The Jews and the Irish were right next to the Italians when OC got started in New York. But all three of these groups had a desire for upward mobility.

They didn't cry about discrimination. They sacrificed to educate their children. And today their grandchildren and great grandchildren are reaping the benefits of that assimilation and upward mobility.

Hairy,

I can't imagine in this day and age that anyone would turn to the mafia for help outside of desperate people who are in some kind of jackpot that they can't solve through legal means and also the wannabes who hang around. It appears that the Media at least in the last decade has done a better job of not glamorizing these bad guys. Say what you will about the Sopranos but it was not a flattering portrayal of the present day Mafia.

Once you've seen Tony Soprano pick up the newspaper in his underwear, it's hard to accept Don Corleone in his tuxedo .

Not to mention seeing Gigi die while taking a shit .

I think that was the main factor in all of it starting. Back in those days it was much harder to "get ahead" in life than it is now. Everybody was poor back then and to get ahead meant really living. I don't agree with what they done, but you have to admire how they decided their family would no longer struggle in life and they went out and took it.

Kind of like one of the opening lines in The Departed:

I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me. Years ago we had the church. That was only a way of saying - we had each other. The Knights of Columbus were real head-breakers; true guineas. They took over their piece of the city. Twenty years after an Irishman couldn't get a fucking job, we had the presidency. May he rest in peace. That's what the ni**ers don't realize. If I got one thing against the black chappies, it's this - no one gives it to you. You have to take it.

I only added it all above to get it all, none of the above is of my own words. Just talking about the mentality of gangsters.

I don't know, HK. But if you know me, you know I'm not that deep. Speaking for myself, I'm pretty cut and dry and I'd die (willingly) for my husband or my kids only.

I wish more independent filmmakers would make mafia films, rather than leaving it to the big studios....

Guys, im not defending the mafia. The OP simply asked why mobsters are idolized and i explained why. They like living vicariously through guys with power. Im talking american lcn, not Italy's. Italian lcn is more like a damn terrorist group.

All true,,but we both know that in Boston, several cities in NJ, and NY, and along the eastern seaboard that there are communities of people descended from those SAME immigrants who are part of the working poor, on public assistance, or in criminal system.

The implication of what you wrote is that..Jews,Irish and Italians did things that Blacks didn't or don't do.


It doesn't run on the six o clock news but there are and have been successful African, African American, and Caribbean Americans who have been doing what EVERY other group in this country have done. The old money Black families are mostly down south , are 5-6 generations Fisk and Morehouse grads and made their fortunes in the
jim crow era South that makes the hardships that ethnic white immigrants experienced seem like Disneyland.


The "Didn't cry about discrimination" line is really misinformed...and whether it's clear or not.....the Civil Rights legislation passed benefited all non wasp male Americans as it made it illegal to discriminate based on race, religion, gender.etc.

Look up up the college and commercial opportunities that opened up to ethnic whites as a result of civil rights legislation being passed.


So those people "crying about discrimination" somehow ended up benefitting others.



No beef at all, I've just heard this stance before from people and always make these points. I'm an immigrant myself and have had to challenge White,Black,Latino,etc immigrants when this topic comes up and they say the same things.

Well, you're partially correct. There WAS an implication to what I wrote. I won't deny that. But it wasn't about Blacks.

It was about the newer immigrants who come here and refuse to learn the language, do nothing but complain about discrimination, and curse this country all while living off the government tit.

If that makes me a cranky old White guy, so be it. But the original implication certainly wasn't against Blacks. Blacks were in this country 200 years before my grandparents were, and I haven't lost sight of that.

No….It makes you a RACIST!

All I am going to say is this, nets. Applied to the blacks- it's not allegedly, its not maybe. It's fact. It's bore out by the empirical evidence- whether crime and murder rates, single motherhood, education levels, median income. Non immigrant blacks significantly under-perform every group out there. Immigrant blacks tend to very well. Which suggests culture. Which is racist. Anyways.

Now in explaining this issue you can come back and say it was racism (which i find unlikely, considering Nigerian immigrants outperform every single group out there including some asians and all whites), or slavery, or drug laws, or whatever the popular theory floating around sociology departments today. But don't deny the basic facts or act somehow shocked about what everyone knows to be the state of affairs.

pizza

What you wrote doesn't make you a cranky white guy whether it was how you intended it what I read into it. Either way you are just being honest.

I don't have my head buried in the sand. I see what my people are doing to EACH other. What you wrote could have easily been about Blacks because as the years go by a greater % of us are just falling into self imposed permanent underclass and the effects of that are felt by ALL Black people. I shouldn't be stopped and frisked BUT...I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge that people who look like me are behind a lot of street crime.

Just going on the record, pizza, I'm not a Black apologist...reality is reality. I speak honestly and respect others who do too.
=============

And while I'm not a professional.....I do semi manage some property that my family owns...and it's hard not to notice and acknowledge patterns along ethnic lines of tenants.People ARE individuals but.....hard not to notice patterns......I feel you on that....

I think what you're saying is, sometimes the stereotypes are true. And I agree. Sometimes they are true.

Some Italians are in the Mafia. Some Irish people are drunks. Some Jews are cheap. Some Blacks are on welfare. And on and on and on.

But the key is to try to look past those small percentages of people who insist on living down to the stereotype, and to judge each person as an individual.

nicky

I wrote this in the Donald Sterling thread and it applies to you




Every post even remotely related to Black criminals....or Blacks fucking up .....seems to attract you like honey to a bee.
Those are your favorite types of Blacks, huh?

