by Bill Dal Cerro | Oct 23, 2021 | Uncategorized
Why are fictional Italians who behave like violent Neanderthals considered more “authentic” than living legends like Bennett? On CBS’ 60 Minutes a few weeks ago, reporter Anderson Cooper offered a profile of 95-year-old Tony Bennett, detailing the great crooner’s...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Sep 25, 2021 | Uncategorized
Things are so chaotic in our “dis-” United States that, although the next presidential election is three years away, people are already hurrying up and wishing it was next week. But, no matter who is nominated, there is a sure-fire issue that unites both...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Sep 6, 2021 | Uncategorized
Big Al with son Albert Francis, Chicago Tribune “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away,” General Douglas MacArthur famously noted in a speech to the U.S. Congress on April 19th, 1951. This dictum certainly isn’t true for old Italian...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Aug 23, 2021 | Uncategorized
“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita…” begins the opening line of L’Inferno, the first part of Dante Alighieri’s three-part literary epic, La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy). It’s a line every Italian student can recite by...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Aug 9, 2021 | Uncategorized
An Italian named “Marcell Jacobs” shocked the world by winning the 100-meter race at the Tokyo Olympics, earning the title, “World’s Fastest Man.” But, just as in other historical examples, there is a woman in his background – in...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Jul 24, 2021 | Uncategorized
Anti-Italian prejudice is found in the oddest places. A new local business opened up in my Chicago neighborhood a few summers ago: Local Goods, a simple little storefront place that specializes in knick-knacks highlighting the Windy City, both inexpensive (key chains,...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Jul 13, 2021 | Uncategorized
Though I found fault with actor Stanley Tucci’s recent CNN series on Italy – largely his irrelevant injection of politics into a food-based show – he is one of the few Italian American actors to publicly challenge anti-Italian movie stereotypes. One of his...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Jun 13, 2021 | Uncategorized
It isn’t often that a lowly journalist like myself scoops the New York Times, but it happened: On June 4, 2021, covering the famous French Open Tennis Tournament in Paris, New York Times sports correspondent Matthew Futterman filed a story noting something...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Jun 5, 2021 | Uncategorized
American history has caught up with the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, a race war that broke out between outraged white citizens who attacked an armed brigade of Black WWI vets trying to save a Black man from being lynched. But, did you know that one of the chief historians...
by Bill Dal Cerro | May 29, 2021 | Uncategorized
On May 24th, 2021, music fans celebrated when one of America’s greatest singer-songwriters, Bob Dylan (a nice Jewish Midwestern boy, born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota), celebrated his 80th birthday. It seems hard to believe that this iconic musical...
by Bill Dal Cerro | May 15, 2021 | Uncategorized
Variety magazine announced that comedians Ray Romano and Sebastian Maniscalco are teaming up for a “dramedy” about an Italian American high schooler whose love of basketball causes a ruckus within his family. It’s worth re-printing the film’s...
by Bill Dal Cerro | May 4, 2021 | Uncategorized
Prejudice: “an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, or race, or their supposed characteristics.” – MERRIAM-WEBSTER Dictionary When I mention anti-Italian prejudice, people giggle, though it wasn’t my...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Apr 26, 2021 | Uncategorized
As a fan of The Simpsons TV show, I’ve always found its mixture of irreverence and cultural awareness (i.e, spoofs of literary works) a bracing source of fun, both entertaining and enlightening. Just as the Monty Python troupe made me want to be an English...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Apr 21, 2021 | Uncategorized
You’ve heard the expression that it’s not ethical to speak ill of the dead; however, what if that dead person was a total scoundrel? I’m speaking of financial scammer Bernie Madoff, who passed away in prison last week. Madoff was one of the most prolific scammers in...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Apr 13, 2021 | Uncategorized
Anyone lucky enough to travel to Italy has probably visited one of the “Big Three” cities: Rome, Florence, and perhaps the most intriguing city of all: La Serenessima, aka, “The Serene One”, aka, Venice (Venezia in Italian). Every city in every nation on...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Apr 5, 2021 | Uncategorized
Next to the late Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues), Dick Wolf is probably American television’s best-known creator of recurring dramatic series – specifically, his Law and Order franchise, which has been on the small screen, in various incarnations, since 1990....
