This hack product’s chief mutilation of the beloved children’s favorite, however, is merely its replacement of the good Fairy Godmother character with an evil and malicious fairy “Godfather” named “Franco Di Fortunato”.

Italians play no other roles in the story and there was no discernable reason to give this villain an Italic name…unless we consider the more sordid connotations of the term “Godfather”, which Zachary & Weiner obviously felt confident that even the kids in the audience would understand and appreciate.

There is no reference to organized crime (or even to Italians) in the plot. Ashman could have just as easily named this brute “Smith" or “Finklestein", since there was absolutely nothing essential to the story that required an Italian villain...other than, perhaps, “credibility” by providing audiences with the familiar associations they've been conditioned to accept.

But when Hollywood tells the legend in Batman Begins (2005), the mafia is suddenly responsible for the ruthless killings under orders of fictitious mob boss Carmine Falcone. We can assume nobody in the audience was left with doubts as to the cold-blooded villain’s ethnic background.

“Nick Borelli”, the title character of latter series, aimed at teenage readers, is a clean-cut, all-American kid from the suburbs… until he’s introduced to his true ethnic heritage (ala Schirippa) by his Uncle Frankie from Brooklyn. The lessons include an introduction to the mob and assorted tactics in professional criminality.

Introducing a whole, new generation of kids to traditional stereotypes, Korman makes sure that all of the characters on the right side of the law are naturally non-Italic.

Cognizant of the importance of promoting positive self-images for children, Ms. Reed has also authored numerous books on African American history and achievements. Her apparent failure to connect the dots is not a failure at all, but perfectly in keeping with the logic of modern, liberal American intelligentsia.

Betty’s already difficult life is made all the more challenging by the vicious antics of her neighbor, a promiscuous and vulgar petty criminal who habitually steals both the possessions and the boyfriends of every woman she meets. Need you speculate on the cheap tramp’s ethnicity? Of course not! She’s “Gina Gambino”, the really bad girl (and only Italic character) of the show.

Despite the neighborhood’s supposedly pronounced demographics, violent young Joey is the show’s only identifiably Italic character. Fortunately for Chris, there are non-Italic and more tolerant kids at Corleone High whom he can befriend to help him through his daily challenges.

But what are we to say when Italophobic slurs are not written in the script, but ad libbed by, let’s say, an emcee on a children’s’ game show? We’re to say “business as usual”.

Upon hearing a young contestant’s surname, Mark Summers, host of Nicklodeon’s popular kids’ game show Double Dare, once wittily remarked “Oh, you’re Italian. Do you know where Jimmy Hoffa’s buried?” As far as we’re aware, and supported by the fact that he hadn’t been fired on the spot, this was the only incidence Summers employed “ethnic humor” on his show. No black kids were ever humiliated by jocular references to welfare fraud; no Jewish youngsters ever faced a one liner about negotiating down the price. After all, as we are so often told, such stereotypes are harmful to the self esteem of (non-Italic) children

There was absolutely no conceivable reason to recast this character as an Italian American, other than the fact that he was a bad guy and therefore more likely to satisfy audience expectations.

Hollywood hacks are not troubled by such concerns. In the 1990 movie version the kingpin crook is an ugly, brutal, lecherous, hood named Big Boy Caprice.

Script writers Jim Cash and Jack Ebb clearly figured an Italic scumbag would make a more credible villain to modern viewers.

Physically repulsive, violent, and unbelievably crude, the four characters are tailored by Spielberg to embody everything that would make his juvenile viewers recoil in their seats.

“Mr. Teach Tolerance” completes the depiction by giving the family, yes, the solidly Italic surname “Fratelli”. Typically, there was nothing whatsoever in the plot that required an Italian connection. In fact, given the backwoods rural setting, filling the script with Italic villains would even seem downright implausible. We can only guess that words “depraved” and “Italian” are in the same paragraph in Spielberg’s thesaurus. Spielberg’s studio, by the way, also gave us Shark Tale.

Kids can pick and chose from multiple titles in any electronic entertainment store across the country. In “Mafia”, players take on the role of fictitious Italic mobster Tommy Angelo and negotiate their way through such skillful maneuvers as beating a rival’s brains out with a baseball bat.

During production, its creator Jeffrey Katzenberg crowed that Shark Tale would be an amalgam of "...everything from The Untouchables to Some Like It Hot to all three Godfather films."

DreamWorks, of course, is the production company of Steven “Teach Tolerance” Spielberg.

