On November 17th, filmmaker Martin Scorsese will be 81.  His soulmate Francis Coppola is already 84.  I’m sure the media have obits prepared on both these octogenarian goombahs.  We can only wait to see what accolades they will pile on, and how many more showings of their films will crowd out cable programing. You can see at least one of their ‘mafia’ movies every few days.

If these Italo-bashers were only born of another ethnicity we might have had a normal assimilation into American society.  But alas, Scorsese and Coppola found cover and encouragement in every media outlet, pre-Woke and Woke.  And with their junior partner David Chase (orig: DeCesare) of The Sopranos infamy, the trio is the dream team of unfettered defamation – an all-you-can-defame buffet of Italian culture.  It’s defamation with benefits.

Only Italian Americans “have to admit” that organized crime is part of our culture.  So, I was surprised to read last week that Armenian Americans have something to admit.  According to the U.S. attorney’s office in southern California, the Armenian Power (syndicate) has around 200 members and hundreds of associates in that area.  They specialize in extortion, racketeering, assault, contract killing, money laundering, bribery, embezzlement, tax evasion, drug trafficking, murder, Medicaid fraud, identity theft, illegal gambling, kidnapping, and robbery.  They are affiliated with Russian organized crime and Mexican cartels. 

So where is their Coppola, Scorsese, and Chase to blacken the Armenian image across the nation?  Armenians have plenty of progeny in Hollywood – Cher is one of them, as is actor Andy Serkis (Planet of the Apes, Star Wars), directors and producers as well.  But like every other non-Italic ethnic and religious group, Armenians don’t crap where they eat. Although the Armenian mob has made cameos on TV shows like NCIS-Los Angeles and House of Cards, Armenian culture and history are reverently treated under the ‘Media Protection Plan.’  Their genocide by the Turks in 1915 dominates our perception of them as victims.

Last week’s information on the Armenian mob was contained in a Wall Street Journal article titled Citigroup Fined For Bias Against Armenian People.  As reported, Citibank was fined $25 million for discriminating against Armenians in southern California.  A payment of $1.4 million of that went to individuals who claimed injury, the rest went to the government.  The court found that Citibank employees, trying to protect the bank from well-publicized financial fraud by the Armenian mob, denied many credit card applicants with surnames ending in –ian or –yan.  As a California consumer agency director reported, “Citi stereotyped Armenians as prone to crime and fraud.”

Phew!  Thank God we have never been victims of such discrimination by surname.  People don’t associate us with mafia movies, right?

Will the eventual passing of Coppola, Scorsese, and Chase leave a void in crime movies for other enterprising groups to fill?  I once imagined that the huge true-to-life Madoff fraud would become a movie standard, but alas, there were only three forgettable TV films on that crime of the century, with not a scintilla of Jewish culture eviscerated.

The Media’s Protection Racket is quite flexible with non-Italian groups.  Recall the flap over Apu the Indian American convenience store owner in the animated series The Simpsons a couple of years ago?  One Indian American actor didn’t like Apu’s heavily accented English and his touch of business chicanery.  He convinced actor Hank Azaria (Sephardic ethnicity), who did the voice-over, to quit the part.  So, Apu joined Speedy Gonzales, the Mexican mouse, into oblivion.  Luckily Mario and Luigi, the comic Italian plumbers, are still under Media Protection.

I will refrain from listing all the other Media Protected groups – animated or human.  You know them already by their absence.  In short, our “dream team” of mob-directors has no competition to worry about, now or when they pass.

To quote Shakespeare’s Mark Antony: “The evil that men do lives after them…” -JLM