Entire site devoted to the criminal underworld, yet when ANYTHING involving Black street guys, or Blacks on lower end of socio economic ladder comes up, you pull out your sociology hat.

quick look at your posts support what I'm saying.

give it a rest.....we get it...you're fascinated with Black pathology.....makes you feel better about your great life.

A argument rises or falls on its merits, not its source. I could be satan for all it matters, it doesn't change the factual nature of what i said. Either vaguely relate your claims to verifiable evidence or this isn't a conversation worth having.

But thanks for the junior high school psychoanalyzing. It's about a C paper in about 7th grade. Is this what passes of intellectual discourse in your group of friends? Attack the source, attempt new age psychoanalyzing, and just completely ignore anything approaching reality?

nicky,

the actual original question was along the likes of irish, jews, and italians being compared?


I don't know what your ethnic background is but it would have made sense for this thread if you pulled up "empirical data, which doesn't lie" comparing education rates, and other factors among these three groups.

But like I said, comparing yourself to lower socio economic level and criminal Blacks is a more favorable comparison.


Why don't you compare the data for American jews with whatever ethnic group you belong to and tell us what the findings "prove" ?

Remember, "the data doesn't lie."

Again, you seem to lack the ability to separate the merits of the argument from personal attack. This is therefore not a conversation worth having.

I'm just going to leave this article about immigration, culture and performance here from the ultra conservative, right wing NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/opinion/sunday/what-drives-success.html

I hope the "cognitive dissonance" (i love psychology), plays itself out before you go back to pretending not to understand on average differences (just because A group on average differs from B group by 5% in trait C doesn't mean a member of group A will have more trait C then a member of group B, in fact many individuals in group B will have more trait C than members of group A).

Seeing Nicky and Get go at it is like watching an old Tyson in his prime fight. Get, Ill give you a hint on which fighter you are: not Tyson.

Belmont, have you ever considered that the asshole in your situation could be connected. For example, what if the neighbor in the pool situation was a mobster. It is feasible that he could tell the guy putting the pool in that he would have to pay him extortion money or he would have the pool ripped up.

Also, what if the pool guy put the pool on knowingly and without asking permisission hoping that he could push his neighbor around? I don't think the mobster would mind helping the asshole as long as the price was right.

Don't admire or idolize people who you don't personally know. Just because you read about a mobster donating to the orphanage, doesn't mean he actually did it. The same about reading that the mobster is a maniac killer.

In the end of the way, I also hate the behavior "all criminals are scum and should be shot". You never know what led this man's life to what he is doing.

Just out of curiosity, why did you remove you-know-who's name, PB? The guy's family's problems with their neighbors are fairly well known and it's not like he has an upstanding reputation one has to be careful not to besmirch.

I know, and the name is still up in a similar post I made a few years ago. I guess I just feel bad for his ex because she's sending three sons to prison this summer. And actually, one of them never made bail, so he's already at the MCC pending sentence.

So call me an old softie .

Sure It is.

These are individuals that live outside of law & order. They cheat the system & in many cases live better lives because of it. Money & power without Having to go through years of monotonous schooling & sucking the cocks of authoritative figures.

These are admirable things to any clock punching average Joe.

The means whereby they attain their money and power are hardly something to admire. Only someone morally bankrupt would claim there is anything about these guys to idolize.

Nah, anyone that has endured the excruciatingly dull monotony of the American education system & worked a 9-5 shit kicking desk job can find something to admire about a mob guy. It's only natural.

You mean the exact same way all of Gotti's underlings sucked his cock? And Persico? And Gigante?

There is something very emasculating about scores of 6 ft. "tough" men in their twenties, thirties and forties being terrified of a 5 ft. 5, 69 year old man like Carmine Galante.

That to me is every bit as pathetic as someone working a desk job and being disillusioned with their boss.

You look at guys like Louis Daidone and Alphonse Persico. They were intelligent enough to go to college but chose the easy way. Look where it got them. Rotting in prison.

Look at Anthony Casso. Nobody brave enough to say boo to him. Then as soon as he goes to prison, the "tough guys" crawl out of the woodwork to start extorting his elderly wife.

Such men of honour... such admiring traits.

Simply no but there always a bunch that admire criminals.

That's actually a very fair point. What's especially sickening is watching middle-aged men drooling all over the sons and other young family members of these guys.

And I'm seriously talking about watching a fifty year old bookmaker fawn all over a 19 year old kid because he's the son of a local wiseguy, hoping the dopey kid will "put a good word in for him."

And all all that ego stroking does is turn the kid into a bigger punk than he already is. It's the reason it's so hard for some of these kids to avoid getting caught up in the life. It's a vicious cycle.

All right, you guys are going to think I'm nuts for saying this but I'll post it anyway.

There is one thing about the mob that I do kind of admire, and it's the apparent lack of ageism. It's not like much of the rest of society, in which people are considered over the hill when they turn 40. Seems like in the mob, no one cares if a 90 year old is still actively pursuing their career. In fact, one gets the impression that the mob is one of the few sectors of society in which the elderly are taken seriously as actual human beings.

Of course, I could way off base with that, but it's the impression I get. They seem to lack the creepy youth fixation you run into everywhere else. Of course that doesn't excuse all the horrible shit they do.