Following is a Letter from Bob Miriani to the Mark Brown, 

Bob Miriani has a lot to say, but your patience will be rewarded. Bob fits in the necessary statistics, but he wraps it in some entertaining, informative, tweaking sarcasm, that couldn't have been aimed at a more deserving person.

8/30/01

From: Bob Miriani
To: markbrown@suntimes.com

Mark Brown
Columnist
Chicago Sun-Times

Dear Mr. Brown:

    Enjoyed your piece entitled "Sopranos could learn something here."  You do write well and I can understand how the Chicago Sun-Times could employ you as a writer.  You're a natural!  Did you go to college?

    I especially liked your comparison of Robert Natale and Paulie Walnuts.  Very well done.  Somewhat like a pastel artist who uses colored pencils.  That is, had you done your piece in pastels Natale and Walnuts would have come out as much more "colorful" -- you know, as in Bill Maher's finding that "Italians are colorful and they don't complain as much."  However, when you used the "colored pencil" technique in your writing we got a lot of detail; so much so that it was almost as if Natale and Walnuts faded into each other, they so much looked alike after you got finished portraying them.  Found this interesting because for a little while there I got the impression you got Walnuts mixed up with Natale and Natale mixed up with Walnuts and reality mixed up with fiction.  

This is interesting because it sort of points up that here's this actor, whose name is never mentioned in your piece but one would swear that he's a real character and his name is Paulie Walnuts, which is exactly what the Italian-American activists are saying, that people find it difficult to make a distinction between reality and fantasy regarding Italian-Amercians.  Then, 
of course, the Italian-American activists get all bent out of shape about reality and fantasy blending into each other and they go out and hire a polling service to see if their belief is right that reality and fantasy are one and the same in the minds of John Q. and Jane Public.  SHAZAM! back comes the finding from the Princeton based Response Analysis Corporation that they found that 74% of Americans believed that most Italian-Americans are in some way associated with organized crime.  Of course, that's really fantasy because according to FBI statistics only about 11/100ths of one percent of the 15,000,000 Italian-Americans are associated with organized crime.

    So, where are we now?  Oh yes, "The question, please."  "The question" is "If true (and we have no reason to doubt the Response Analysis Corporation's findings, that 74% of Americans associate Italian-Americans with organized crime), where could they get such an idea, when it is pure fantasy?"  Well, while I could very well get somewhat that impression myself from your piece mentioned above, I'm sure that as good of a writer and mixer of reality and fiction together as you are, that you are certainly not responsible for the fantasy held by 74% of Americans regarding Italian-Americans. Thus we are faced with a conundrum:  Where did 74% of Americans get such an idea about Italian-Americans?  

    Well, we can eliminate BIRTH OF A NATION, although there are some interesting negative stereotyping between that abortion and The Sopranos.  Too, BIRTH OF A NATION has already been mentally adjudicated by the American public as a work of dubious artistic merit and obvious racial stereotyping, while there are still some columnists who are currently out-to-lunch as to whether The Sopranos is negative stereotyping.  So, it can be said, with some certainty, that 74% of Americans are not holding the myth in their minds regarding Italian-Americans being mobbed-up from BIRTH OF A NATION.

