Mafia: There is No Such Thing

          Earlier, I logged in to my favorite organized crime news site.  Okay, I’m still interested in crime.  I don’t commit them any more, but since I do write about it and am called to shows as an expert on the subject, I like to keep up.  A lot of what I say and write is from first hand experience; the rest is common sense.  For example, Bill O’Reilly had me on the Factor as an expert in, of all things, assassinations, when they were looking for Chandra Levy, and suspected Congressman Gary Condit of having gotten rid of the girl’s body.  In a pre-interview, O’Reilly asked if I thought Condit had really made her disappear.  I said, “This guy couldn’t get rid of a watch box without getting caught.  How do you expect him to get rid of a 110 lb girl?”  That was common sense.  O’Reilly thought so too.  He introduced me on the show by saying, “I know he couldn’t get rid of a watch box without getting caught…”  Stole my line.

          Back to the site I logged on to today, the headline read, “Korean mafia member arrested in Manila.”  KOREAN MAFIA?!!  There is no such thing as a Korean Mafia, a Russian Mafia, or a Scandinavian Mafia.  Yes, there are criminal groups in all those places, but outside of Sicily there is no Mafia.  The Italians know that.  Calabrians have N’drangheta, Neapolitans named their group Camorra, the latter of which at some point founded Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia.  Let the Koreans, Russians, and Scandinavians get their own goddamn names.  Why don’t the Koreans have a Korean Yakuza?  They’re certainly closer to Tokyo than they are to Palermo.

Sicilians have worked for centuries to develop their Mafia, which is more than just a criminal fraternity.  Mafiosi have entwined themselves in the business, politics, and general life of Sicily.  They have run major legal international businesses, helped the Allied invasion in WWII, and been elected to important government posts.  They are administrators of hospitals and have worked closely with the Vatican.  Don’t they have a right to exclusivity of their name, and not to have themselves used as an umbrella for worldwide groups made up of nothing but thugs?  Would the media call all terrorists Al Qaeda or Skinheads?  The Icelandic Al Qaeda?  The Somalian Skinheads?  Each of those groups gets to keep its own name, why not give the Mafia the same consideration?

While we’re at it, surprise, surprise: there’s no Cosa Nostra.  I am proudly old enough (many of my friends never made it this far) to remember a time before Joe Valachi.  I also remember hearing the term cosa nostra, but it was with lower case letters, as in, “This thing of ours…this thing that has no name.”  Then came Valachi, an illiterate half-moron, who told the world that this generic phrase of confusion was a proper noun…and they believed him.  Suddenly capital letters were thrown on it, and it became “La Cosa Nostra,” and American version of the Sicilian Mafia (at least he gave it a different name…though writers call it, “La Cosa Nostra, the American Mafia.”).  The worst part is that not only did civilians get taken in by this stumbum, but so did mobsters themselves.  Thirty years later, no less than John Gotti was recorded saying, “This will be a Cosa Nostra till I die,” or something like that.  A Cosa Nostra?  A thing of ours?  That’s almost as bad as the Jersey wiseguy who had his guys commandeer the jukebox in a diner he scheduled meetings at, and play the Godfather theme all the time he was there.  Good grief!  No wonder organized crime is fast becoming history, leaving only chaotic, violent crime in its wake.

On behalf of Sicilian Mafiosi, who I don’t even know, stop committing copyright infringement and calling those criminal groups from Brazil, Uganda, or Romania “Mafia.”  Yo, crooks, get your own damned name.

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