Last Don Standing-The Secret Life of Mob Boss Ralph Natale
by Larry McShane and Dan Pearson
Many people have written books about the Philadelphia Mob of the last forty years. That organization has been in constant chaos since the 1980 murder of boss Angelo Bruno, known somewhat inaccurately as the "Gentle Don". This latest foray into that milieu details the story of Bruno loyalist and enforcer, later boss and government witness, Ralph Natale. Natale was imprisoned during many key events in the modern Philly mob's timeline. Natale describes many happenings he heard about or confirmed via other mobsters. Presumably, the authors have researched and verified Natale's stories. Something that the book emphasizes is that despite their evil, many mobsters, like anyone else, love their families. Mobsters want their families provided for during their incarceration. As most hoodlums can't qualify for or use unemployment insurance for this purpose, they often rely on their mob partners and/or bosses to do this.
Theoretically it's a best business practice for a Mafia Family to support the relatives of incarcerated members. People who know that their families are safe and financially stable are less likely to take rash steps like starting mob wars from behind bars or worse, begin blabbing to the FBI.
In fiction, for example, the Corleone and Prizzi bosses paid the wives or mothers of imprisoned employees the same income the men earned when free. And upon a gangster's release from prison, a high level family leader, perhaps even the boss, would stop by the man's house to drop off some bonus money and to congratulate him for keeping his mouth shut. These actions kept morale high and discouraged informing. Some real life bosses understood the benefit of having engaged employees. But generally this gangster insurance didn't happen. Mobsters are far too selfish. In real life only the meanest bosses and/or the most savage killers could be sure that their income stream would be uninterrupted by prison terms.
Allied
directed by Robert Zemeckis
Prizzi's Honor set in World War Two. Reminiscent of classic films.
In the film Prizzi's Honor, Charlie Partanna, the melancholic top hitman and underboss for the Prizzi Family, makes the mistake of falling in love with a woman who is like him, a thief and murderer. They get married. But the Family discovers that its interests and the wife's interests do not coincide. The Family boss and his oldest friend, Charlie's father, order Charlie to do the unthinkable. Similar to that movie, Allied imagines that two WW2 undercover operatives marry but find that the affairs of the heart are subordinated to state affairs. With the exception of a blink and you'll miss it side glance of a Cotillard breast and a brief showing of Pitt's bottom, this movie would have fit well in smoothly with 40s and 50s classic Hollywood films. Everyone, most especially Pitt and Cotillard, is dressed to impress. The dialogue is rich if not especially snappy. Cotillard has the meatier role. Pitt, while not exactly the film's straight man, is in a position where he has to react more to events than actually be the hero who makes things happen. No knock on Pitt. It's just that the story requires that he's usually one step behind things. This movie is not too violent but the violence that does take place is emotionally real.
Allied is worlds apart from Pitt's over the top performance in Inglorious Basterds but here, as there, familiarity with language or customs that only a native speaker possesses can be the difference between life and death. A non-American might not know or care about the differences among US accents and cadences. However, if you claim to be from Peoria but speak English with a Charleston, South Carolina accent, an American will notice immediately. If you lie about your origins what other deception might you attempt?
Despite all of the changes that have taken place concerning the dance of life between men and women, one thing that hasn't changed is the general expectation that the man is supposed to pay for the date, at least at first. A man who doesn't do that or tries to split costs before the woman is convinced that he's even worth any of her time or money is often derided as cheap or a loser. Good, bad or indifferent that's just how things are. Even many staunch feminists suddenly become Victorian England style ladies when faced with the idea of spending their money to meet men. If the man and woman don't like each other's company or independently decide that they'd be better off elsewhere or conclude that the date was a serious waste of time, money and resources then the man just has to eat the loss of whatever money he shelled out. And though it ought to go without saying, taking someone on a date doesn't guarantee anyone anything. Not one doggone thing. There is nothing implied other than the opportunity to determine if you like someone's company or not. If you spend $17 on a date but discover that someone is not up to your standards most people (men) would count that as the cost of dating and write it off to the game.
But 37 yr old Brandon Vezmar is not most men. Brandon went out on a date with a 35 yr old lady. Things didn't go well.