    So, how about from the history books in schools?  No, they seem to deal with the greatness of those of Italian ancestry; you know, like Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci (remember the Country you're living in is named after Amerigo -- Good!, I was pretty sure you weren't asleep that day in third grade when they covered that piece of information), Da Vinci, Michelangelo, 
LaGuardia, Giovanni Caboto (you know, they called him John Cabot in the history books), William Paca and Caesar Rodney (am sure you know these two Italian-Americans who were two of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence, right?), Filippo Mazzei (now come on, you remember Mazzei, that Italian guy who spoke out against British rule of America and wrote between 1774 and 1776 articles regarding his opposition, under the pseudonym "Furioso," using such phrases as "All men are by nature equally free and independent," etc., which George Mason wrote as "That all Men are created equally free and independent and have certain inherent natural Rights...," while Jefferson wrote Mazzei's words and thought as "That all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."), Galileo Galilei,
Alessandra Giuseppi Antonio Anastasio Volta (you know, like when the light goes on in your head and you write such brilliant" pieces as "Sopranos could learn something here"), Fermi, Marconi, Marco Polo, Dante, St. Francis of Assisi, Maria Montessori, Raffaello Sanzio (you know, Raphael), John "Manila John" Basilone (no, not the hit man for Lucky Luciano, but rather the Marine Sergeant in WWII who won the Medal of Honor and the Silver Star and gave his life that people like you could be of the opinion that The Sopranos doesn't negatively stereotype Italian-Americans despite scientific polling evidence 
to the contrary, not to mention the many personal incidents of Italian-Americans and "the wink" by our fellow Americans about their knowing about our being mobbed-up), Humbert "Rocky" Versace (no, Mark, he wasn't Paulie Walnuts' cousin, but rather a Green Beret Captain whom Lt. Jim Rowe stated was his ideal of a hero, for such hard core resistance as a POW in Vietnam when he sang the National Anthem while tied up and being beaten by his kind and loving Vietnamese captors (who by the way were never brought to trail for their abuse of Versace nor his murder), who finally gagged him to shut him up, yet he continued to then hum the National Anthem until they beat him unconscious), et al.   No, Mark, 74% of the American public didn't get their myth from these individuals.  So where did they get such negative stereotyping?

    How about Holewood?  Do you think that all those mob pictures since talkies came into vogue could have contributed to such a myth?  How about the modern myth of The Sopranos, which is advertised in Canada on billboards as merely a name, The Sopranos, and a plate of spaghetti with a knife and spoon on one side of the plate and a revolver on the other side of the plate.  Gee, they must be referring to the Chinese when they feature a plate of Italian food with a revolver next to the plate in lieu of the fork, right?  Gosh, I would hope there's no social coding there about The Sopranos being related to anything Italian, like spaghetti.  

    Yea, I guess you're right, Mark, the current court action regarding the contribution of The Sopranos to negative stereotyping is, as you say, "groundless."  

    Thanks, Mark, for leading us to the truth regarding The Sopranos and the "groundless" court action by Enrico Mirabelli and Michael Polelle.  

    Oh, by the way, did you ever hear the advice of Black Elk, Lakota Medicine Man?  Perhaps it might be helpful to your future writing concerning The Sopranos and negative stereotyping if you taped it on your forehead:  "The power of a thing, thought, or act is in its meaning and understanding."  

                                          Sincerely,

                                            Bob Miriani
                                            7070 Lakeshore Drive
                                            Pentwater, Michigan 49449
                                            (231) 869-8813

'Sopranos' could learn something here 

BY MARK BROWN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST 

Former Stone Park Mayor Robert Natale looks a little like Paulie Walnuts, my favorite character in my favorite TV show, ''The Sopranos.''

 You wouldn't say he was a dead ringer, mind you, but dressed as he was Wednesday in a nice gray wool sports coat (Italian designer, I'd judge) over a silver crew neck knit shirt, the pugnacious Natale certainly looked ready to pick up his next cash-stuffed envelope.

 In truth, Natale wasn't collecting wads of cash when I saw him. He was sandwiched between federal prosecutors Scott Levine and Stephen Andersson and his own lawyer, Marvin Bloom, while admitting to a federal judge that he used to take payoffs in his past--$500 a month for five years to protect the Chicago Outfit's illegal video gambling machine business in his west suburban community.

 But the physical resemblance to Paulie Walnuts, a capo in Tony Soprano's fictional New Jersey mob family, was a fortuitous coincidence for me because I had the notion Wednesday that I would sit in on Natale's guilty plea, as well as on a court hearing in the civil lawsuit brought by Chicago lawyers who contend the makers of ''The Sopranos'' should be cited for offending the dignity of Italian Americans.

