Anniversary doesn’t deserve celebration

So why are pundits celebrating the 25th anniversary of HBO’s “The Sopranos”? According to them, it’s because the fictionalized (except for the relationship between mother and son) mob series ushered in a new Golden Era of Television. Nonsense.

Take away the hype and intellectual window dressing and you’re left with a case of the mob boss wearing no clothes. The show is revered for one reason only: It brought crude Italian American cliches (goons and buffoons) from the big screen to the small one.

Instead of giggling at cartoonish images of Italian Americans in movie theaters, audiences were able to do so in the comfort of their own homes. Occasionally, local bars did sponsor “Sopranos” parties, but, for the most part, audiences tuned in religiously every Sunday, treating the show as if it were a weekly ritual.

What people don’t realize is that “The Sopranos” had a precedent: the 1954 Senate Kefauver hearings on organized crime. The historical significance of this cannot be understated.

The rise of Italian gangs in American cities from the 1930s to the 1950s coincided with a brand new invention: television. The combination of these two forces conditioned people to accept the idea that only Italian Americans had criminals in their midst.

The hearings set the template for the Italian-American-as-gangster stereotype. By the time a group of Italian American criminals with arrest records were rounded up in 1959 -- the infamous Apalachin, New York, incident -- the public had already accepted the idea that we had been invaded by a foreign criminal organization.

Thanks to Hollywood, revered terms in Italian culture--godfather, family and, now, soprano--have since become radioactive and even subject to ridicule.

So, what is there to celebrate?

Bill Dal Cerro

Chicago