, enjoy a preference over, say, an Italian-American vet or an Irish cop? A Richmond ordinance struck down two years ago by the Supreme Court assigned 30% of city subcontracts to firms owned by minorities, defined as "Blacks, Spanish-speaking ((citizens)), Orientals, Indians, Eskimos or Aleuts." Richmond, capital of the Confederacy, is not known for its mistreatment...
GoodFellas, the homicidally funny fresco of a Mafia family that Scorsese has made from the Nicholas Pileggi book Wiseguy, is the centerpiece in a new rogues' gallery. Mob movies are gathering, like capos at the Appalachia conference, from all over America. You want Italian-American hoods of the New York City stripe? We got 'em by the hundreds in GoodFellas. In My Blue Heaven, written by Pileggi's wife Nora Ephron as a kind of comic coda to the Scorsese picture, Steve Martin plays a Mafia rat in a Witness Protection Program out West. At Christmas, Paramount has The Godfather...
Distinctive voices are hard to hear this fall amid the din of the assembly line. Much of the new programming is slicker than ever. NBC's The Fanelli Boys, for example, about a quartet of Italian-American brothers who move back to their mother's house in Brooklyn, is cleverly written and brightly acted. But that doesn't compensate for its rancid rehashing of every Italian stereotype known to Hollywood. (One brother is a playboy; another a wheeler- dealer with a hint of Mob connections; a third almost gives Mom a heart attack when he brings home a Jewish girl...
Residents of the neighborhood groused that they didn't want to put up with visiting busloads of crime buffs. Italian-American organizations argued, somewhat illogically, that by designating the house, the Government would be honoring Capone, thus defaming their ethnic group. Said Robert Allegrini, executive director of the Joint Civic Commission of Italian Americans: "We shouldn't be haunted by Capone's ghost 50 years later." Daunted by the furor, Levell withdrew his proposal last week, explaining, "I still feel the house is historically significant, but not at the cost of hurting the Italian- American community...
They are the last ethnic group America can comfortably mock. In movies and on TV, the Italian-American male is Stanley Kowalski without the sex appeal, the female a masochistic Judy absorbing too many Punches. So it is a tonic to meet the Italian Americans in John Patrick Shanley's plays (Danny and the Deep Blue Sea) and films (Moonstruck). The residents of Shanley's Little Italy dare to express their feelings in street poetry whose melodic line is closer to Verdi's than to Bon Jovi's. In his new off-Broadway play Shanley goes further, announcing that these...