(no subject)

[waider]

From the trivia notes for Shark Tale:

The shark gangster voiced by Peter Falk was originally called Don Brizzi. Bowing to pressure from the Italic Institute of America, an organization protesting Hollywood's stereotyping of Italians as mobsters and gangsters, Dreamworks agreed to change the name of the character to Don Feinberg just before release.

So, wait, (a) there's an Italic Institute of America? (not Italian? Do they all lean to one side?) and (b) Dreamworks' response to accusations of stereotyping Italians is to turn them into Jews? (not that "Brizzi" is a million miles away from "Bris", either)

Oy vey.

Comments

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Apparently. (I didn't know it existed until just now, and I am Italian! Well, half.)

According to my mom, the big ethnic conflict in this country (at least where she grew up) used to be between Italians and Irish. My grandfather was, um, not very nice about it when my mom was a kid, though he seems to have gotten over it—my high school boyfriend's mother was from Dublin.

Ah, America, it's not so much a melting pot as a disordered stew...

[king-mob.livejournal.com]

First generation, yeah. Second generation, the Irish and Italians started marrying each other, because they were part of the same communities -- basically church.

Denis Leary's got a joke about this, to the affect that the first time a lot of Irish men found out food could have flavor was when their brother married an Italian woman, and her family supplied the food at the reception.

"This beef...it's...it's not boiled...what strange taste is this?"

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

I think it depends to an extent on where they lived. My grandfather was second generation, although in his case it might've been personality; he hated pretty much everybody.

[king-mob.livejournal.com]

I object to this organization's work on the grounds that, should they succeed, people will no longer fear me just because my name ends in a vowel.

Your final line

[mopti.livejournal.com]

The brother works in hospital admin in London. One day he was on admissions in a paediatric hospital. The doctor sent both parents over to the brother to do the registration. He went through the details: chhild's name, address, date of birth, parents' names, parents' telephone numbers, etc., all dutifullt tapped into the computer. Then: "religion" says the brother. Simultaneously the parents answer:
"Jewish"
*Catholic"
The brother responds: "Ave? Oy vey? What will I put in the computer?"

(The doctor heard about it and told the brother he was lucky the parents had a sense of humnour and never to do anything like that agaon.)