 I'm sure somebody will point out the flaw in my thinking, but I thought there might be something to be gained by comparing some of the real-life doings of the criminal organization allegedly controlled by recently deceased mob boss Anthony Centracchio with the story lines in the HBO television program.

 Centracchio, 71, died three weeks ago in his Oak Brook home. He had been battling cancer, as well as a federal racketeering indictment that accused him of using intermediaries to pass out bribes to public officials to protect his gambling operation. Natale was one of those officials.

 The feds had bugged Centracchio's office, as well as the automobile of his alleged bag man, former Stone Park police officer Thomas Tucker, who is still awaiting trial.

 If you watch "The Sopranos'' regularly, you might be able to imagine a scene using this actual conversation between Tucker and co- defendant Robert Urbinati, a former Franklin Park police officer, just days after the bug had been discovered in the ceiling of Centracchio's office. The two men didn't know that Tucker's car was bugged, too.

 Tucker: ''I told uh, you know I didn't mention no names or nothing, but I told Leon that you know a friend that I know, his office, Leon's coming in and getting his joint swept.''

 Urbinati: ''I don't blame him.''

 Tucker: ''Yeah. You know you're not [bleep]ing safe in your own home or your own, I mean, Jesus, Bobby. You know a restaurant, it's a public place, you know what I mean. But I mean your office, your own home, what the [bleep]. This is like [bleep]ing Russia.''

 Urbinati: ''Restaurant or not, I mean, they still do it in restaurants. What the [bleep], they did it downtown, didn't they?'' 

Tucker: ''No, no. I'm saying a public place, I can see it. You know what I'm talking about? But in your own home, in your own, you know, office or something, I mean, Jesus. They got no [bleep]ing morals?''

 Urbinati: ''Those [bleep]ing G-men, they don't give a [bleep]. What the [bleep] you gonna do? What would be the charges anyway, for us?''

 In one government undercover video, Centracchio was taped having sex in his office with a female employee, according to court records. There was nothing illegal about this, of course, but it sure was reminiscent of some episodes of "The Sopranos.''

 Prosecutors also contended they had evidence that Centracchio complained that he wanted to receive more of his street tax payments in $100 bills instead of piles of $20s, which were too bulky for him to carry.

 That's the kind of deft detail so often found on ''The Sopranos.''

 With his guilty plea, Natale was able to avoid sitting through a trial at which he probably would have had to listen to Tucker opining on tape that the Stone Park mayor should have been demanding a bigger payoff for protecting the video gambling machines.

 ''To tell you the truth, if I was [bleep]ing mayor, they wouldn't get me so cheap,'' Tucker said. ''No, I'd take a tally of what the [bleep] the machines are doing. Tell them I want [bleep]ing 10 percent.'' 

(By the way, in case you're wondering, Tucker was known to tell people he was half Italian.)

 The case hasn't proceeded far enough to make public the kind of wiretap stuff that I usually enjoy the most. That's where the mob guys talk about food. They always talk a lot about food, for some reason.

 Enrico Mirabelli, the lawyer who brought the lawsuit against Time Warner Entertainment Co. under the novel theory that "The Sopranos'' violates the obscure ''individual dignity'' clause of the Illinois Constitution, was visibly uncomfortable outside of court when I mentioned my theory that a documentary on Natale and Centracchio wouldn't be too dissimilar from a Sopranos episode.

 Mirabelli said that becomes a problem only when somebody says, ''This guy Natale is like all the other Italians on the West Side. He's a crook.''

 ''If it was a television show about blacks, shiftless blacks on welfare, you know what would happen to that show?'' chimed in Michael Polelle, professor of constitutional law at John Marshall Law School and Mirabelli's co-counsel.

 Knowing how prejudices can be reinforced by the power of such a program, especially one that is so painfully realistic, I can't honestly say their concerns are groundless. But their lawsuit is.

E-mail: markbrown@suntimes.com