by Bill Dal Cerro | Mar 29, 2021 | Uncategorized
Whenever he got exasperated by the antics of his skinny friend, Stan Laurel, his partner, Oliver Hardy, would sigh, “Oh, Stanley!”– which rather sums up my reaction to Stanley Tucci’s six-part CNN series, Searching for Italy. Now that’s...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Mar 22, 2021 | Uncategorized
In the final episode of CNN’s Searching for Italy, actor Stanley Tucci says he ate some of the best food he’s ever tasted in Italy. I think I know the possible reason why, backed up by much of what he highlights and says in this episode: It’s because...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Mar 16, 2021 | Uncategorized
In this week’s episode of CNN’s Searching for Italy, actor Stanley Tucci returns to Firenze, known to the world by its Anglicized name, Florence. As a twelve-year-old, Tucci and his siblings lived in the great city while his father, also named Stanley,...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Mar 9, 2021 | Uncategorized
The Romans called it Mediolanum, and in 286 the emperor Diocletian made it head of the Western Roman Empire. And it was there, in A.D. 313, that Emperor Constantine issued his famous Edict of Milan, paving the way for the rise of Christianity in Europe. Stanley Tucci...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Mar 1, 2021 | Uncategorized
CNN’s Searching for Italy, the weekly food-travel series with actor Stanley Tucci, visited Rome on Feb. 21st and Bologna on Feb. 28th. Although I considered the first episode, set in Naples, to be routine, the episodes on Rome and Bologna showed a wee uptick of...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Feb 23, 2021 | Uncategorized
At a time when Americans are so sadly split between political divides, it’s nice to recall a well-known American who unified everyone: Lawrence Peter Barra, better known by his baseball name, “Yogi.” The month of January was so tumultuous – with the...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Feb 15, 2021 | Uncategorized
It is a famous phrase: “Vedi Napoli e poi muori”– See Naples and die! The point is that Italy’s third-largest city is such an overwhelming feast for the senses – of food, art, history, museums, music, etc. – that there is nothing left to see once...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Feb 5, 2021 | Uncategorized
In 2018, the “Tucci Gang” of New York made a big splash in the national media. Was this yet another Italian criminal group, a modern incarnation of New York’s infamous “Five Families,” who dominated organized crime in that city for nearly...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Jan 23, 2021 | Uncategorized
It is no surprise to see that President Biden selected Gina Raimondo, the governor of Rhode Island, to be in his cabinet, specifically, as his U.S. Commerce Secretary. Raimondo is the latest in a long line of strong Italian American women in politics – a link which is...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Jan 6, 2021 | Uncategorized
“Old soldiers never die, they just fade away,” General MacArthur famously said. Would that the same were true for American filmmakers who’ve made their careers exploiting crude mobster and moron stereotypes of Italian Americans in popular culture. Such a person is...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Dec 29, 2020 | Uncategorized
Last October, Abigail Napp, an editor at La Cucina Italiana, a national cooking magazine available in Eataly stores in the U.S., asked me to write a “food piece” for Italian Heritage Month. I tried to go beyond the usual simple fare by adding an ingredient...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Sep 15, 2020 | Uncategorized
They are a staple of modern television, and anyone who has watched political speeches or COVID briefings sees their presence: interpreters for the deaf, standing off to the sidelines to translate important information for non-hearing viewers. Indeed, every September...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Aug 24, 2020 | Uncategorized
In a letter to fellow psychologist Marie Bonaparte (yes, a great grand-niece to the Corsican-born Italian emperor, original family name: Buonaparte), Sigmund Freud famously asked, “What do women want”? Though he never found an answer, he did once write that “women...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Aug 4, 2020 | Uncategorized
As a film purist, I believe movies were made to be seen where they belong – in a movie theater where, on a 60-foot blank white canvas, ghostly images projected in the dark can fully engage our imaginations. Watching a film on a TV monitor, no matter how large, still...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Jul 29, 2020 | Uncategorized
Anyone who loves science, or who at least pays attention to American popular culture, knows the name Neil deGrasse Tyson. Since the late-1990s, via his lectures, books, and TV shows, Dr. Tyson has surpassed his mentor, Carl Sagan, as our nation’s most well-known...
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