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CBS Defines Italian-Americans as "No Necks"
Some might consider the herein referenced derogation as a minor slight. Others may more correctly see it as one of innumerable slights.
These "slights" are particularly dangerous, because each "sting" singularly seems innocuous, and hardly worth bothering about, so you are tempted to shrug it off.
BUT in the "aggregate" they inundate the public, and have an "insidious" and "pervasive" effect.
In toto they casts a comprehensive pall on our community, inflicting great damage, that is neither inflicted on any other community, or tolerated by any other community.
Bob Mariani makes a very good case, in the following article for being "ever vigilant".
Subj: As the World Stands Still, CBS is there!
To: CBS atwt@cbs.comIt has been brought to my attention that on the CBS Show "As the World Turns" the character of Rose, speaking to another show character, Malden, stated, "I could have married (Italian name) and had a dozen kids with no necks." GREAT LINE!
That is, GREAT LINE if the writer who wrote the line is an escapee from that socially retarded show "The Sopranos" or perhaps a Neanderthal writer from "Birth of a Nation," but such a line does not give credit to a great broadcasting network like CBS.
Hearing of the reference to the line from the show I immediately went to the mirror and sure enough I evidently escaped having "no neck" because of my Italian ancestry. Looked at all of my family pictures on both sides of my Italian ancestry and evidently we were a lucky family as none of my ancestors nor contemporary relatives have "no necks," but all necks appear to be of normal length and size. Did a survey of my friends of Italian ancestry I knew over the years and again could not find any of them with "no necks." Given that I could not find any one of Italian ancestry of my acquaintance with the prescribed "no necks," I had to ask myself to what the writer was referring when s/he penned the line, "I could have married (Italian name) and had a dozen kids with no necks."
Could it just be the writer was trying to transmit a subliminal message in the line? For help with such a possible subliminal message I turned to Jungian Dream Analysis to see what such a "no neck" concept might mean in dreams. It would appear the message might be that a person with "no neck" is a person without the ability to express themselves in a coherent and clear way: a dunce or an inarticulate person. Isn't it strange that on the show "The Sopranos" the same "inarticulateness" or "duncelike speaking" is used to give the show its flavor of pseudo Italian-Americanism?
Could it just be that what we are dealing with here is a social cue regarding Italians; i.e., Italians are gorillalike in nature who can't speak right (given that the neck contains the voice box and without a "neck" the voice box and the ability to speak right/correctly are a bit collapsed and invalidated) and who lack the elegant neck (articulateness?) of the cultured and educated personages of history we see in paintings in museums, etc.? Perhaps the subliminal message was indeed that people with Italian names are "gorillalike" and not fully evolved or maybe such a social cue was hoping to conjure up the image of the enforcer type character of reel life in organized crime movies. Whatever the buried message in this throw away line, it was, at the least, a social faux pas which requires an apology from CBS to the Italian-American community as it does not reflect reality and is OBVIOUSLY some type of ethnic slur.
For CBS to be a party to such an ethnic slur is really something to be ashamed of, for as the great Judge Learned Hand, considered by many to be a peer of such great Justices as Holmes, Brandeis, and Cardozo, once said, "Words are chameleons, which reflect the colour of their environment." Surely CBS is not a dung heap with archaic ethnic slurs scattered about, but rather an institution which has always led the way for Americans to come together as a nation of immigrants, all of whom have contributed to the greatness of America -- regardless of their neck size!
As custodians of the public good, CBS might want to copy off the following Chinese proverb and paste it above the desk of the offending writer: THE SWIFTEST HORSE CANNOT OVERTAKE THE WORD ONCE SPOKEN.
Hopefully you will do the right thing and apologize to the Italian-American community and quit acting like a bunch of "red necks."
Sincerely,
Bob Miriani
St. Joseph, Missouri
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