Did Not Like Comedic Video by Italian Comedian: If wee had an Italian President from NJ

Tags: Stereotyping American-Italians Not Funny. Comedic Video? White Americans Lost Its Mind? Michael Parenti

Kawakami: I didn't know we had Italian comedians. I normally don't watch Mafia shows on TV, even Sopranos.

For reasons I don't understand, American-Italian politicians tend to be Far Right Wing. The Cuomo Family is an outstanding exception.

I did not find him funny and did not even crack a smile because it stereotyped New Jersey Italians. Link: Bottom of Page.

This article in the current Village Voice explains what is happening quite well in a long article. Jim

White America Has Lost Its Mind

By Steven Thrasher Village Voice Wednesday, Sep 29 2010

About 12:01 on the afternoon of January 20, 2009, the white American mind began to unravel. Will someone please throw a butterfly net over Palin, Limbaugh, Beck, DeLay, and Schlessinger? It had been a pretty good run up to that point. The brains of white folks had been humming along cogently for near on 400 years on this continent, with little sign that any serious trouble was brewing.

White people, after all, had managed to invent a spiffy new form of self-government so that all white men (and, eventually, women) could have a say in how white people were taxed and governed. White minds had also nearly universally occupied just about every branch of that government and, for more than two centuries, had kept sole possession of the leadership of its executive branch (whose parsonage, after all, is called the White House).

But when that streak was broken—and, for the first time, a nonwhite president accepted the oath of office—white America rapidly began to lose its grip. … http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-09-29/news/white-america-has-lost-its-mind/

My favorite American-Italian who grew up in New Jersey is Michael Parenti. Home Page http://www.michaelparenti.org/index.html Next to Noam Chomsky, he has the greatest books describing how our Coercive Capitalist System works. He has written many great books, but his most famous which he used to teach his former Yale college class is Democracy for the Few which he has seven editions at least. I have his sixth which came out in 1995. His books are very expensive, a way the establishment to limit readers, so bought the much cheaper used version. Its about 300 pages in a paperback edition.

Each revision results in a better book which is both shorter, up-to-date, and better written. He is a superb writer. Parenti grew up in a close-net very Italian Blue Collar family. He got his Ph.D. at Yale and did work for a while as a professor until he was selling enough of his well written books and popular books to make his living writing books and giving lectures to sell his books. Of course the New York Times never reviews his books.

I strongly recommend reading one of his books. Below are some of his quotes: http://www.michaelparenti.org/quotes.html

I have put my favorites in bold type. Sample of Michael Parenti quotations:

“Conventional opinions fit so comfortably into the dominant paradigm as to be seen not as opinions but as statements of fact, as 'the nature of things.' The very efficacy of opinion manipulation rests on the fact that we do not know we are being manipulated. The most insidious forms of oppression are those that so insinuate themselves into our communication universe and the recesses of our minds that we do not even realize they are acting upon us. The most powerful ideologies are not those that prevail against all challengers but those that are never challenged because in their ubiquity they appear as nothing more than the unadorned truth.” “Global warming is already acting upon us with an accelerated feedback and compounded effect that may be irreversible! We do not have eons or centuries or many decades. Most of us alive today may not even have the luxury of saying 'Après moi, le déluge' because we will be around to experience it ourselves. And if you think it will be 'interesting' or 'exciting,' ask the tsunami survivors if that’s how they felt. This time the plutocratic drive to 'accumulate, accumulate, accumulate' may take all of us down, once and forever.”

“Ecology's implications for capitalism are too momentous for the capitalist to contemplate. [The plutocrats] are more wedded to their wealth than to the Earth upon which they live, more concerned with the fate of their fortunes than with the fate of humanity. The present ecological crisis has been created by the few at the expense of the many. In other words, the struggle over environmentalism is part of the class struggle itself, a fact that seems to have escaped many environmentalists but is well understood by the plutocrats---which is why they are unsparing in their derision and denunciations of the 'eco-terrorists' and 'tree huggers.' ”

“In societies that worship money and success, the losers become objects of scorn. Those who work the hardest for the least are called lazy. Those forced to live in substandard housing are thought to be the authors of substandard lives. Those who do not finish high school or cannot afford to go to college are considered deficient or inept.” “The goal of a good society is to structure social relations and institutions so that cooperative and generous impulses are rewarded, while antisocial ones are discouraged. The problem with capitalism is that it best rewards the worst part of us: ruthless, competitive, conniving, opportunistic, acquisitive drives, giving little reward and often much punishment -- or at least much handicap -- to honesty, compassion, fair play, many forms of hard work, love of justice, and a concern for those in need.”

If we had an Italian President from NJ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avw0n9b2o9U