s a father, and as a member of the community, there are certain aspects that I find stereotypical. There are certain aspects that I grew up with, and I never liked it, because people were responding not to my image, not to my reality, not to the Toronto reality. They were responding to the images of reality that were manufactured in New York or in San Francisco or in L.A., etc." -- Pal Di Iulio, executive director of the Columbus Centre in Toronto, about HBO's The Sopranos, on the CBC
The National Congress of Italian Canadians does not want CTV to air the award-winning series about a family of mobsters of Italian descent, because they say the series slanders their good name by glorifying crime and the Italian mobsters. -- Janet Ringer, The Arts Report, CBC
"Pat told me that a plan was bein' worked out all around the country to do somethin' about a television program called The Untouchables. It was a big hit and all it did was use some of the newspaper files about the old Chicago mob in the Capone days and maybe change a coupla names. The program was really goin' over with the public, and the sponsor, Chesterfield cigarettes, was as happy as a kid with a new toy. So the council had a meet about it and one of the guys in Profaci's outfit, named Joe Colombo, come up with the idea of formin' a legitimate association of Americans with italian backgrounds to start a campaign against usin' just Italian name for them gangsters in the TV shows and movies. The whole idea was to try to get The Untouchables off the fuckin' air. Pat was told to get my point of view and see if I could recommend the right guy to head up the new association.
"I thought about the whole thing for a day or two, while Pat was still there, and I couldn't see nothing wrong with the idea, on condition that nobody connected with any outfit have his name involved. It had to be strictly legit on the surface or it would fall into the shithouse before it ever got off the ground. I looked over the list of names they sent me and finally I agreed on Santangelo." -- Charlie "Lucky" Luciano, The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano, Gosch Hammer
Congressman Alfred Santangelo, New York Democrat, was soon named New York State president of the Federation of Italian-American Democratic Organization and headed a nationwide campaign to force The Untouchables off the air through a boycott of the sponsor, Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company. That campaign finally paid off March 14, 1961, when the cigarette manufacturer announced it was withdrawing its sponsorship because of the pressures. According to Luciano, "Santangelo knew from the beginnin' that the whole thing was dreamed up and supported by the outfits." -- "The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano", Gosch Hammer
A few years ago when reading Krushchev's secret speech in which he denouncedStalin for the first time (at the 1956 Communist Party Congress), I noticed the use of a term in Russian that could be translated as "politically correct." While denouncing Stalin, Krushchev maintained a belief in the "politically correct" -- which Stalin obviously wasn't. -- anonymous, Sum: Political Correctness, LINGUIST List 5.1230
"Wherever you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Modern political correctness is based off the idea that human beings are far too stupid and vile to form decent behavior patterns, so the government had better legislate some, and the media had better conform to what the government says, because everybody else (except you, of course) is too big of an ignorant idiot to be trusted.
This spawns from the hyperextension of human life -- an extra twenty years lifespan on average if you lived in the 20th century. Compound generation gap. Depression, Boomer, Flower Child, Me Generation, and Gen X all battling it out for control to dictate the parameters of your (sorry, not your, everyone else's) ignorant idiocy.
God help you if you think you want to make up your own mind. You'll run into a thousand pressure groups telling you that you belong to them because you're white, black, male, female, Jewish, Catholic, French, English, 20, 40, 60, retired, lost an eye in Vietnam, lost an eye in the Gulf War, are a non-smoker, are a smoker, eat, drink or breathe.
Don't worry, though, because you belong to them, they'll protect you against anyone who tries to make you less of an individual because you belong to them.
I want the political instinct of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, the selling power of Dorothy Parker, the piercing glare of Elizabeth I, the body of Marilyn Monroe below the neck, the smile of La Gioconda, and the family connections of Livia Augustus. But I've never seen a pressure group offer me that.