- This letter was sent to Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, Nov.
5, 2002
-
- Dear Mr. Alter...
-
- Please forgive me for taking so long to respond to your
reply to my letter of Oct. 10 in which I was critical of your essay in
which you compared New Jersey Senator, Robert Torachelli with the fictitious
crime boss, Tony Soprano. Regarding the comparison, you said you were merely,
" trying to be funny".
-
- As for the question of whether the show demeans Italians,
you took the position that this is "much debated" and then gratuitously
stated that, "the Italians who created the program and act in it obviously
don't think so".
-
- Ethnic disparagement that masquerades as humor is easiest
when it is at someone else's expense. The fact that Italians act in the
program and are among its creators does not get you or the program off
the hook any more than the fact that the actors in the old "Amos and
Andy" series were black. And why did you not mention the ethnic background
of the producers of the series or of the ownership of HBO? They are certainly
not Italians.
-
- At any rate, since you obviously do not find the "Sopranos"
offensive, perhaps you could use your tribal connections to the media to
promote my idea for another series about an ethnically-defined "Crime
Family".
-
- It could be called, ''The Shapiros" and the following
could be its leading characters:
-
- * The patriarch of the family Morris Shapiro, a slumlord
whose tenants are mostly minority and who is also suspected of being the
nation's largest launderer of Colombian drug money.
-
- * Uncle Yitsak who runs a chain of sub standard nursing
homes and is currently out on bail for dealingin child pornography.
-
- * Eldest son Dr. Mortimer Shapiro who runs a Medicare
mill and several dozen "bingo'' parlors in poor neighborhoods, the
profits of which are used to finance illegal settlements on the West Bank.
-
- * Cousin Irving Shapiro, a convicted insider trader
who recently purchased a pardon from outgoing president Bill Clinton.
-
- * Zviv Shapiro who languishes in a federal prison because
he spied for Israel and his brother Lev, an Israeli General, who in addition
to siphoning off millions from the six billion in aid the US gives Israel
each year, was recently indicted for war crimes by a Belgian court for
his role in the murder of 1600 Egyptian POW's during the Six Day War.
-
- * Nephew Aaron who runs a "Tolerance" institute
that has destroyed the careers and ruined financially numerous public
figures who were critical of Israel and her American supporters.
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- * Family attorney, Seth Ginzburg, who, when he is not
providing the family with legal loopholes for their nefarious activities,
is bringing class action lawsuits on behalf of Holocaust survivors with
contingency fees that have netted him tens of millions, whereas the actual
individual plaintiff awards have usually amounted to a few thousand dollars
at most.
-
- * Rabbi Joshua Goldstein spiritual councilor to the
family who is currently under indictment for having hired a hitman to kill
his wife.
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- Then of course there are the Shapiro women:
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- * Bertha, the sister of Morris who wrote the new course
of study for multiculturalism and diversity mandated for use in New York
City public schools and who has also been linked to the world's largest
white slavery network that traffics primarily in poor young women from
the former Soviet Union;
-
- * Tiffany her younger sister, who with her lesbian lover
were the first same sex couple to adopt a child in New York;
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- * Daughter Beth and her Israeli husband, Yossi, who
are the leading importers and distributors of the drug ecstasy into the
United States;
-
- * The voluptuous Cohen twins, Becky and Rachel, who
allowed themselves to be taped by the Mossad during sexual trysts with
the president and various congressional leaders for the purposes of political
blackmail;
-
- * Niece Sharon and her husband Herb Hymawitz, who as
officers of the ACLU are actively lobbying for the passage of a federal
hate crimes which would make, among other things, a series like "Shapiros''
illegal. And no episode would be complete without a visit
by one of the principle characters to family therapist and frequent "Oprah"
guest, Dr. Sarah Sokoloff whose standard pattern of treatment calls for
her to have sex with her patients.
-
- Joe GiuseppeFurioso@aol.com http://www.thebirdman.org/Index/Temp/Temp-TheShapiros-RePorter&Babe.html
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