Apologists point out that the "no holds barred" nature of the show makes room for satirical depictions of several racial or ethnic groups. Their argument is weakened by the fact that the show's writers take obvious pains to avoid heavy handed characterizations of all groups but Italian Americans. The several African American characters that are featured, for instance, are racially distinguished only by skin color and not by speech or stereotypical behavior.

Another character, a decadent clown, is depicted Jewish, while a convenience store owner is depicted as Pakistani. Yet virtually all are unaccompanied by dialogue or mannerisms which evoke the crudely negative (criminality and violence) stereotypes as those heaped on Fat Tony and his gang, proving that the writers of the show are not nearly as bold and daring as they'd like us to believe.

As with "The Sopranos," people who love the show claim to recognize that "it's not really about Italians" or that they "don't believe all Italian Americans are like that." Yet the ubiquitous and mean-spirited spoofs of "Jersey Shore," whether on Chelsea Lately or on Craig Ferguson's TV talk show, clearly identify the characters as "typical" Italians.

Imagine a similar "reality show" about Jewish American kids behaving badly during their summer retreats in the Catskills, or of gay men partying in nightclubs and in bathhouses. You'll actually have to imagine it, of course, because no such shows would ever be allowed to air. What is "poor taste" or "promoting stereotypes" for everyone else is "fun" for Italians.

Well, not exactly, since in this series, the WORST of all of the bad guys are Italian.

Of all the characters weaving their way in and out of each episode, none are as violent and brutal. The evil deeds of everyone else are at least tempered by occasional demonstrations of human decency.

Corrupt Irish political bosses, for instance, are sharply contrasted by the insightful and moral behavior of Irishwoman Margaret Schroeder (Kelly MacDonald) who proudly makes unchallenged references to the enlightened superiority of her native land.

The actions of James Darmody (Michael Pitt),a young Irish veteran wavering between honesty and a life of violent crime, are more often guided by an obvious sense of justice and decency. It takes Darmody’s superior Irish intelligence, by the way, to figure out that the uncommunicative behavior of Al Capone’s son is not due to mental retardation as the famous mobster has concluded (mean-spirited Capone is heard dismissing the boy as a “little dummy” as he kicks him aside), but actually to the child’s deafness.

While Arnold Rothstein is coldblooded and calculating, he is at the same time smooth, polished, well dressed, and coolly sophisticated, continually correcting the poor, obscenity laced grammar (and reining in the hot headed behavior) of his Italian protégé Lucky Luciano. On the other hand, every other word out of the mouth of Johnny Torio, Rothstein’s Italian counterpart, is a crude expletive. The show’s other Italian characters, the fictional D’Allesio Brothers, are almost subhuman in their primitively reactive behavior, low intelligence, and unlimited propensity for violent criminality. And they’re the show’s star racists to boot, literally lynching rival African American bootleggers, who they (and only they) call “niggers” and “coons”.

That a show like this is cause for celebration among Italian American anti-defamation activists only demonstrates how painfully and pitifully low our expectations have dropped.

UPDATE: Not content to leave well enough alone, the writer for "Boardwalk Empire," Terence Winter, futher underscored the brutality of Italian American thugs on the show by introducing a completely fictitious character during the late 2012 season: Gyp Rosetti, played by the Italian/Cuban actor Bobby Cannevale. A former writer for another HBO mob show, "The Sopranos," Winter makes no secret of his contempt for Italian Americans, even admitting in an interview on Slate.com that he invented the psychotic Rosetti in order to "symbolize" the truly depraved nature of some Prohibition-era gangsters.

But Prohibition-era gangsters were of many different ethnic and religious backgrounds, a point which "Boardwalk Empire" proudly trumpets via its fidelity in referencing real-life thugs of the period. That hollow pride, however, is exposed by the creation of Rosetti who, unlike the other Italic gangsters on the show, has no basis in reality (and even the real ones, like Al Capone and Johnny Torrio, are likewise portrayed as brutal, over-the-top Neanderthals). Winter's creativity isn't creativity at all, merely a well-worn form of bigotry.

In his autobiography, Hefner states that a lone Chicago Outfit gambler, Marshall Caifano, did approach him about being a potential investor in the club but that he and his associates flatly turned Caifano down. Hefner went on to live a long, healthy, financially successful life, giving lie to the show's portrayal of Italian criminals as being innately sociopathic.

