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. Though critics were impressed by its novelty – a show which balanced cop characters working their shifts and lawyers who then prosecuted some of the criminals who were caught – Wolf was actually inspired by Arrest and Travel, a 1963 TV series which starred Ben Gazzara and Chuck Connors. It only lasted one season, but the premise was the same: the first half-hour profiled the cops, the second half profiled the lawyers.
Wolf dusted the idea off a shelf, anchored it with a much-imitated “dramatic musical bridge” (a single tone), and the rest, as they say, is history. He has since spun off into a series of shows based on Chicago first responders (cops, firemen, and a hospital staff). The only person I know who watches his Chicago Fire show is my brother, a retired fire lieutenant with the Chicago Fire Department. I once asked my brother about the show’s accuracy. He merely shook his head and said, “Totally phony.” (He referred to the melodramatic plots and the blatantly unconvincing actors.)
His latest incarnation of Law & Order is Law and Order: Organized Crime. When a friend shared last year that this “new” edition was in the works, I automatically knew what was coming. When the title of the first episode was released just a few months later, “What Happens in Puglia,” it only confirmed my fears. I deliberately put the word “new” in quotes because, as per usual, Wolf totes the well-upholstered prejudice that organized crime = only Italians Americans.
A quick visit to the FBI’s website quickly deflates that lie. And do note: the last time a so-called “mafia” story gripped America was on March 13th, 2019, when local Staten Island thug Frank Cali was gunned down outside of his house.
Predictably, the media ran amok: “Mob war!” “Mafia assassination!” “The Mafia still lives!”
When the facts were finally revealed, it turned out that Cali was killed by a young Italian American punk-associate who had wanted to date his daughter but was told “no.” Enraged, the kid came back and shot Cali. End of story.
And yet, in his new show, just as in his old ones, Wolf promotes the Big Lie that Italians are “Numero Uno” when it comes to criminal behavior or criminal gangs. As the late, great NY state school superintendent (and educational activist) Dick Capozzola put it, “You’re more likely to win the Lotto than be gunned down by the so-called mafia.”
(Note: This didn’t stop Wolf from showing two greasy thugs on a motorbike zipping around downtown Manhattan – in the middle of the day, with people everywhere – firing an automatic weapon at a Black female college professor.)
The show’s tagline is that it “rips stories out of the headlines”– in short, that it reflects reality. In truth, Wolf “massages” stories to make Italian Americans look bad.
Two quick examples of his sleight-of-hand: In 2011, Wolf turned Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French banker accused of raping a Black hotel maid in NY, into an Italian diplomat (played by Franco Nero); and in 2014, Chazz Palminteri guest-starred as a ruthless Italian American sex-trafficker (even though the great majority of such pimps, both in the U.S. and around the world, are found in Eastern Europe and Asia).
Palminteri was back in the first episode of Law & Order: Organized Crime. (Incidentally, he has aged terribly; he looks like Edward G. Robinson on his last legs.) In what is perhaps Wolf’s most egregious example of bigotry yet, the character’s name is SINATRA. I’m no anthroponymist (fancy word for someone who studies surnames), but Sinatra isn’t exactly the equivalent of “Smith” in Italian. This leads to only one conclusion: Wolf named him after Ol’ Blue Eyes.
If true, this is no less than ethnic character assassination of the highest order. Imagine an Hispanic drug cartel boss on the show – if we ever see one – named CHAVEZ. And, top it off, this Sinatra slug was a horrible, unredeemed racist.
In reality, entertainer Frank Sinatra is still revered – there is no softer word – in the African American community for his long-standing work in civil rights. In the 1940s, Sinatra visited high schools in NY and Indiana to quell racial tensions. In the 1950s, he demanded, much to the consternation of racist producers, that idols like Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald be allowed to perform with him on his television specials. In the 1960s, he held fund-raisers for the NAACP, and is even credited with desegregating Las Vegas when they refused to allow his friend Sammy Davis Jr. to stay at his hotel; basically, he told the owners, “If Sammy can’t stay here, the show is over.” Sammy was allowed his own room.
Final fact: It was Sinatra’s concern with civil rights which is what first inspired the FBI to keep a secret file on him, which they did for 40 years – and which, after he died, was revealed to show no serious ties to “organized crime,” either.
(Taking a photo with fawning mobsters – who were obviously delighted to be in Sinatra’s company, not the opposite – is not the same as being in cahoots with them. If so, then Rosalyn Carter, wife of President Jimmy Carter, needs to explain why she once took a photo with serial killer John Wayne Gacy in Chicago. Was she kidnapping victims for him?)
In addition to the Sinatra slight, there is also the continuing gap between “real” Italian Americans and “reel” Italian Americans. The star of Law & Order: Organized Crime is actually a returning actor, Chris Meloni, who abruptly left the show a decade ago. In reality, Meloni’s father and grandfather were both doctors. Gee, kind of like some doctor-guy named Fauci. But, thanks to bigotry like Wolf’s, damned if you’ll ever see an Italian surnamed doctor on his programs.
I can hear the cries already: “Relax! It’s just a TV show!” I beg to differ. It’s a TV show which shows a continual pattern of making Italian surnamed characters the worst perpetrators of evil. Heck, even the few “positive” characters seen on the show over the past 30 years have been few-and-far between, and even many of them had issues (one was an alcoholic cop with PTSD, another was one of the few characters on the show to ever fire at a suspect while on duty).
In an era when America is allegedly “woke” to racism, this blind spot in the media via Italian Americans is a stunner…or, rather, a stun gun used by producers like Wolf to “freeze” any progress. May I perform a citizen’s arrest on him? – BDC
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