Supreme Court Justice Thinks It’s 2000

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito spoke at Rutgers yesterday and talked about a ton of things, I’m sure, but the Associated Press picked up that he bashed The Sopranos, and so that’s what every news story says.

Yes, The Sopranos! The show that everyone liked ’til it cut to black during the final episode last year is apparently still a hot topic for spaghetti-eating mafia members Italians, because Alito says it’s offensive. Apparently, he was so excited about people calling Ed Rendell racist for saying some white people won’t vote for a black person, he wanted to hop on the offensiveness train, too.

During a visit to Rutgers University, Alito complained the hit HBO television drama “The Sopranos” not only associated Italian-Americans with the Mafia, but New Jerseyans as well.

“You have a trifecta — gangsters, Italian-Americans, New Jersey — wedded in the popular American imagination,” Alito said at an event sponsored by the university’s Italian studies program. Alito lived for nearly two decades in a West Caldwell home in the same area of New Jersey where the fictional Tony Soprano was supposed to live. Alito told the gathering of about 100 people that a friend in California once sent him a map of Sopranos-related locations. “He wanted me to put down where my house was on the map,” Alito said to laughs.

Later, Alito talked about how offensive The Untouchables was.

Alito takes on ‘Sopranos’ during visit to Rutgers [AP/Courier-Post]

The Sopranos: Bada-Bing Bada-Bang!

Some thoughts about the final episode of The Sopranos after the jump. Spoiler alert, I suppose.

More »

Blogicized: Making And Taking

• Ah, yes, the dream everyone has when they drive by Trenton on Route 1 or they leave its train station: What if Trenton were suddenly on fire? Just, keep it in your fantasies, please, lest someone get hurt. Or sue. [TinaPoPo]

• Yay! Let’s meet the bidders that are hoping to one day run the Daily News, starting with the owner of another Daily News. [Attytood]

• If you combined The Sopranos and Philadelphia’s hard-on for giving away money to those who don’t need it, you’d get this. With bonus Navy Yard reference! Hey, I thought that was going to be the Olympic Village? [(1) Philebrity (2) Welcome to Phillyville]

This Just In: Italians are whiny stereotypes

Today’s Daily News contains a guest op-ed from a local PR consultant who hates The Sopranos. Hates hates hates The Sopranos. Why? Because, of course, it stereotypes Italian-Americans.

First off, wasn’t this old like back at the end of Season 1? I mean, it was three and a half years ago when Sopranos cast members were banned from marching in the Columbus Day Parade. Second off, uhm, dude, I understand and mostly agree with the whole media-perpetuates-stereotypes thing, but, uhm… it’s Italian-Americans. Yes, they’re being kept out of the unions! No Italians need apply!

Anyway, apparently, Italian-Americans are the greatest group ever. He mentions how not all mafia members are Italian. And how “Italian-Americans have constituted little more than 5 percent of the fugitives on the FBI’s most wanted list.” And how an Italian-American discovered the AIDS virus, how two Italian-Americans signed the Declaration of Independence — no, I’m not making any of this up — and how the Jacuzzi was invented by an Italian-American.

Then, he pulls out the ultimate trump card, 9/11:

IN FACT, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, an ex-crime-busting prosecutor named Rudy Giulianni rallied the nation and set an example for all others to follow.

Finally, the word “Mafia” itself is nothing more than an ethnic slur. The term was first popularized in this country in 1891 in New Orleans as part of a violent campaign of hatred directed against Italian immigrants who were wrongly accused in a murder plot.

Oh, just shut up. Go choke on some spaghetti, you greaseball.

‘Sopranos’: Dumb, crude & wrong! [DN]
“Sopranos” Parade Plans Iced [E! Online]