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  • The Italian Americans is a four-hour PBS series which is scheduled to premiere nationally at 9 p.m. on Feb. 17 and 24. Narrated by Stanley Tucci, the celebrated actor of Calabrian descent, “The Italian Americans” is made of four masterfully constructed one-hour episodes written and produced by John Maggio. The film was presented in a special event organized by NYU's Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimo' in collaboration with public broadcasters WETA and WNET and introduced by a passionate speech given by NYC's mayor Bill de Blasio.
  • Pulitzer Prize- and Oscar-winning John Patrick Shanley is best known for his riveting Broadway play Doubt, which he has since rewritten as a screen-play and a movie, as well as his Hollywood hit Moonstruck, which won three Academy Awards. He is also a theater and film director. And above all, he loves Italy and Italian America.
  • Library: Articles & Reviews
    At a time when Italy has transformed itself into a country of arrival, dealing with the issues of social misunderstanding and bigotry that accompany immigration, this anthology reminds Italians of their own citizens who left the country well over a century ago facing innumerable trials and tribulations in their new locales.
  • In a recent two-day conference at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, dozens of scholars from the U.S., Italy and elsewhere looked into the global mafia phenomenon from a multi-disciplinary perspective. The guest of honor was Italy’s former Interior Minister Vincenzo Scotti, whose book about the relationship between the Mafia and the State in Italy has just been translated into English.
  • There is an excess of successful Italian American politicians in the New York Metropolitan Area and as I’ve spent too much time on NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio, I shall turn my attention to the personal qualities and ethnic ties of Westchester County Executive and Empire State Gubernatorial wannabe, Robert Astorino, Empire State Governor and Presidential wannabe, Andrew Cuomo, and Garden State Governor and Presidential wannabe, Chris Christie.
  • There have been so many complaints about Bill De Blasio’s inauguration in the right-wing (di destra) mass media and apologies in the left-wing (di sinistra) mass media that I thought I should take a look/listen at his speech.
  • If ever it comes to pass, that an American university or college develops a Patria Meridionale curriculum, dedicated to educating the near 17 million Americans of southern-Italian descent about their mighty history and culture, then no doubt Guy de Maupassant's "Sicily" will be required reading. It will probably come as a shocking heretical statement to the philo-Florence /Chicago literati who own and operate America's Italian Studies programs, that an artistic genius such as Maupassant thought "Sicily an indispensable land to see and one unique in the world ... a divine museum of architecture” – that is, a UNIQUELY SICILIAN ARCHITECTURE! He writes: “When we have seen all these monuments that - although belong to different periods and types - have the SAME CHARACTER the SAME NATURE, we can say that they are neither Gothic, nor Arab, nor Byzantine, but SICILIAN. We can affirm that there exists a Sicilian art and a Sicilian style...THE MOST IMAGINATIVE OF ALL ARCHITECTUAL STYLES.” (emp. +) ---- 'But Of Course'; a Sicilian architecture ignored by the Italian Studies’ Chairs of Wisdom; and by ignoring, thereby insulting American Terroni who are heirs to that great artistic tradition. SUNY Stony Brook's “Manifesto of Italian Studies”, albeit eloquent, is factual inaccurate. The FACT is impeccably documented in the catalogue curriculum and course descriptions from Long Island to Los Angeles; from Ivy League to Community Colleges – American Terroni history and culture is STILL: “In the BASEMENT”! (e.g. see conclusion of “John Domini...” #1 in related articles box)
  • In U.S. House of Representatives – “Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Committee” – hearings on December 15, 2011, very authoritative expert witnesses in sworn testimony stipulated: in a period of less than two days during October 2011, 1.2 billion dollars of customer money “disappeared” from MF Global’s “customary accounts”. No one knows were it went (i.e. who got it). Multi-Billionaire Jon Corzine CEO of MF Global testified: “I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date.” Further, there has yet to be even a hint of criminal charges being brought against anyone. At least half of that money belonged to “small ranchers and farmers” (small business people analogous to the “Gomorrah” film’s “dressmaking company”). Crime does not get more organized and international than this MF Global scam. Frankly, how pathetic does even the most exaggerated “docufiction” movie representations of Camorra gang-sters seem when juxtaposed against real life international ‘Bank-sters’, such as the officers and managers of MF Global. What Camorra gangster could even dream of stealing 1.2 billion dollars with the click of a computer key and not even be suspect of a crime? In this context, Roberto Saviano’s hubris becomes clear. Whatever high moral glorious “muckraking” claims Saviano makes about “Gomorrah”, it’s just another Hollywood violent car chasing, shooting, sadistic crime entertainment film. Southern-Italian Americans should be especially mindful! “Gomorrah” falls solidly in the 200+ year tradition of denigrating dehumanizing representations of their Patria Meridionale. Saviano gives us Neapolitan boys running around in panties mindlessly firing off mega-machineguns...Gimme a break!
  • Saviano is right. Silence is not the answer; protesting dramatic portrayals of mafiosi is not the answer. Italian Americans have spent more time and money fighting fictional mafiosi than they have fighting real mafiosi in their midst.

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