On "Law and Order," however, the very French Strauss-Kahn suddenly metamorphosed into an Italian diplomat, played by veteran Italian actor Franco Nero, right. Italy's current prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, may love the ladies a little bit too much but he has never, ever been accused--even remotely-- of using physical violence against them. Ever.

The writers of "Law and Order," like the writers of "The Playboy Club" (see above), clearly view the Italian male as the lowest form of humanity, a modern-day Neanderthal. Once again, anti-Italian prejudice is passed off as "entertainment."

The casual viewer, tossing aside his or her remote, goes to bed yet again with the comforting image of Italian culture as intrinsically evil. What he or she barely considers, however, is that this recent episode of "Person Without Interest" manages to smudge together--and taint--achievements of Italian Americans both in teaching and in law enforcement. For example, principal Leonard Covello founded one of the first multi-cultural high schools in the U.S, and professor Anna Anastasi discovered biases against minority students in national standardized testing. And two of America's greatest police officers were Italian Americans: Lt. Joe Petrosino, the only U.S. police officer to die overseas while on duty (turn-of-the-century) and Frank Serpico, who exposed widespread racism and corruption in the New York City Police Department (the 1970s). But hey, it's only a TV show, right?

Via the Windy City: Dr. Antonio Ligorio founded the Pasteur Institute in Chicago in 1890; Dr. Italo Frederick Volini headed the School of Medicine at Loyola University from 1929 until his death in 1950; and Dr. Leonard Cerullo founded the nationally recognized Chicago Institute for Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch in the 1980s. Chicago also boasts Dr. Joe Amato, one of the top heart surgeons in the nation, as well as a born-in-Chicago doctor with a Hollywood pedigree: Dr. Gary Annunziata, personal physician to the late, legendary performer Bob Hope, who lived well over 100 years old. (Talk about good medicine!) .

Nationally, Dr. Marianne Bertola, an early feminist, helped victims of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Dr. Henry Viscardi advocated for people with disabilities for decades, working with every president from FDR to Bill Clinton. And the doctor who saved President Reagan's life after his 1981 assassination attempt was Dr. Joe Giordano.

In real-life, however, Lamb's only real "run-in" with a mobster was with Johnny Roselli, whom he publicly pushed around in a casino in the early 1960s. That is all. And Lamb's show of force was enough to make Italic low-lives keep their distance and remain in the shadows. They didn't tangle with Lamb via the simplistic good vs. evil concept of the show.

Two other points about "Vegas": 1) Gambling kings/mobsters of other ethnic backgrounds are significantly omitted, leaving viewers with the notion that "the mafia" built and controlled the entire city (note: "the mafia" is actually a terrorist group in Sicily, but the American media has long co-opted that term to mean "anyone with an Italian surname"); 2) the show was conceived by writer Nick "Casino and Goodfellas" Pileggi, yet another Italian American writer raking in tons of pelf at the expense of Italic culture.

The late writer Nora Ephron was Pileggi's wife---she considered "marrying an Italian" one of the best things that ever happened to her. Sadly, the love which Pileggi showered on Ms. Ephron is nowhere to be seen when it comes to members of his own ethnic community.

Continuing the assault on Italian American (and other) children via 2004's animated cartoon "Shark Tale," Schirippa's program will also feature many of his fellow cast members from "The Sopranos" to add authenticity to his vision. "Nicky Deuce" is the television equivalent of dirty old men in trench coats hanging around a school yard, and clearly would not be tolerated if it featured gross, negative stereotypes of any other racial or religious group.

Sadly, the star of "CSI: New York" is himself an Italian American: Gary Sinise, founder of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater and an Oscar nominee for "Forrest Gump." We contacted Sinise and his representatives as well, and also, as of late, have received no response.

When "CSI" was being cast back in 2000, Sinise's character was originally named "Carlucci," prompting Sinise to remark that he "doesn't feel like a Carlucci." He then changed his character's name to the more Anglo (and less "negative"?) Mac Taylor.

Never mind that Frank Carlucci served as President Ronald Reagan's Defense Secretary in the 1980s, or that 1950s jazz pianist Joe Carlucci (aka Joe Carter) wowed 1950s audiences with his talents. Sinise, like many other actors of Italic background, has obviously internalized the media's message that being Italian is something to either be embarrassed about, ashamed of, or unworthy of being taken seriously.

We can only hope that he begins to borrow a page from his fellow Chicago actor Joe Mantegna, who, as of late, has actively pursued playing Italian surnamed characters who radiate dignity and integrity---in short, positive, regular Americans, which is what we are.