Seton Hall professor William J. Connell, the Conference Organizer is to be commended for this effort.

I am however wary of Academics organizing Conferences of Activist Issues. Being "wired" totally different ways, one likes to talk about a subject, the other determine problems, solutions, and plans of actions.

I will look forward to reading the papers, and especially the papers of those "Anti-Activists" who were invited to an "Activists" Conference, before I issue a full fledged critique.  Hopefully there will be a Conference Summary that states what was accomplished, and what would be subsequent steps.

Some of my confederates, were angered by the invitation of Joe Piscopo and Tony Lo Bianco, previously known to "embrace" the mafia image, but claimed during the Conference to be among  the "converted", which appears to have been an effective device, in both setting the proper mood, and drawing Media attention, two worthwhile objectives.

I have thus far seen only reportage in just the New Jersey Herald, and Newsday that ran an 8 paragraph Associated Press report.

NJ Star-Ledger Staff
By Mike Frassinelli
Sunday, December 05, 2004

The only Italian-American lead character on "Seinfeld" is a loser who pushes women and children out of the way during a fire drill and picks half-eaten eclairs from the garbage.

George Costanza has a simple solution when another Italian-American character on the classic television show urinates on a couch: Turn over the cushion.

"One Italian pees on the couch, the other Italian takes it," Emanuele Alfano, chairman of the Anti-Bias Committee, UNICO National, said yesterday during a conference at Seton Hall University in South Orange to discuss discrimination and defamation of Italian-Americans.

It's also not lost on Alfano that Dick Grayson, Robin's alter ego, became a ward of Bruce "Batman" Wayne only after his family was wiped out by an Italian.

Or that an Italian doctor on the television show, "The Nanny," announced that he spent the best six years of his life in junior high school. Or that another show contained this punch line about why it is so easy to get Sicilian women pregnant: "cheap Chianti and narrow streets."

[RAA: These could otherwise be laughed off, IF it were Not for their Unrelenting PERVASIVENESS]

At the university in Essex County, the county where fictional mob boss Tony Soprano resides, Alfano said the popular Hollywood portrayal of Italians as gangsters is only a portion of the problem.

At a daylong conference attended by "Saturday Night Live" funnyman Joe Piscopo and numerous other prominent New Jersey Italian-Americans, Alfano wondered why, in the words of columnist Jack Newfield, prejudice against Italians "is the most tolerated intolerance."

"If we say nothing, if we do nothing, surely we will become nothing," Alfano said.

His talk was a perfect segue into a often volatile panel discussion on entertainment and the media.

The panel included Piscopo, Trenton Times publisher Richard Bilotti, Tom DeGenaro of One Voice Coalition, Purdue University professor Ben Lawton, actor-director-producer Tony Lo Bianco, and playwright and journalist LindaAnn Loschiavo.

Bilotti said that while movies and television drive most of the negative images of Italian-Americans, newspapers aren't shy about running big spreads to preview each season of "The Sopranos." Bilotti said his paper did, too, before he finally stepped in and stopped it.

Lo Bianco said the unemployment problem is so rampant in the acting profession, with only about 5 percent of actors working, that many Italian-Americans are reluctant to turn down gangster roles or any other role.

That statement later drew a sharp rebuke from DeGenaro, who fumed, "Actors of Italian descent who allow themselves to be cast as mentally challenged buffoons, criminals and people of ill repute aid and abet the defamation."

Lo Bianco said he is shooting a pilot for Showtime about an Italian-American police chief, a positive role model, and noted, "I think that's a start."

Piscopo said he used to play a stereotypical Italian Jersey guy character on "Saturday Night Live," and didn't think much about it at the time. Now, he said, he is embarrassed by it.

He is working on a show called "Bloomfield Avenue," which portrays an Italian-American family from North Jersey.

But because it is not a gangster show, it has been a hard sell, Piscopo said.

"In the name of my grandparents and my parents, I will make that movie," he vowed.

The conference, which also touched on a surprising history of lynchings of Italians, was organized by Seton Hall professor William J. Connell, the university's La Motta chair.

Loschiavo said part of the problem is that Italian-Americans are not funding plays that could improve their image. While there are 90 Hispanic drama groups, she said, there is not one Italian-American theater or drama group in the United States.

[RAA: Loshiavo vacillates between "bashing" IA Major Orgs for not Funding Plays for Broadway that project a Positive Italian American Image, (which I totally oppose, since they are such RISKY ventures, BAD IDEA!!!), and justifiably complaining about the lack of Italian-American theater groups, but when approached as to what have Italian American actors done to even ctreate a proposal is Silent.)

When she said that Italian-Americans should start supporting writers, an angry audience member shouted: "Like Scorsese and Coppola!"

Piscopo said during an interview following the panel discussion that the exchange of ideas was healthy.

"I loved it. It was great," he said of the sometimes raucous banter. "They were passionate about that."

Piscopo during his routine jokes that the conflict in Iraq can easily be solved if America sends in two guys from Jersey in a Buick.

But the death of his father two years ago has made him become more ethnically aware and more protective of the legacy of Italian-Americans like his parents and grandparents.

"I've seen the light," he said.

Show-biz industry draws Italian wrath - New Jersey News Ledger
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey
/index.ssf?/base/news-8/110222779750270.xml

Celebrity panel examines popular perceptions of Italian-Americans- Newsday
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/state
/ny-bc-nj--italian-americans1205dec05,0,1387957
,print.story?coll=ny-region-apnewjersey