Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Steve Adubato, Stunod: What Are You Thinking Asks Thomas De Seno ?

The ANNOTICO Report

 

Steve Adubato is an accomplished journalist and commentator, and it was therefore that much more hurtful when I read his article on June 11, 2007 about the Soprano's finale. My heart sank. But I could not summon up the energy to respond to still another "traditore".

 

Fortunately, Thomas De Seno, an attorney in Asbury New Jersey said it as well as I ever could, although he was kinder than I would feel inclined, and here is his Message to Steve Adubato.

 

 

Steve Adubato, Stunod: What are you thinking?

 

A great many people believe they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.  William Jennings

 

Do you know Steve Adubato?  You should; he’s a model Jersey boy.  Steve has been a part of my Sunday morning ritual. After going to the bakery to buy buns and rolls, my wife and I feed the kids, and then spend the morning with coffee and newspapers watching political talk shows.  We usually catch Steve Adubato on channel 8 covering Jersey politics.

 

Steve has a PHD in communications and a Masters in politics.  He owns a communications business, teaches at Rutgers, has written 2 books and won 4 Emmy Awards.  He writes columns for the Star Ledger and MSNBC.com.  Nationally he has done commentary on media for C-Span, CNN, Court-TV and Fox News (Fox News! My dream job!).

 

My thought is the cable networks are test-driving Steve on media issues.  I’m betting they bump him up to political analysis soon, and eventually well see news anchor Steve Adubato hosting a presidential debate.  His obvious talents aside, I’m always rooting for him as a Jersey boy and a great exemplar of an Italian American man.

 

With the immigration debate raging right now, we are reminded that what is most important for ethnic groups, Italians included, is to assimilate into America, to be thought of as Americans first and our ethnicity second.  That being true, then each ethnic group has to obliterate any old stereotypes. Culturally you can master the language, clothing, education, business and politics, but a stereotype will be the last lock on the door to assimilation if you can’t pick it.  There will always be something that says ‘outsider’ about a group with a widely accepted stereotype.

 

The Italian stereotype still widely accepted is that Mafia myth.  Before the movie The Godfather, real organized crime had many ethnicities: Dutch Shultz, Bugsy Segal and Meyer Lansky were Jews.  Dion O’Bannion and Bugs Moran were Irish.  Of the Midwest Crime wave including John Dillanger, ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd, ‘Baby Face’ Nelson, ‘Ma’ Barker, Bonnie & Clyde and ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly, none were Italian.  Yet because the Godfather was so acclaimed, more than 400 feature films have been made since, where the mobsters are just Italian, despite the historical inaccuracy.

 

This stereotype is still ‘OK’ in Hollywood. No other ethnicity suffers from their hurtful stereotype being politically correct.  Imagine an HBO series today about a Step’n Fetchit Black family, a drunken Irish family, cheap Jews or dumb Poles.  Those wrong stereotypes haven’t been wiped out, but they are universally reviled and controlled by making a pariah of anyone who uses them.  Yet portraying Italians as murderous, awful, immoral criminals will get you an Emmy.

 

One problem of course is the number of Italians who embrace the stereotype, because of the media portrayal of mob life as exciting and sexy.  Italians who perpetuate this lie because of the romanticism dont realize how they hurt the rest of us.  Our identifier has gone from real people like Galileo to fake people like Corleone.

 

Steve Adubato’s column for MSNBC.com about the Sopranos finale is a perfect example of an Italian-American sellout - perpetuating the mafia myth.  Here are his worst moments:  ‘For those of us who are Italian-American and live in New Jersey and have uncles or cousins who went away ‘to college’ because they were somehow ‘connected,’ "The Sopranos" has been a terribly guilty pleasure.  Sometimes the series felt way too close for comfort.  So provincial, yet so profound.  There really are mobsters like Tony Soprano-The Sopranos’ was true to life in so many ways.

 

No Steve, it wasn’t. There is no one as disgustingly immoral as these people.  They were like your family?  Who in your family kills someone nearly every week? Who in your family killed his best friend?  Who killed his cousin? Who suffocate his injured nephew?  Who took over his best friend’s business?  Are your wife and every friend she has too dumb to discuss cinematography after watching a movie?  This doesn’t resemble your family or the family of anyone else you ever met.

 

Adubato justifies his perpetuation of the myth by saying ‘people in Nebraska will think that about us anyway.’  As long as you’re speaking for us Steve, yes they will.

 

Consider this.  It isn’t our stars like Scalia or Giuliani that are going to get hurt, nor the Italian American community as a whole.  I worry about the individual.

 

Twenty years ago when I was in law school, three students were in the next booth at a campus restaurant.  One said, ‘In criminal law we’re studying a case were all the defendants had these long Italian names - they were sooooo guilty!’  I wonder where that student is today: a judge? A prosecutor maybe?  Hopefully someone named ‘Adubato’ never gets dragged before a jury for having a last name that makes him ‘soooo guilty,’ and I pray no one who recently moved from Nebraska has jury duty, since they all ‘think that way about us anyway.’ We must fight the stereotype, not embrace it.

 

So Steve, sfacim, I’m still a fan.  I’m still rooting for you.  I’m in your corner.  Just do me a favor:  The next time you are asked to comment about Italians within American culture, please  remember the neighborhood.  The real neighborhood.

 

Thomas De Seno

deseno@msn.com

 

RAA NOTE: I hadn't heard the word "sfacim" in so long I had to look it up. It wasn't easy. Alta Vista/Babel wouldn't translate.

It wasn't in the Italian Slang Adult Section of About.com .

 

But it was in the "Talking like the Sopranos" section  in About.com

sfacim: sfa-CHEEM; Neapolitan slang for semen and equivalent to English slang such as spunk or gism. However, it's also widely used as a term of endearment, as in "Hey, sfacim. Come over here and give your grandmother a kiss before I break your face." The closest American English slang term would be "spunky."

In the Urban Dictionary:

sfacim: Also spelled "sfaccim", it literally means "semen" or "jism", (Southern Italian dialectal word) but is also used as an insult, more or less equivalent to "bastard", or "son-of-a bitch", or even "dick-head".

In  Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. according to Pynchon Wiki, Chapter 3 , Pg 58

sfacim-a: from "sfaci`re" = to dismantle (plus the definition in About.com)

 

If you REALLY want to read Steve Adubato's article on MSNBC it can be found at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19170445/

 

The ANNOTICO Reports Can be Viewed (and are Archived) on:

Italia USA: http://www.ItaliaUSA.com [Formerly Italy at St Louis] (7 years)

Italia Mia: http://www.ItaliaMia.com (3 years)

Annotico Email: annotico@earthlink.net