People across the political spectrum dislike the free speech concept. They claim that some speech, which is always speech they oppose, is not so much speech as it is weaponized hate or discrimination, which is not protected by the First Amendment. Others even drop that fig leaf and argue that "hate speech" in any form can be banned, even if it has no provable impact on anyone. Although the most vocal advocates of this approach tend to be on the left, witness the brouhahas over right-wing intellectuals speaking at colleges, arguably many of the most powerful advocates of this approach are on the right. There is a right-wing movement to criminalize advocacy of BDS (Boycott/Divest/Sanction the state of Israel) in America. So it goes. Humans being human, we will always be tempted to outlaw viewpoints we don't like. Limits on institutional ability to criminalize, punish, prohibit or restrain speech usually are only legally present on government institutions. Private institutions can set their own rules. And they often do. The government can't jail me for writing something nasty about my employer. But my employer, upon reading my screed, might decide that it wanted to fire me. Right now. And if I am in an at will employment state there's probably not too much I could do about that.
Two recent events illustrated how someone's honest opinions got them in trouble. Well it might not be so much their honest opinions as the disdain that lay beneath them.😒
(I've Been A Winner, I've Been A Loser) I've Been In Love
Smith Connection
I was listening to the Invictus box set again and ran across this song which for whatever reason I hadn't paid attention to before. It's funny how that works. You can have something for years and discover new treasures. The Smith Connection was made up of a trio of brothers who hailed from St. Louis, not Detroit but it's a good thing that they came to the attention of the Detroit based label owned by famed producers/songwriters Holland-Dozier-Holland (HDH). At the time H-D-H were doing their best to compete with their former employer Berry Gordy and his iconic company Motown. This song was very similar to contemporaneous work coming from Philadelphia groups like the Delfonics or Chicago groups like the Chi-lites. But the deep bass and scratch guitar mark it indelibly as a Detroit based production. I like the voices and harmony, which are very masculine albeit in the higher range. The song is not blues but it is bluesy. There's no guitar or horn solo. All the focus is on the vocals. Michael Smith, who I believe is the lead singer here, later went on to modest acclaim as a songwriter, producer and solo singer with Motown. The lyrics express sadness, love, maturity, regret and hope all at the same time, which I think is a pretty neat trick. I also enjoy that there's a lot of space in the recording. No one instrument dominates. Nothing is too loud. There's something to be said for the old maxim of keep it simple, stupid.
Recently, in the South people have begun removing some noted Confederate monuments from places of honor. There are so many of these though that it would take forever to do it. Some US federal institutions are named after Confederates. It's important to remember that the Civil War was started by Southern white supremacists who feared that Northern whites were insufficiently dedicated to the twin causes of black slavery and white supremacy. So the South tried to break apart from the United States. The South started the bloodiest war ever experienced by the United States. Ironically, in their desire to defend and expand their right to own, whip, rape, exploit and murder black people, the Confederacy ineptly but fortunately brought about slavery's demise earlier than otherwise would have been the case.
With the exception of the honest white supremacist, many present day defenders of Confederate monuments, flags and namesakes do not like to admit what it is they are actually defending. The United States is not a white man's country. Black people actually do have rights that white men and women must respect. And despite Kris Kobach's best efforts Black people get to vote. How about that? All of this was anathema to Confederates, then and now. For Confederates blacks were slaves. Period. End of story. There was a Supreme Court decision which established that blacks had no rights whites needed to respect. How much more clear does someone need to be. At its core the Civil War wasn't about tariffs or balance of powers between the Federal government and states. It was about enslavement and exclusion. This isn't a modern revisionist idea.
Blissfully unencumbered by any political niceties, after all they were about to start shooting people, Confederate politicians detailed for posterity their purpose in seceding. If we weren't living in a post-truth society this evidence would prevent particularly malevolent or obtuse people from arguing that the Civil War from the South's POV wasn't about slavery and white supremacy.
Generally speaking, and all the lawyers who are qualified to speak on it can chime in if they wish, if you are are an official representative of one country doing official business in another, you have diplomatic immunity. Unless your home country decides for its own reasons to waive such immunity you usually aren't subject to prosecution by your host nation. All they can do is expel you. Consider this a form of guest right, if you will. No one kills, arrests, or otherwise harms the messenger. It's bad form. It would open up your diplomats and representatives to similar treatment if you went around, justifiably or not, arresting or abusing foreign diplomats. But the deal in having diplomatic immunity is that the foreign diplomat or other representative is supposed to live by the laws of of the host nation. Some diplomats or other representatives have a problem doing this.
The latest example of this, and it's by no means limited to Turks, occurred recently in Washington D.C. where members of the Turkish President's security team and apparent Turkish embassy staff, charged through a line of D.C. police officers to kick, punch and pummel a group of mostly Armenian-American and Kurdish-American protesters. For whatever reason the D.C. police did not use deadly force. Arguably they should have done so. American citizens have been killed by police for far less.
