Offer We Can't Refuse The Mafia in the Mind of America

Excerpted fromAn Offer We Can't Refuseby George De Stefano. Copyright 2006 by George De Stefano. Published January 2006 by Faber and Faber Inc, an affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved. Introduction The Mafia is dead. Long live the mafioso. At the dawn of the new millennium, the Italian American mafia barely resembled its old fearsome self. Beginning in the 1980s, vigorous law enforcement drove gangsters out of many of their traditional rackets and put many of its leaders in prison. In early 2003, Joseph Massino, the Bonanno organization boss and the last purported head of New York's notorious "five families" of crime still at large, was arrested and a year later was convicted on murder and racketeering charges and sentenced to life imprisonment. Then Massino did something unheard-of for an old-time mafia chief: he brokeomertathe venerable code of silence, and became a government witness. John Gotti, the publicity-loving "Dapper Don," died of cancer in prison in 2002; a year later his brother Peter, his successor as boss, was tried, convicted, and imprisoned. Vincent "the Chin" Gigante, the Genovese family chief who had eluded justice for years by feigning insanityhow could this mumbling old man shuffling through Greenwich Village in a tattered bathrobe be a cunning crime lord? his lawyers had arguedwas also put behind bars. At his sentencing in March 2003, the Chin admitted, to the chagrin of his lawyers and the mental health professionals who had long attested to his impaired state of mind, that it had all been an act. And among those mafiosi not yet dead or incarcerated,omertafurther collapsed as wiseguys increasingly chose to do the unthinkable: spill family secrets to prosecutors rather than stoically accept decades of imprisonment. Chazz Palmintieri, the Bronx-born actor who has played gangsters in such films asAnalyze ThisandBullets Over Broadway, and who grew up in a mobbed-up neighborhood, explains whyomertano longer governs mafiosi in their dealings with law enforcement. "Once a DA says to a wiseguy, 'I wish you'd talk to me, 'cause if you don't you will never see the sun for the next fifty years,' whaddaya gonna do? The guy will talk. It's just that way. And by rights, he should talk. Let 'em put you away for forty years, fifty years?...People talk. So that's what broke that code of silence." No wonder an Italian journalist has called the current chapter of the American mafia's history "il declino del padrino"the decline of the Godfather.1 But if the mob indeed is dying, American popular culture tells a different story, one in which Italian American organized crimethe mafia, La Cosa Nostra, the mobremains a potent, if troubled and diminished force. The spectacular success of the HBO seriesThe Sopranoscurrently provides the most compelling testament to the gangster genre's enduring popularity. Created by veteran television writer David Chase (ne De Cesare), the series, about a depressed New Jersey mobster whose two "families," his crime crew and his blood relatives, are giving him majoragita, is the most successful program in the history of cable television. The show has consistently attracted more viewers than its competition on broadcast television, even though the networks reach three times as many homes as HBO. 2 In 2004The Sopranosreceived an Emmy award for Best Drama Series, the first time a cable show won in that category. The Sopranoshas madeDe Stefano, George is the author of 'Offer We Can't Refuse The Mafia in the Mind of America', published 2006 under ISBN 9780571211579 and ISBN 0571211577.