You're welcome, Antoni.
The irony is that while Gotti was probably the most famous Mafia Don of recent times, Columbo was far more of a publicity hound--and sought and achieved far greater public exposure. He even appeared on the Dick Cavett Show, where he held forth about the "myth" of the Mafia ("no such thing") and decried the prejudice against Italian Americans that was based on the "myth" of the Mafia. He touched a sensitive nerve among the vast majority of Italian-Americans who have nothing to do with organized crime, but suffer from prejudice based in the tiny percentage who are Mafiosi. His Italian-American Civil Rights League had considerable success: They picketed the FBI (which stopped referring to "Mafia" in its public relations), and the New York Times (which dropped references to "Mafia" and "Cosa Nostra" in its pages, substituting "organized crime"). They also famously pressued Coppola and Ruddy to drop references to "Mafia" and "Cosa Nostra" in "The Godfather." In return, Columbo gave the film crew cooperation among unions his family influenced, and even let James Caan hang out with his top guys to "learn" his part (a nice irony for a guy who denied being a Mafia Don).
Alas, Columbo was really victimizing his fellow Italian-Americans: his motivation for forming the "league" was to get the government to back off prosecuting him for racketeering, and to drop charges against one of his sons for violating currency laws by melting down coins for their silver content. After he was shot and nearly killed during one of his big rallies in Columbus Circle in New York City in 1971, the Times took off the gloves. In an unforgettable interview with Columbo's "employer," they asked Joseph Cantalupo, who owned the real estate agency where Columbo was "employed," how Columbo could own a vast and lavish estate in upstate New York on his realty commissions. Cantalupo replied, with a straight face: "Mr. Columbo is our best salesman. He has the sincerest group of clients--no one ever tries to cheat him out of a commission."
